starter poetry

[radfrac_archive_full]

rm wonders about excessive rhyme in spellwriting.

I wonder if this phenomenon has the same wellspring as gratuitous rhyming in poetry in general, if we consider spells a special form of poetry, or alternatively, poetry a generalized form of spellcasting?

There's a form I think of as the 'starter poet' structure. Think of a funnel. It begins with long, liberating, casting-off-convention free-verse lines, which acquire rhyme about halfway down an 8-1/2 x 11 page, then gradually contract into a tighter and tighter rhyme scheme until every word rhymes with the next, which is how you know the poem is done.

For example:

This is not actually a poem I wrote when I was seventeen, but it certainly could have been:

And they're killing the trees and the oceans and our children
And we all sit there like mice and don't make a sound
because we're too complacent
and we like our comfortable little lives
like bees swarming around in their hives [Say! Rhyme!]
we know what we have to do
I know it and so do you [I like it!]
take action now
you know how [Natural! Instinctive!]
change you've got to make [Little archaic reversal there--]
or you'll take [--it's artistic!]
your last breath
in stress [Slant rhyme! Can't cage me!]
and death
death
death

And like that.

When I was this seventeenish person, I noticed the above form in my poems and thought, "Aha, perhaps this is my Unique Style." In the many years since then, I have noticed perhaps a thousand other poets/spoken word artists with the same Unique Style. It crept on me gradually that perhaps it was not so easy to find a poetic form that served my expressive needs. Which are... voracious. Explosive? Oh, anyway.

There must be a reason it shows up. Maybe it's a protostyle: what you do on your way to getting a grip on form.

I have Spellcraft somewhere, but most magical language I've come across was in the form of ritual song. When I've, you know, Cast Stuff, it was usually more incantatory than rhymed. inlandsea has heard some of the rhymey bits. I don't think anyone else has.

{rf}