Rhyme

 

Greetings cheerful versifiers, dedicated declaimers, potential bards  and midnight confessors. Here are the next three in the series about making poetry, written after the style of Wislawa Szymborska, most notably in her book translated from the Polish, ‘How to Start Writing (and When to Stop): Advice to Authors.’ (New Directions, 2021). 

Question 16: Is poetry translatable? Yes, every day readers of English poetry are translating English poetry into English. The same is true for any poetry; we are engaged in translating not just the one meaning but the many meanings of any one poem in the original. This multiplicity of meanings is given as one reason why poetry is not translatable into other languages. Translators know from the start they are trying to convey sounds, internal rhymes, assonances, analogies, references, traditions, sayings and jokes that resist translation into another language, each with its own attributes. But they try and it’s helpful. 

Question 17: Why rhyme? Chime, crime, mime, pantomime, prime, the sublime, and time are just seven reasons why we rhyme. Essentially, it’s a memory game, memory itself. It’s about remembering a song, an expression, a link. Our very memory is a rhyme to the actual that is already past. Rhyme makes connections, because the mind is rhyming night and day, what to say. Natural rhymes work better than rhymes where we force it, oft unable to turn off the faucet. Still, rhyme has its limits, there are limited sets of rhymes for any word. We want more, leaving rhyme behind. 

Question 18: Is a thesaurus appropriate? Do you mean is it suitable, proper, pertinent, apt? Applicable, congruous, opportune, germane? Relevant, befitting, rightful, appurtenant? Maybe. As with rhyme, there is a school that says your own vocabulary is reliable and more convincing, that thesaurus words stick out like a sore pollex. Another school opines that all words are valuable and expansion of your vocabulary likewise. Thesauri are indifferent to subtlety, cannot distinguish magenta from lavender, mauve, plum, periwinkle or amethyst. Your violet verse could turn into purple prosody. They encourage herd unity, keeping sheep with goats. Of use, but user beware.