Verse Discussions

[A_Non_Ymous]

HawkLord created a thread in Community Exchange sometime back that has metamorphosed
into the Poetry Thread from Hell. It contains both technical discussions, ideas and planning,
a great deal of banter, and quite a number of actual verse submissions.

I'd like to try to bring some sanity into the process of our versifying activities by:

(1) moving that activity to the "Writers" Forum, and
(2) breaking the activities up into marginally more logical threads.

Hence, I'm creating threads here for discussions on technical matters and plans for future
work (this thread) and a separate thread for verse submissions. Banter on the subject
is probably welcome in this thread, but I want to discourage it in the actual verse thread.

LSN

[A_Non_Ymous]

proposed cooperative verse sequence: request for submissions

The Mouser and I have been planning to inaugurate a new sequence of communal verse
contributions as a successor to our recent game with the ballade.

What we propose to do is to have each contributor post verses to form a large unified
work. To create that unity, we're going to use a common starting point. Briefly, we're
going to create a mosaic picture of a fantasy city, complete with incidents / short stories
describing various unusual events and characters. The cities have individual characters,
of course, but I expect with a broad cross-section of contributors, we can work a
little bit of everything in, from down-at-heels decadence reminiscent of Leiber and
CAS to ultramodernity or elegance or just raw strangeness.

The starting point of inspiration for the form is Edward FitzGerald's long quatrain
sequence, The Rubaiyat, which is a fairly free rendering of verse of the Persian
poet Omar Khayyأ،m. That famous sequence starts with the break of day on the city
of Naishapur. For our sequence, we plan to start with the onset of twilight on our
imagined city. The Mouser has already written some opening quatrains, which I hope
he'll post in the MWM Verse Submissions thread soon.

At this point, I want to solicit contributions to this project. The Mouser and I are already
"in," as it were. Mikey_C, Kommando, HawkLord would be more than welcome.
In addition, we'd really like to see contributions from Perdix and Doc, as well as other
people in this forum. (Come on, Lydia, don't be coy. Show us some of your verse!)

Before you contribute, if any of you wish to discuss the idea and proposed design,
please feel free to post to this thread. The Mouser and I will do our best to respond.
(I'm swamped at work right now, and had to type this as fast as I could to fit it into
the work day.) In particular, if you have technical questions about the FitzGeraldian
quatrain, please feel free to ask.

When we've reached what we consider a logical conclusion to the sequence, we'll
put the whole thing together as a single work.

Looking forward to all of your contributions.

LSN

[Mikey_C]

I'd like to play. :) But still no ballade Am a bit preoccupied at pres. with evaluating positivism as a methodology for social research plus nursing the traditional New Year's hangover. Why do we do these things to ourselves? (in 2,500 words, no plagiarising please).

[A_Non_Ymous]

I'd like to play. :)

Good. The Mouser and I are counting on you especially. Your skill at narrative
verse ought to help a lot.

But still no ballade

No big deal. We're expecting your ballade when the opportunity for you to write it
presents itself. You admitted earlier to lapidary impulses, too, so I expect you might
get it roughed out pretty quickly, then tinker with it until it's "right."

Am a bit preoccupied at pres. with evaluating positivism as a methodology for social research plus nursing the traditional New Year's hangover. Why do we do these things to ourselves? (in 2,500 words, no plagiarising please).

I don't know. Understand about the hangover. I stayed up all night and read a couple
of books I'd been wanting to read. I definitely feel something resembling a hangover.
Why do we continue to do this when we're well past adolescence and should know better?

LSN

[Mikey_C]

Why do we continue to do this when we're well past adolescence know better?

Where we should have grown, we just groaned instead...

[Grey Mouser]

It's a shame for us you have so much else on your plate Mikey_C as the stuff you write is excellent. I hope that our next project might be more convivial for you to fit into your schedule in that it is designed for submissions that can range from a one verse vignette up to however much you have time for.

[Grey Mouser]

A rubaiyat is formed of quatrains called rubai, which are in iambic pentameter with rhyming scheme a,a,b,a. Here's a well known example from the famous Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam as translated by Edward Fitzgerald:

XCIX
Ah, Love! could you and I with Him conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits--and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!

It's a form which is short, flexible and quite easy to use, but if anyone wants to tinker with the structure (Hawklord, Kommando, Feuerfuchs?), or even ignore the rhyming scheme entirely and just write in quatrains of free verse, then that's welcomed too.

Rather than a Rubayat, this may turn out more of a Rubaiyique. :)

[A_Non_Ymous]

A note on the FitzGeralidan quatrain. Its rhyme scheme is aaXa, where the
"X" line means, "Anything that doesn't rhyme with the other 3 lines."

Here's a teaching example from John Hollander's Rhyme's Reason
(which is highly recommended both for information and amusement):

Rhyme's Reason[/i]]
Translating Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat,
Edward FitzGerald, it would seem, forgot
To rhyme the third line with the other ones.
(The last line underscored its lonely lot.)

FitzGerald used pretty strict rhyme in his own essays in the form. I want
to hold out the suggestion that if people wish to use slant rhyme, or simple
assonance in lieu of strict rhyme, that it would be just fine with the rest
of us.

LSN

[HawkLord]

I'd love to play this sounds like loads of fun. Something I can just let my imagination go wild on!

[Grey Mouser]

Cool. Hawklord's in too. Good to have you in the game Hawklord :)

Looks like the 'Patchwork City' game has already begun:

[link expired]

[A_Non_Ymous]

The Mouser apparently chose to emulate FitzGerald and publish his
initial quatrains anonymously. :lol:

I'm working on a sequence to drop in. I can't imagine Kommando will
be able to resist unless he's really busy with other projects. We need
to get the attention of Doc and nudge him about contributing. Come
on, Doc, just one quatrain (for starters), please? :lol:

Lydia, Duncan, Perdix, Adlerian, and several others have a standing
request for contributions. Perhaps someone will come through, but
if not, we've got enough people to get started.

LSN

P.S. Mouser, Perdix and I are awaiting your next contribution to the
"Lurker at the Baker Street Threshold" thread. Obviously, when
time permits.

[A_Non_Ymous]

The Mouser brought up with me the possibility that people don't need to
restrict themselves to strict quatrains. I agree. A mixture of poetic
techniques and styles and forms welded into a common whole can work
well. (Take a look at Stephen Vincent Benet's long poem John Brown's
Body to see how this can work to good effect.)

For an example of how you could provide a drop-in sequence that
deviates from strict quatrains: suppose you've got a chunk of quasi-self-
contained narrative/incident that you'd like to insert in the work.
Suppose you want to emphasize the self-contained unity of this
drop-in sequence. You decide to write this sequence in a different
verse style -- say, ottava rima (much favored by Byron for
humorous narrative) or chant royal. Go ahead, I say. When
your sequence is done, the work should revert to quatrains, of course.

Certain forms and techniques go with certain styles. Heroic or mock
heroic couplets could be used for a sequence, for an epic or mock-epic
subject. Similarly, using a long chunk of blank verse could work if you
want to achieve a certain grandiloquent rhetoric, similar to Marlowe
or some of Shakespeare. (If you try blank verse, good luck. It's hard.)

So the summary is: our approach is flexible, but the overall narrative
frame will be "mostly" quatrains.

LSN

[A_Non_Ymous]

It's a shame for us you have so much else on your plate Mikey_C as the stuff you write is excellent.

Yeah, but just because we like his stuff doesn't mean he owes us
anything. :lol:

I hope that our next project might be more convivial for you to fit into your schedule in that it is designed for submissions that can range from a one verse vignette up to however much you have time for.

We want him for the fantasy city project, but *I* want his ballade, too!
Don't let him off the hook, even if it takes him a while with all his other
duties! :lol:

He needs to get his school work done, obviously, but a few pangs of
Art would do him good, too.

LSN

[Grey Mouser]

I forgot to ask LSN, should we write about:

1) incidents in our own invented city, which we later patch together?
2)different aspects of the same city called by different names in different times and planes (a la Tanelorn)?
3)or is this all to be set in the same city which we sketch out as we go?

I suppose 1) is probably the easier option, with perhaps 2) being the rational for drawing it all together at the end?

[Mikey_C]

Cheers for the compliments. As you can see from the no. of posts in the past couple of days, i'm not averse to distraction, but the ballade seems like bit of a major project. I made a start, but the results got binned with the wrapping paper! Watch this space...