Would you like to attempt another rhyme, in iambic pentameter this time?

You owe amends to bard and read’r;
I think you know just what I say.
Your verse’s derived from a better preceder
And I would fain be summer day.

This reminds me that I once blew off an English assignment to write a sonnet as homework. The penalty was going to be a -10 point deduction per day that we turned it in late. I submitted my work three days late, expecting to fail, even though it was excellent work, if I do say so myself. I got a D. The teacher had written his own couplet to me on the graded work:

You did try hard, a noble attempt,
But from a poor grade you are not exempt.

I can’t believe I’m taking all the time
To write a quip in antiquated style.
It’s hard enough to write without the rhyme.
Oh well, I’m on the time clock all the while.

MIlo here:

To paraphrase the Bard takes so much nerve
That even I, the nobl’st feline here,
Would’st scarcely dare to throw you such a curve
For fear of retribution from a peer.

So raise your glass to verse that’s been well scanned
And keep your brutish lines at home and banned.

O what a rogue and penguin slave am I…...

Some poetry can move a wretched soul
And extract tears enough to fill a bucket.
But all the verse through centuries be told
I most remember those that rhyme “Nantucket”.

With deepest apologies

Of all the thoughts of mice and men,
The saddest is this: It’s just @seazen.

Plato questioned Socrates, or so I saw today,
And Schopenhauer queried vision, an’ which I learnt as well.
But now I write my sights in verse, and readers have to pay:
Expired is my license here, and rhymes not fit for hell.

A’working I should be, and not composing verse.
Schedule meeting; toeing line, and turning ‘pon a dime,
But here I am composing ditties. Alas, it could be worse -
I could be home and unemployed, rhyming on own time.

Scanning iambs is the key task here.
The other tropes should simply disappear.
The beat goes on, da DUM da DUM da DUM.
The other metrics need a rushing bum.

If e’er our bosses check our hard drive’s cache
And find out how we’ve spent the time they’re owed,
Our HR files will promptly hit the trash,
And slips of pink will bid us hit the road.

To think that I shall never see,
A jelly swimming in the sea.

O would that god the giftie gie us
To watch some jellies climb the tree-us!.

Execrable! There’s a word!
To write a line about our poems:
These heaps of dung, these turds,
That we should keep without our homes.

I do not fear the reaper, see,
Death holds me not in thrall
But I am loath that readers here
May curse these odes withal.

Though facebook and email I oft peruse
In my heart there is always another
Where literate people meet to amuse
There is no other place quite like Fluther

Writing Iambic on a Rainy Monday

Whose lines I crib I think you know.
His place is in the graveyard, though;
He can not see me playing here
To wreck his poem as I write slow.

My feeble brain doth think it queer
That I can write in meter clear
And pick out words that also rhyme
Upon these lines you’ve asked of me.

I’m writing many things I say
In penta-meter through the day.
The only other things I speak
Were metered (unrhymed) throwaways.

The poem was lovely; you could weep,
‘Cuz I have couplets more to reap,
And while into the evening deep,
And while into the evening deep.

Pssst. He asked for pentameter and not tetrameter.

Tis a fleeting year it’s been
floating in the jelly pond
to and fro I swim and swim
and into the brackish waves beyond

Here is an earlier question that explains why the “pentameter” is as important as the “iamb”: http://www.fluther.com/8461/how-to-write-in-iambic-pentameter/

There is some wonderful verse here, but five feet is different than four feet, as Milo likes to say. He also notes that a trochee is different from an iamb. He is such a pedant, I know.

Oh to be a babe in waters still
To float along quiet as a jelly
To drop a plop in diapers waterproof
And worry not as to whether one is smelly

I never saw a purple Seazen
I never hope to see one.
But, I can tell you any day
I’d rather see than be one.

An iambic pentameter has ten syllables with five pairs of alternating stressed and unstressed syllables. Every pair of syllable is called an iambus. The rhythm of the meter is written as:

da DUM, da DUM, da DUM, da DUM, da DUM.

I am taking my aching head to bed. End rhymes and rollicking
tumpty-tiddle-tiddles is not iambic pentameter.

I’m starting to get it, @gailcalled, maybe.
Meters of tetra and penta, oh babe,
It’s all Greek to me, and it just don’t scan,
And schemas for rhyming, stanzas and lines,
That simply don’t matter, you tell me now.
So what is poetry? I want to know.
If I’ve got it or not, I have to go.
(And I’m sorry your head hurts. Good night, girl.)

Well, shit, I thought mine was pretty darn amusing. No freakin’ lurve? :o

@ladymia

Zen is normally quite generous with the lurve. Maybe a tad tardy at times, but patience is a virtue, you know?

Here’s a little pity lurve from moi. But actually yours was kinda funny, come to think of it :)

@WasCy; I love where this thread has taken us. Congratulations for introducing the anapest, dactyl, and spondee (and pyrrhic, which is a boring da da).

Dactyl: DUM, da, da, as in JA que line KEN ne dy.
Anapest: da da DUM as in tam bour INE
Spondee: DUM DUM as in BITE ME

I will spare you the more exotic beasties such as amphibrach.

8:52 and the runways clear
departure for exotic shores
instead my bath runs over here
whilst doing all the mundane chores

But soon I’ll fly
though not by jet
beneath a warming noonday sun
have things to do and people to see
just can’t quite shed my bathrobe yet

Come 4 o’ clock the Corona bell rings
and I will be in all my power
this zippy soul will laugh and sing
it all starts with my morning shower

@WasCy
You are a poet and you know it,
But your face doesn’t show it.

@gailcalled Dactyl, Anapest and Spondee sound like religious denominations to me. Are you sure you’re in the right thread?

They are also the new and trendy names for babies. Anapest Romanov, for example.

Spondee O’Grady?

Forever Choriamber?

Iambic the Mob?

Iambic the hijack?

Anapest is also a town in Hungary (or is that Rumania?).

Psst. I think the Israeli wants his thread back.

I doubt it. He let it stray alarmingly from the original intent of iambic pentameter, didn’t he?

@janbb Now I have to kill you.

@seazen You have to catch me first chaver.

Stand up and look out the window. No, the other one.

oops!

Oh yes. Yous in trouble now Bubsy. You taught you saw a puddytat – but it was me.

that was some fucking big puddycat!

Enjoy Bubs

I taught I saw a puddy tat is perfect iambic tetrameter, you’ll note.

@seazen Denks bubbeleh.

MILO
Jillycat here:
Anything you can do, I can do better.
I can do anything better than you.
I can make the bed warmer, I can make my mom calmer, I can make the garden wetter,
And I can write poetry better than you!

Yo mama.

No you can’t.

Did that.

It’s such bad taste to disappear from view
And re-emerge with ancient verse, not new.

Nice to see Andrew grace the scene
But where are the others on his team?

Sounds good. But do we have a subject set,
That we are all supposed to write upon?
Is this a thread, where sens’ble talk is done,
Or is this just a glorified group chat?

@Fyrius Apparently its the latter.

@seazen
And errantly, thus I gather.

A careful look at what was said above
Suggests an absence of a common theme.
All rhyme, no reason, so it has to seem.

No subject writ upon by any pen
But randomness, which I admit I love
The form suffices, function be condemned.

While that is fine and dandy and good fun,
I fear the subtance out of which I run;
My inspiration turns an empty trove.

@Fyrius You da dog!

Why thank you much, my dearest penguin-friend.
Yet you are celebrating a lament.

That rhyme scheme was awkward. I can’t quite feel the regularity in it, even if I know where it is.

@Fyrius: Milo here; It scans for me.

Is it so hard to count to four plus one?
Count off the fingers on your little hand?
The end rhymes suck, but let the beat
(go on)

‘Tis not the rhythm here that gives me pause,
Nor does the length requirement of five
And iambs too are no high goal to strive
For; none of these things is my worry’s cause.

No, clearly, as I said, my qualm is that
I fear that my material be spent.
Methinks you missed the point of what I meant.
(But leave that sort of bollocks to a cat.)

Milo is a cat, right?

@Fyrius: Here’s Milo in his most recent meditation chamber.

Sorry, I should have been clearer but all this poetry, form and meter is exhausting.

I was addressing my peroration at the responders here who ignored the original instructions. You get top marks for both form and content.

And if I am correct in my assumptions, English is not @Fyrius’ native language.

@janbb: Oh, double wow. Of course he’s Dutch. What is it with that little country and linguistics?

Imagine writing any kind of formal and structured verse in Dutch!

Am I chopped falafel?

@seazen You have never revealed where you grew up, but I suspect English was once your native language.

@gailcalled
Haha, thanks.
It’s not such a grand miracle. I’m a language geek. It’s my hobby. Other people paint or sing or read about trains for fun and become really good with that, I speak English for fun and become really good at it. You can pick up your jaws and put them back on now.

I suppose I misunderstood you, then. I thought that entire post was talking to me.
And of course I wasn’t really angry, I was just playing on the old dog-cat-rivalry joke.

@seazen: You left this question seduced and abandoned and moved on to board games, Lady Gaga, velcro,TJBM, best friends and self-perception.

We wanted a seminar, serious brooding, the history of Celtic alliteration, Frost’s and Auden’s take on the art of the vilannelle, and the theory behind language skills and small countries on the North Sea.

@Fyrius: MIlo here: I knew that. Gail’s a bit slow.

My native language is Native.

@gail So go ask a question – who’s a-stopping you?

Oh I have missed some of the smart and snappy interchanges from the past. This question has been fun!

@janbb:
The end is nigh, the curtain finally dropped.
Needs must decide that this is now estopped.

Now why are you two talking of the end?
This thread could prosper on for evermore,
So long as we write on like heretofore.
Why leave it for Oblivion’s callous hand?

A thread can reach a far more graceful age
As long as there are characters on stage.
Why curtains? Why stand up, why take a bow?
I understand the meaning, but why now?

Zounds, I think we have William von Shakespeare amongst us, begad! (or perhaps Willliam of Orange?)

Enough of that. Please.
I prefer people to be dumbstruck and speechless from my brilliance. It’s less awkward, because I don’t have to say anything back.

(remains quiet)

(gobsmacked)

Mere doggerel, if you ask me

And some catterel.

Or caterwauling

Well, it is a bit ruff!

Now I’m feline a little sick.

Time to paws and take a deep breath

Pardon me for jumping in so late.
Composing verse with meter specified
Is quite a challenge, I can plainly see.
And that’s without a rhyme in any line.

Pentameter—five beats per line of verse
Iambic meaning how the sounds are stressed:
“Da-DUM, da-DUM,..” and so on, ever terse.
But oh, in Shakespeare’s hand it was the best!

“To be, or not to be? That is the question.”
Pentameter, iambic all the way.
“Oh Romeo, Romeo. Wherefore art thou Romeo?”
Well done. Bravo. What else is there to say?

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.”
I count five beats again. It never ends.
“Now is the winter of our discontent.”
Will Shakespeare nails it every time, my friends.

Thank heaven for @gasman. I was just looking for the escape claws.

Buncha pussies.

Don’t be hatin’ on them, dawg.

No hatin’ – just pontificatin’.

Y’all should have left it to end on “buncha pussies”...it would have been perfect.

Right, sorry.

Read between the lines, pussies! :)