19 Responses to “A poetry lesson for Bartle”

Jump to reader comments » | Leave a reply »

Trackbacks & Pingbacks

Reader Comments

1. Oliver Smith said on September 6th, 2008 at 2:34 pm:

   said Portia to Antonio in which
   of Shakespeare’s Comedies? Who killed his wife,
   insane with jealousy? And which Scots witch

   “which -> wife -> witch” that sort of underhand secondary derision that Shakespeare liked to hide behind the crude and the obvious.

2. Amaranthar said on September 7th, 2008 at 7:18 am:

   “which -> wife -> witch” that sort of underhand secondary derision that Shakespeare liked to hide behind the crude and the obvious.

   OH man, interesting!
   How about:
   tragedy->death->why
   you->poetry->moon
   we->nothing->begin

   This probably can be allot like cloud watching, but it makes you wonder. Especially if you find a sort of pattern to it (which I don’t here, but I’m a noob).

   Cool.

3. Michael Chui said on September 7th, 2008 at 8:24 am:

   or the way in which this paragraph is made of iambs.

   No it’s not… it’s pretty good, and maybe it’s my accent (or yours), but it doesn’t read iambic to me in way too many places.

4. Raph said on September 7th, 2008 at 10:18 am:

   No it’s not… it’s pretty good, and maybe it’s my accent (or yours), but it doesn’t read iambic to me in way too many places.

   I cheated a few times, but in classic poetic ways. “ev’ry” “ope’ning”, and the stranger “al/go/ri/thm.” I broke it on “quatrain” where I talked about, well, breaking.

5. Richard Bartle said on September 7th, 2008 at 11:51 am:

   >Loosely, this can be termed half rhyme or slant rhyme

   Yes, but that doesn’t mean it actually rhymes…

   >tragedy/why I would call a stretch because it is dependent on accent.

   I did question whether I might be reading it with the wrong accent. I don’t know what Carol ann Duffy’s accent is, though, never having heard her speak. If it’s that of Shropshire, where she grew up, I guess it’s possible that “tragedy” would be pronounced maybe “trad je day” which could rhyme with a “why” pronounced “way”, but even that would probably be a bit of a push.

   >you/moon is a classic case of assonance, with a full rhyme on the vowels and not on the consonants.

   I know what assonance is. I didn’t know it counted as rhyme, though.

   >Again, if you say it more as “nuthin’” it rhymes fine, but is again somewhat accent-dependent.

   Again, I said I could have been reading it with the wrong internal accent. However, the temptation to read “nothing” as if it ended in “ing” and not “in” is so strong that I’d rather have expected someone who wanted it to be read as “nothin” to have put in the apostrophe to tell us it wasn’t an “ing” ending.

   >It’s also an imperfect rhyme because the rhyme is between a stressed and an unstressed syllable

   So an imperfect rhyme still rhymes?

   >the tragedy/why rhyme is greatly helped by the internal rhymes

   Not enough to make it rhyme, though!

   >the hammering on the “which” sound

   Which gets to rhyme with the homonym “witch”. I was always taught that words can’t rhyme with homonyms, but I guess the rules could have been changed.

   That, indeed, could be the problem here. When I did my English Literature O-level 30 years ago, we would look at close-but-no-cigar rhymes and try figure out why they were there. For example, in Blake’s “The Tyger” he rhymes “hand or eye” with “symmetry”, which doesn’t rhyme with “hand or eye” unless you mispronounce it. They didn’t used to pronounce “symmetry” as “simmer try” back then, so he must have done it deliberately. Was he just being slack, because he thought a close rhyme was enough? Well, no: every other line rhymes perfectly. Therefore, he must have been forcing the rhyme to make a point – something about the inexactness of the symmetry, perhaps?

   If things have changed since then, and non-rhymes can be passed off as rhyme, well, OK, that would explain why I don’t think this poem rhymes and you do.

   Richard

   PS: I almost called my original post “Raph bait”, heh heh.

6. Richard Bartle said on September 8th, 2008 at 12:23 am:

   Hmm, I think I meant homophone, not homonym, back there…

   Richard

7. Morgan Ramsay said on September 8th, 2008 at 1:10 am:

   Raph:

   I cheated a few times …

   Richard, I have a poetry lesson for you. Never argue with poets. They cheat.

8. Richard Bartle said on September 8th, 2008 at 3:53 pm:

   Morgan Ramsay>Richard, I have a poetry lesson for you. Never argue with poets. They cheat.

   Yes indeed. They are also keen to tell you what rules they’re breaking, and especially eager to point out to non-poets what philistines they are.

   My issue was with the headline-writer, not with the poet. Poets can write what they like: it’s poetry simply because it was written by a poet. Carol Ann Duffy is tipped to be Britain’s next Poet Laureate; I’m not going to argue over whether anything she writes that she says is a poem is indeed a poem or not. Personally, I see something of a discordance between choosing to write to a prescribed structure and then being lackadaisical with said structure, but it’s not me who’s writing the poetry.

   My blog entry was complaining not about Carol Ann Duffy’s poem, but the fact that The Guardian‘s headline said it rhymed. It doesn’t, except in a couple of places, unless you stretch your definition of “rhyme” to include “doesn’t actually rhyme”. Just because two sets of syllables sound almost the same if you hear them said through an inch of felt, that doesn’t mean they rhyme. They can nearly rhyme, but that’s not the same thing.

   All that Raph had to say was that I was talking about perfect rhymes, and the headline-writer was talking about rhyme in a much looser sense. Fair enough; I knew that. Part of my motivation for blogging was to set myself against the gradual and casual devaluation of the word “rhyme”.

   But no, instead we got “a poetry lesson for Bartle”. I don’t need a poetry lesson to instruct me on the basics of poetry. Bartle had plenty of poetry lessons at school. However, I don’t suppose many of the 331 people (as I write this) who read the post’s headline are going to come away with that impression.

   Richard

9. Raph said on September 8th, 2008 at 4:05 pm:

   I seem to have caused some offense, when I thought we were simply going back and forth in ongoing humorous needling. Your last remark on the poems was “I studiously avoid the music, because I have read the poems!” or some such… I took that as the same sort of teasing. No condescension was intended.

   FWIW, the Wikipedia article on rhyme sums up my understanding pretty well — which is that “rhyme” is generally used for perfect rhyme, but when digging deeper into poems, there are many forms of imperfect rhyme, and using them is not at all considered out of bounds for the form.

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhyme#Types_of_rhyme

   For that matter, the sort of syllabic elision I used and referenced as “cheating” is also extremely common in metrical verse and can be seen going back to Chaucer; the use of the apostrophe to indicate it seems out of fashion at this point.

10. Richard Bartle said on September 9th, 2008 at 1:18 am:

    Raph>I seem to have caused some offense

    Nah, your poems aren’t that bad…

    >when I thought we were simply going back and forth in ongoing humorous needling.

    Yes, but that’s not how it was going to look to someone on their RSS feed, was it?

    I knew when I posted Carol Ann Duffy’s poem on QBlog that it might catch your attention, and I almost entitled it “Raph Bait” because I was sure you’d have something to say about it so soon after I’d been dismissive of your own poetry. I decided not to, though, because that would have been an unnecessary dig.

    >I took that as the same sort of teasing. No condescension was intended.

    It was teasing, yes, although not without reason – I really don’t read your poems any more. I wouldn’t have mentioned it, but hey, you asked! I kept my comments on the matter short, though, because if I went into details I could have come across as being hurtful, which was not what I wanted at all. If you want to write poems, hey, that’s your prerogative – the last thing I’d want to do is to put you off. If you want to publish them on your blog, well you can publish what you please on it, it’s yours and it’s you. Just because your poems are not to my taste, that doesn’t mean you should stop writing them. It’s only when you yourself find no drive to write them that you should take notice.

    >FWIW, the Wikipedia article on rhyme sums up my understanding pretty well — which is that “rhyme” is generally used for perfect rhyme, but when digging deeper into poems, there are many forms of imperfect rhyme, and using them is not at all considered out of bounds for the form.

    Well, I’d suggest that it depends on the form, but that’s beside the point. The word “rhyme” generally does (still) mean perfect rhyme, but that headline in The Guardian was drifting away from this.

    Here’s the deeper background, which you might not know. We saw in the UK a move away from “structure” in English literature the 1980s, because it was regarded as a constraint on creativity. This covered everything, with allowing bad spelling at one end to stories with no story at the other. It was believed that children would be better able to express themselves if they were freed from rules. Of course, the opposite happened: children became less able to articulate their thoughts – having to think “how to say it” at every turn got in the way of “what to say”. One of the things children were told was that poems didn’t need to rhyme, which is true but it meant that it took rhyme out of their toolbox. They’d get marks for “rhyming” the words “luck” and “love”, but told off for rhyming “luck” and “book” (which, believe it or not, in my accent are a perfect rhyme – “luck” and “look” sound identical when I say them). The pendulum is swinging back the other way now, although it won’t be going far in the opposite direction (we’re not going to be teaching children grammar any time soon – that had been dropped even in my day).

    The damage has been done, though. So when I see a front-page headline proclaiming that something rhymes when no, actually it doesn’t, I’m going to complain about it. If you relegate perfect rhyme to just one of a basket of casual rhyming possibilities, it takes away its power. I don’t want that to happen. That’s what was behind my QBlog post.

    Two things irritated me about your post. The first, which you probably weren’t to know, is that the assumption that I’m ignorant about the arts touches a raw nerve. As someone from the north of England who lives in the south, I’m used to being stereotyped as someone who must have no concept of high culture (I recall one of my university colleagues laughing in disbelief when I told him I’d read Chekhov). It annoys me, though. Now sure, I don’t know as much about poetry as you do, but I knew everything you said. What made you think I wouldn’t know it?

    If that was all there was to it, I probably wouldn’t have commented. The second thing that irritated me, though, was the fact you dedicated an entire blog entry, entitled “A Poetry Lesson for Bartle”, to it. Now, people who read that are also going to think I’m ignorant! It may have been intended as humorous needling, but no-one would know that unless they’d read the comments section 7 posts earlier. Now, I had to say something, otherwise people would think it was true, so I did. I wasn’t meaning to be malicious or anything – I apologise if it came across that way.

    Richard

11. Amaranthar said on September 9th, 2008 at 8:30 am:

    This has been a pretty damn interesting topic. As someone who’s basically uneducated in the arts, but trying to cram allot in due to a personal goal, it’s been more informative than some of you may realize.

    Personally, I love to see this kind of “spat”. They bring out allot of stuff that is very informative to anyone who’s listening with an ear towards picking up a thing or two.

12. BadMisterFrosty said on September 10th, 2008 at 2:50 pm:

    I am with Dr. Bartle. Totally. And would go much further with it. Way too many people use their own “Private Language” where believed connotations already taken over the denotations. When it doesn’t rhyme, it doesn’t rhyme. (which isn’t exactly the same). Well, let’s not bend words around. There are probably combinations of letters left to make up a new word for this specal kind of sorta-rhymes-somehow. It’s perhaps easier to have that established than to convince everyone that something that clearly doesn’t rhyme does rhyme — actually. Aside, I am not a native english speaker (I should note that in a commentary about language, where I dare to criticise language with imperfect english).

13. Michael Chui said on September 10th, 2008 at 7:40 pm:

    Eh. I’m of the school that everyone has a personal language, in the strictest (philosophical, not academic) definition of the word. From accents to vocabulary to idioms to the geographical and cultural mobility of modern people, it gets really hard to pin down any kind of “perfect” language, unless there’s an arbitration committee writing down a manual.

    Besides, any half-assed study of linguistics will tell you that language drifts. Yes, muddling the definition of a word makes it hard to use it meaningfully, but if you say “there are probably ways to arrange letters into new words”, then go ahead. Do it. Use it. Convince others to use it.

    If you don’t care enough to do that, then why should anyone else?

    http://www.dictionaryevangelist.com/labels/neologism.html

    http://abriefmessage.com/2007/10/17/mckean/

14. Richard Bartle said on September 11th, 2008 at 1:56 am:

    It might at this point be worth my mentioning that I have nothing against poems that don’t rhyme per se. My objections are to calling things rhyme when they’re not – because that undermines the meaning of “rhyme”, and therefore the meaning of what rhyme is used for. If you think that a near rhyme is as good as a perfect rhyme, for a start you’ve lost the aesthetic and memorability features of perfect rhyme, and you’re also hacking at the poem’s structure. If you choose not to rhyme for a form that demands rhyme, then it ought to be for a better reason than your thinking that it did rhyme (or, worse, that it was too hard to find a perfect rhyme but close-rhymes are just as valid so it’s OK). Poetic forms are there to provide constraints that concentrate what you say, so you’re forced to distil your thoughts and emotions to fit. If you decide they don’t have to fit, well the truth is that you didn’t distil enough.

    As I said, though, poetry can be poetry without rhyming. Indeed, one of my favourite poems (Breaking the Rule, by Julia Copus) has only the vaguest suggestions of resonances where you might expect rhyme; it’s this way for a reason, though. Incidentally, this poem was what finally put me off trying to write poetry myself: it reads as if it came so easily, yet my own efforts were always titanic struggles. I can write verse, yes, but poetry is just too hard to get to say what I want to say. I can articulate myself much better (and with appropriate ease) in virtual worlds, games, screenplays and novels.

    Richard

15. Raph said on September 11th, 2008 at 8:31 am:

    That really is a pretty fantastic poem, Richard.

    I suppose that to me, given that all those other terms about rhyme are always swirling around in my head, when I read “rhyme,” I read it in that context, where there are many sorts of rhyming.

    The prevailing poetic standards these days have drifted pretty far from rhyme in general over the years (though the rise of New Formalism and the like pushed the pendulum back some) and when you do see rhyme, it frequently is not full rhyme all the way through. But it has been that way since the 19th century. So I don’t really fight the use of the term, particularly when there is so much specific vocabulary around the many flavors of slant, close, and half rhymes.

    Way too many people use their own “Private Language” where believed connotations already taken over the denotations. When it doesn’t rhyme, it doesn’t rhyme. (which isn’t exactly the same). Well, let’s not bend words around. There are probably combinations of letters left to make up a new word for this specal kind of sorta-rhymes-somehow.

    These aren’t new words, nor is what I wrote a private language. See the Wikipedia article I linked — all those terms are common poetic terms, generally lumped under “rhyme,” — and in fact, they are on the “rhyme” page in Wikipedia.

16. Amaranthar said on September 11th, 2008 at 9:50 am:

    I wonder if any of you would indulge me and say what you think of this poetic story I wrote for UO, about an in-game happening. See, I’m trying to write a book, and I’m working on my skills as I develop the story. (I’ve joined an online writing club also.) Mainly, I’m curious how I did on this a few years ago.

    Ballad of the Battle of the SinTax

    There once was a time, many years ago, before three dark hooded watchers pointed up in the night.
    Uttering not a single word, they fortold moonstones falling from the sky, the comming of Trammel and the order held within it’s sight.
    ——————

    It was a time of chaos and of lawless flaw
    A time when the sword and the spell ruled over all
    Many warlords rose and many also fell
    Lord British himself could not stop deaths knell

    From these ashes one rose above all
    A mighty warrior and his followers from his hall
    A warlord to Lord British he would pay no heed,
    He was BoneDancer, by name and by deed

    Ruling the dungeons, the forest, and the dell
    They left safety to Lord British’s cities swell
    By the waste of others they did feed
    They were Sinister, by name and by deed

    And as fate would have all come to pass
    These folk of evil times would amass
    To look upon their glimmers and fortunes held fast
    And say to themselves it is not enough vast

    They would challenge British’s law and decree
    They would make all pay them fee
    Issued from BoneDancer and guild Sinister
    It was taxes they would wage and administer

    Now stood there a tower to freedom and trade
    Where the peoples of our land met and deals there were made
    Auctions and sales done under watchful and security
    Where free trade could be held for assurety

    It was RedDevil’s tower of old and of fame
    And all who came were treated the same
    Where much gold changed from hand to hand
    And here where Sinister would make their taxes stand

    But this is where the fates make their promise
    For live in their plan and be treated with hospice
    But overstep this grand plan the fates do set
    And you surely will feel the wrath they beset

    So the fates set in motion a thing to behold
    And warriors and mages dreamt not to fall fold
    Of a warlord and clan whose bounds did not know
    And a doom was made in a seed the Fates would sow

    A cry for freedom arose from the people
    “No More SinTax” was yelled from a steeple
    And the cry was heard by many far and wide
    Taken up it was by a host of massive tide

    A night was chosen to do battle and wage war
    The numbers did gather before RedDevils tower and store
    Clans and guilds gathered around their campfires
    And waited the night to battle for their desires

    And ever they came, on through the night
    Fire and camp were set by the stars light
    Many and more they filled the wood
    Five Hundred strong they would count to be stood

    On through the waiting night stories were told
    Of great battles past and how they unfold
    But none would match this battle in size
    The epic battle would join when a new day to rise

    The new day rose with a fog and a mist
    The warriors of Sinister raised clenched fist
    And shouted with fury their battle cry’s bray
    Thunder arose as they charged to the fray

    They came like a vice from north and from south
    Two attacks divided to swallow like gorging mouth
    Not knowing what fate had for them in store
    They were about to become of legend and lore

    The battle was joined and Sinister fought like demons
    Wasting lives and calling deaths beacons
    Cutting down more than they themselves fell
    Great warriors and mages ringing evil Hades’ bell

    Five Hundred strong awaited them there
    And it matters not how terrible they fare
    For they were outmatched by numbers if not skill
    And it wasn’t long before they saw fates wanton will

    The retreat was ordered by BoneDancer and clan
    Regathered they did to form a new plan
    And next they came with murderous fury
    All in one like a wedge driven flurry

    And battle rejoined and warriors blead
    The Five Hundred stood strong and firm in their stead
    They would not bend to tyranny by might
    Much blood was shed under this dreaded sight

    The good peoples of Sosaria stood in the end
    Victorious they were after battles mend
    Hells mouth had swallowed many souls on that day
    Destiny showed it would have it’s way

    Sinister met doom and BoneDancer his fate
    RedDevil’s tower stands in historic gate
    The virtues triumphed by the jealous design
    Of the Fates who guard destiny’s sign.

    Reading it again I already see some things I’d change now. And it doesn’t seem to flow as well as it should. I needed to spend more time on it. I guess what I’m asking is, is it any good at all?

17. Amaranthar said on September 11th, 2008 at 8:17 pm:

    Must have left ‘em speechless. hehe

18. BadMisterFrosty said on September 14th, 2008 at 3:40 pm:

    Well, Raph — I wasn’t saying that you personally came up with the idea that non-rhymes are rhymes. I am certain that this has established somewhere. I was more amazed how some institution could (apparently successfully) label something ‘a rhyme’ when in the sense of the word, the key characteristics aren’t met. There are probably eight reasons for this idea, like underlying patterns or something the like. I am just wondering why they thought it’s a good idea to seize another word which is already well established. That’s were new words come in. Academia folks could call this new rhyme idea ‘hurglemurgle’ and make it a subset special case of rhyming etc.

    Their idea is more in line with keeping the bible in latin, so that the crowds are effectivly kept outside. So if outsiders want to join the conversion, they can’t because the ‘Insiders’ created their own language, where UP means DOWNS and rhyme, means maybe-rhyming.

    @Michael Chui
    Of course language is most likely never totally exactly the same from individual to indivual, but certain key elements are. I think it’s reasonably isomorphic (at least). The idea is that certain ‘patterns’ are kept in ‘sound’ and that you can evoke those same ‘patterns’ in another individual by referring to them (as both use the same refering system) by creating a certain sound (or by writing a combination of letters etc.) …

    So when I say “a tree that doesn’t stop growing”, you know what I mean, even though you certainly don’t see the same tree. But you know what kind of category of things I am reffering to. Now, think about rhymes.

19. Michael Chui said on September 14th, 2008 at 10:16 pm:

    I am just wondering why they thought it’s a good idea to seize another word which is already well established.

    The same reason you use “establish” to mean something other than “keep a building from falling over”. Why didn’t you make up a new word for “a word definition that has been in use longer than I can remember” and instead subverted a perfectly good word that already had a solid meaning?

Page optimized by WP Minify WordPress Plugin

Meta

Recent Comments

• Sam on Narrative isn’t usually content either
• Peter S. on Narrative isn’t usually content either
• j3w3l on Narrative isn’t usually content either
• HULKGAMECRIT on HULKGAMECRIT and me
• incobalt on Narrative is not a game mechanic
• altugi on Narrative is not a game mechanic
• incobalt on Narrative is not a game mechanic

Categories

• Art (13)
• Game talk (1764)
• Gamemaking (69)
• Mailbag (16)
• Misc (212)
• Music (116)
• Open thread (22)
• Reading (115)
• The Sunday Poem (129)
• Watching (50)
• Writing (113)

Tags

3d web art games flash game business game culture game design game grammar game industry game politics game studies gdc indie games metaplace metaverse second life serious games sf social games speaking theory of fun vw business vw design vw history vw law

Recent Trackbacks

• Wolfshead Online: SWTOR's...
• GamerBoom.com 游戏邦: ...
• The ReAnimators Podcast: ...
• The Simple Gamers: Simple...
• Spectre Collie: Are You...

Archives

• 2012
• 2011
• 2010
• 2009
• 2008
• 2007
• 2006
• 2005
• 2004
• 2003
• 2002
• 2001
• 2000
• 1999
• 1998

---

All contents of this site are ©Copyright 1998- 2012 by Raphael Koster. All rights reserved.

The views expressed here are my own, and not necessarily endorsed by any former or current employer.

---

A Theory of Fun
for Game Design

Press
Excerpts

---

Twitter @raphkoster

---

---

The whole Web

Raph's Website

See popular posts »

---

• 

• 
• 

---

After the Flood

Available as MP3 download
$14.99

---

More stuff to buy

Gator and Penguin
Mousepad
$12.99

---

LegendMUD

"The world the way they thought it was..."

---

• Academics

  • Academic Gamers
  • Chris Bateman
  • Craig Perko
  • David Edery
  • game girl advance
  • Grand Text Auto
  • Jesper Juul
  • Ludology.org
  • Nick Yee/Daedalus Project
  • Notes on Game Dev
  • Patrick Dugan
  • Terra Nova

• Comics

  • Clan of the Cats
  • College Roomies from Hell
  • Kevin & Kell
  • Penny Arcade
  • PvP Online
  • Real Life

• Game devs

  • Chris Melissinos
  • Clint Hocking
  • Gamasutra
  • GameProducer.Net
  • Greg Costikyan
  • Ian Bogost
  • IGDA
  • Jason Della Rocca
  • Jeff Ward
  • Jim Purbrick
  • Jurie Horneman
  • Kim Pallister
  • Lost Garden
  • Patrick Curry
  • Rob ‘Xemu’ Fermier
  • Robin Hunicke
  • Ron Gilbert
  • Scott Miller
  • Steven Gabriel

• MMO devs

  • Alan Crosby
  • Ben Zeigler
  • Brandon Reinhart
  • Brian Green
  • Damion Schubert
  • Dan Rubenfield
  • Daniel James
  • Dave Kennerly
  • Joe Ludwig’s Blog
  • Kira Snyder
  • Massively Multi-Player Game Development
  • Matt Mihaly
  • Nerfbat
  • Oliver Smith
  • Randy Farmer
  • Richard Bartle
  • Sara Jensen
  • Scott Jennings
  • Steve Danuser
  • Steven Davis
  • Tess Snider

• News/Forums

  • f13
  • Quarter To Three Forums
  • Slashdot Games
  • The Corporation
  • The Escapist

• Other

  • BoingBoing
  • Bruce Sterling
  • Cory Doctorow
  • David Brin
  • Locus Online
  • Neil Gaiman
  • reBang weblog
  • Susan Wu

• Players

  • Adam McDonald
  • Aggro Me
  • Damned Vulpine
  • n3rfed
  • The Cesspit
  • Tobold
  • Van Hemlock
  • Wonderland
  • Yehuda Berlinger

---