Rhyme Crimes
How strange that rhymes for “wife” abound
While rhymes for “husband” don’t exist.
An “errant” “parent” might be found,
But “children?” Rhymes aren’t on the list!
And even worse, when poets seek
A rhyme for the word “family”
There’s only two, they’re up a creek
With “hammily” and “clammily.”
And sadly, nothing rhymes with “love”
But “of,” “above,” “dove,” “glove,” and “shove.”
Where It’s @
I love the little “&;”
That saves me space for the word “and.”
An “*” is much desired
When just one footnote is required.
The “#” is quite complex.
It’s “hash tag” when on Twitter/X,
Or “number,” “lb.” it’s often claimed.
But “octothorpe” is what it’s named.
The “/“ in “URLs”
Is doubled up as parallels,
When used with “https,”
But single in a sub-address.
In poetry it’s used to show
The place where line divisions go.
It also serves in other ways:
To separate years, months, and days,
And as abbreviations for
“W/o,” a fraction, “per” and “or,”
A grammar rule, like “neither/nor,”
Division signs, and many more.
But on the other hand, it seems
Chicago Style Manual deems
The “\” is not, though small,
A punctuation mark at all.
To B or Not to B
Why can’t we use the letter “b”
When writing either “be” or “bee?”
It would, at least it seems to me,
Save space and add simplicity
Where single-letter homophones
Could serve as substituted clones,
For “c” in place of “see” or “sea,”
Or “t” instead of “tee” and “tea.”
Or “j” for “jay” and “q” for “queue,”
And “u” replacing “ewe” and “you.”
Then “i” could serve as well as “eye,”
And “y” as substitute for “why.”
And as for “pea,”—the dreaded “pea”—
We could, instead, just take a “p.”
James A. Tweedie is a retired pastor living in Long Beach, Washington. He has written and published six novels, one collection of short stories, and four collections of poetry including Sidekicks, Mostly Sonnets, and Laughing Matters, all with Dunecrest Press. His poems have been published nationally and internationally in both print and online media. He was honored with being chosen as the winner of the 2021 SCP International Poetry Competition.
These are all not only delightfully funny, but also ingenious, both in the ideas and in the way you’ve put them together. It’s surprising that all of us writers haven’t thought of things like this. As a child I used to think that the “hash tag” mark meant tic-tac-toe.
Tyvm, Cynthia!
These little works take “tour de force” magnificently to its slightest level. That’s meant as highest praise, James, for thorough thought and ingenious creativity. Nearly every verse writer in English must have suffered with the apparent need to commit “rhyme crimes” concerning words you mention. That’s only one reason why imperfect rhymes get overwhelming use. Love course, we can always sweep these problems into the middle of a line, or move toward useful compounds such as “thereof” and “whereof.”
Margaret, “To the slightest level” is indeed lowest praise for these self-deprecated trivialities! Thanks for what I can only describe as a concave comment.
These are clever and fun, Pastor James!
Poem 1: An avid SEC fan could say a champion team plays football Alabamally.
Poem 2: I felt smug reading the punctuation marks in the intended meter until I came to the backslash. Is there a three-syllable synonym for it that fits iambic trimeter?
And to your third poem, a hearty, “I, I, Sir!”
Mary, the backslash line was supposed to contain the word, “although” instead of the too short, “though.” And thanks for the comment!
Actually, I must correct my own correction, for if you call it a “backward slash” instead of “backslash” the meter is correct!
James, like you and most of us, often I have been confounded by the lack of some words to have rhyming mates that fit. In “Where It’s @” I was surprised at the deficiency of the Chicago Style Manual! I was taken with your poetic comments on the various symbols we use. “Rhyme Crimes” is certainly a perfect title for your third poem and the examples given are just the tip of the iceberg. In your poem “To B or Not to B, I think you have a hidden thought with the final word, “p.”
Roy, the explanation for why the backward slash isn’t a punctuation mark is because its primary use is in math (and particularly in programming) rather than in grammar. Life is sometimes especially complicated in the little things!
These are playful, facetious, and happily lacking in any moral message. i especially like “Where It’s @,” since every sign must be read aloud with its full name, in order for the meter to be scanned.
I assume that # must be read aloud as “number sign” to fit the meter. Octothorpe would also fit the meter, but I guess that James wanted to keep that as a surprise in the final line of the quatrain. Similarly, I guess that / must be read as “forward slash”, and \ as “backward slash.”
As for “Rhyme Crimes,” I have seen “children” rhymed with “cauldron” — offensive both to eye and to ear, in my opinion. James has all of the standard possibilities for “love,” but I’d add “guv,” which is London Cockney dialect for “governor.”
Good catch with the “guv,” Guv!
These are wonderfully fun. As a word nerd, I ate them up with joy.
Great idea! Great execution… I love all three!
James, These poems are delightful. Only classical poets would appreciate “Rhyme Crimes.” I sometimes count the true rhymes in worship songs I’m singing in church, and to my dismay the count is usually quite low. And hearing of country artists and those of other genres saying that it took ten minutes to write a song . . . I clearly understand, given the hordes of near rhymes and far-from rhymes. I’ve had to rewrite many lines due to lack of true rhymes for love and many other words.
I was smiling the whole time I was reading these. Does this man’s linguistic ingenuity know no ends?
Three interconnected works with completely different styles is a great accomplishment! TYVM for creating and sharing (I didn’t know what that meant until just now).
James, ewe and eye definitely share the same sentiment when it comes to penning in perfectish rhyme, and – in the same vane – I offer this little ditty:
Any Poem that Doesn’t Rhyme to Me’s a Major Waste of Time!
When querying for their preferences twixt ‘prose’ and ‘metered rhyme’ —
The bulk have answered… “‘Prose’, to me’s, a major waste of time”!
Devoid of ‘metricality’, despite their piece’s ‘Cause’,
By snubbing ‘words-that-sound-alike’ — the first among the laws
Of true, authentic ‘Poetry’ — they merely spite themselves
As their worthless works of rhymeless-rubbish rarely leave the shelves!
‘Modernism’ burned the rules that governed proper ‘Versing’,
Causing me – a ‘die-hard-bard’ – to stoop to bouts of cursing,
Vowing – ‘twould I find the turd who’d disinvited ‘Rhyme’ –
Which I believe wholeheartedly’s a guillotinal crime –
That nothing short of whacking off their head could make things right,
And I’ll continue using ‘perfect-rhyming’ when I write!
Thanks four the too fun reeds 🙂 & Merry Christmas
Shakespeare wrote poetry that did not rhyme (blank verse)
So did Milton in “Paradise Lost” (his major work).
So did Wordsworth in “The Prelude” (a very long poem)
So did Shelley and Keats in many poems.
So did Robert Browning in many poems.
So did Alfred Lord Tennyson in many poems
Ancient Greek and Latin poetry did not rhyme at all.
Should all of these guys have been excluded from publication at the SCP?
None of them, Joe, other than maybe one :-), but you make a very valid point. As I mention in my piece, I’m merely echoing what a few thousand of my recital attendees have shared with me over the past few decades, though most, by far, of my listeners are over the age of 50. I’m betting that’s precisely why? Evan has fed the ‘gang’ a lot of extremely wonderful prose over the past couple years, I simply enjoy penning the somewhat-more-difficult-for-SOME-to-write rhyme’n’meter sort, nothing more, which, for me at least, is considerably more challenging. Merry Christmas…
Mark, thanks for the laugh. Your poem got me thinking how curious that our language has so many beautiful words that rhyme with “turd” (including the word, “word!”) while so many beautiful words have no perfect rhyme at all, such as “silver,” “angel,” “warmth,” “rhythm,” and (sadly) “penguin.” On the plus side, however, there are no perfect rhymes for “bilge,” “boinged,” gouge,” “pierced,” “monster,” or (thank heavens) “polka,” either. So I suppose it all more or less evens out.
Great fun. You are indeed Le grand JAT, James!
Tyvm (an initialism I don’t think I’ve seen before, either) somehow reminds me of the old Nichols and May punning gag “sanctuary moch.”
As for / reversed,
You never know in what benighted burg you’ll
Hear the backslash renamed a contravirgule.
There are a few ways to deal with words that seem unrhymeable. There is the old trick of simply having a “sight” rhyme, as with “gouge” and “rouge,” or “bilge” and “oblige.” But this demands a readership that is very consciously literary, in the sense that they’ll accept the absence of sonic concordance because your craft is strong enough to make the thing work.
You can also create a rhyme by combining two monosyllables (either as a new compound word, or two monosyllables next to each other) to solve the problem. Or you can break a word with a dash, and rhyme just the first part of it. Consider this:
I saw something I deemed a penguin
Leap out from a slimy fen, grin,
And reveal itself a monster.
In my wild and utter conster-
Nation, I cried “Stuff this strange’ll
Make me call my guardian angel!”
It works well enough in some cases, but it actually is helpful in writing facetious nonsense verse.
Most of us have done the love/prove sight rhyme while swallowing hard along with a sheepish grin while finding justification in Shakespeare having sight rhymed love/remove in Sonnet 116. The slit word or two-word rhyme is one that both C.B. And I have used in both facetious nonsense and more serious works—not technically classical, perhaps (whatever that means) but creative, clever and skillful enough to entertain a reader or two! Joe, your sample poem—which takes on the challenge of my unrhymeable sample word list—is cheeky fun, especially in the incorporation of the contraction!
Perhaps the third poem could be ‘To P or not to P’, James.
Three whimsical pieces that have put me in a good mood as I unwind for the weekend.
And that trip around the keyboard! A unique piece of weirdness that’s both entertaining and educational.
Thanks for the reads.
Paul, if any of these poems were educational then I must confess to being flabbergasted by the news. I note (approvingly) that Joe correctly acknowledged that there is no moral attached to them, but education? I confess that, apart from the bit about the backward slash not being an element of punctuation, I had no aspiration to edify anyone with this nonsense. Even so, if Warren could learn from the comments what “tyvm” actually means, then I suppose it is, in fact, possible that you learned something from the poems themselves. Que sera! And thanks for smiling back!
Well, maybe I’m the only one, James, but I’d never before heard the word “octothorpe”, so you’ve educated me on that one! (though actually, it was not in my Webster’s New World College Dictionary 2001, so I had to look it up online.)
This is some seriously funny stuff, James, and your attention to detail does not go unnoticed, but there is yet even more arcane stuff going on inside our language and the typographical symbols by which we express it. For most of my life I have struggled to write down a clear ampersand that can’t be confused with a G-clef. Roll on, O deep blue ocean-treader, the shore is yours. You own the land where others only collect shells.
C.B., Perhaps it may be more apropos to my situation near the ocean to say that while others pick up shells I dig for clams! But, alas, whenever I walk down to the beach to dig there are many others ahead of me digging up the sand in search of the Pacific Razor clam—but in the end we all get our limits (15 clans) and are content. Poetry is more like this, I think. But your eloquent high praise is noted with appreciation. Best of all, you were entertained and I could not ask for more! Except in my case, I can’t scribble a decent or even recognizable “@“ in my email address.
Jim, these are highly entertaining, just when we Brits are needing of some light relief. I was reminded of the great Victor Borge and his hilarious punctuation routines. Thank you for a most uplifting read.
Jeff, Sunlight and a smile amidst the gathering darkness of a rising storm can inspire hope that the storm will pass with spring following close behind. May it prove to be so for you and your fellow Brits.
Wonderful poetry James that should be used and taught in our schools so that kids can see the fun and inventiveness and absurdity of the English language. But there is of course an irony in saying all this: so much of our poetry depends on this phonic inventiveness – you make it explicit for the purpose of fun, but when it is implicit – wow! – all that multivalence creeps in!