Comments on: You must change your life. Says who?

By: Andrew Shields

Andrew Shields — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 19:53:26 +0000

Another one I came across again in the past few days:
Hey there mister brontosaurus
don’t you have a lesson for us.
That’s from “Walking in Your Footsteps,” by The Police, whom I have been rediscovering with my son Miles recently.
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By: Henry Gould

Henry Gould — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 11:57:26 +0000

My favorite rhyme (for the moment) :
& Hamlet yes comes home, & it is no dream
Ophelia is singing in the stream.
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By: Mary Meriam

Mary Meriam — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 18:53:09 +0000

Henry! I came back to post another rhyme and saw your kind words. Thanks so much for all your fine thoughts. It’s a pleasure to study what you wrote here. Where is your favorite rhyme? And everyone else’s? Rhyme is not so serious that we have to swear this is my absolute favorite of all time forever and ever rhyme, is it? Or is it uncool to like rhyme? Well, I love it.
But I have that within which passeth show;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.
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By: Alicia (AE)

Alicia (AE) — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 07:19:54 +0000

My favorite couplet is also from the Bard:
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney sweepers, come to dust.
It seems to me all of Housman hangs off that.
For individual rimes, it is hard to beat Byron (intellectual/ hen pecked you all). But my favorite contemporary rime pair is from Lyle Lovett:
flyswatter/icewater
And I love anything that rimes or slant-rimes with river.
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By: Henry Gould

Henry Gould — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 01:24:14 +0000

Wow. Mary Meriam hit the bull’s eye there, in my book.
It’s a simple rhyme, but it clicks shut like a jewel-box, or mousetrap. On a weighty pair of lines. Yet their coupling is couched in that offhand, English-understated style; so the rhyme’s simplicity rhymes with the phrase’s colloquialism. Sort of a proportional proposition.
Somewhere in the library there’s a scholarly study of Hamlet (the play) as a parable of covenantal religion : when Hamlet re-seals (re-written) the letter (to the King of England, authorizing his execution), on board ship, with his father’s signet ring – then, & thus, Hamlet keeps faith with his ghostly father.
Elizabethan drama began with the Mystery plays – local yokels re-enacting the basic liturgical stories, on a parochial stage, wherein the players captured the conscience of the village…
This couplet is the summa of that project.
& behind the simple rhyme of the colloquial phrase of the subtle thought of the mystery play… stands the vague shape of something even more obscure, profound : the master Play of Plays or Song of Songs. The 4th (?) level of that proportion or analogy (anagogical?).
To understand this, check out theologian Urs von Balthasar’s interpretation of History as Drama.
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By: Mary Meriam

Mary Meriam — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 21:24:02 +0000

……………………………..the play’s the thing
Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.
Rilke called rhyme “a goddess of secret and ancient coincidences…she comes as happiness comes, hands filled with an achievement that is already in flower.”
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By: Andrew Shields

Andrew Shields — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 20:24:24 +0000

The one that jumps to mind immediately is “sniff/terrif” (as in “terrif-ically”) from “I Get a Kick out of You,” and in German:
Die schönsten Verse des Menschen, … sind die Gottfried Bennschen
(Peter Rühmkorf)
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