Fwd: [ADS-L] query on poetic figure

Arnold Zwicky zwicky at STANFORD.EDU
Fri Jul 16 17:23:40 UTC 2010


intended for the whole list, not just jesse:
>
> On Jul 16, 2010, at 2:44 AM, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:
>
>> According to the beloved _Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and
>> Poetics_, it's called a "broken rhyme" (sometimes apparently
>> also called "split rhyme").
>
> that's it!  many thanks.  what led me astray was in not thinking of the phenomenon as a type of *rhyme*.  i still don't, but i see how you can end up talking this way, since what is the larger category to which the phenomenon belongs?
>
> this larger category certainly includes enjambment.  in fact, you can view broken/split rhyme as just an extreme type of enjambment: the line division breaks up parts of a word, not just parts of a syntactic consitituent.
>
> my own poetry is very heavily enjambed.  here's an extreme example (not previously posted on the net) from an occasional poem, the occasion being a discussion with musicologist Blake Stevens about "storm music" by several composers (it all started, i think, with Rameau); i don't recall how Conan Doyle came into it, though i do recall that Blake didn't get the reference to the Giant Rat of Sumatra:
>
> The Giant Rat of Sumatra’s song – 10/1/05
>  for Blake Stevens
>
> Rameau, Mozart, and
> Wagner
> Played the
> Giant Rat of
> Sumatra’s
> Song,
>
> Hoping to enmesh the
> Creature in an
> Epic storm, which it
> Could not long
> Endure.
>
> It was the
> Only tactic they could
> Agree on
>
> .....
>
>> Some examples from non-comic poems
>> include G. M. Hopkins' "The Windhover":...
>
> a wonderful poem, perhaps damaged by being assigned for analysis to so many generations of students.  (i don't think analysis/criticsm itself damages works of art -- a good thing, since i do so much of it -- but when it comes to overshadow a work within some community, that's not good.)
>
> thanks for these examples.  and thanks to Charlie and others (starting with Neal) for their suggestions, which range widely over the world of poetry and song.
>
>> ... Arnold, please don't leave!
>
> i am considerably cheered by the discussions of split rhyme and of proscription contamination that have been going on.
>
> arnold
>

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list