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thelifeofwords.bsky.social
@thelifeofwords.bsky.social
Poetry. Dictionaries. Toronto & Waterloo. http://thelifeofwords.uwaterloo.ca. Book on modern poetry and etymology from OUP in 2020.
Post deleted. These language types <s>are</s> were ruthless.
January 27, 2025 at 7:19 PM
it *was* impossible to talk about
January 27, 2025 at 7:13 PM
The (historical-chronological) present time includes some past time, and probably some future time. So can the (grammatical) present tense, but not in the same way.
January 27, 2025 at 7:08 PM
Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future.
January 27, 2025 at 7:01 PM
perseverative. And also, sure, playful and mischievous. "Incantata" likes to rhyme Beckett against himself (Acacacac-, quaquaqua, Quoiquoiquoiquoiquoiquoiquoiq). "Near Izium" (which has Ukraine front and center) gets away with "Putin"/"Biden" (cat/dog type antirhyme).
December 12, 2024 at 3:00 PM
two yarrowrhyme poems are "The Triumph" (from Howdie-Skelp) and "Near Izium" (from Joy in Service). "The Triumph" is in terza yarrow-rima, while "Near Izium" has an idiosyncratic couplet-tercet patterning. These were never, "exploded sestinas" (pace and imho) but something else ruminative and
December 12, 2024 at 2:53 PM
the "Yarrow" rhyming template. Last time I joked that though Muldoon can't quite rhyme "cat" and "dog", he could rhyme "cat" and "god", and now he's gone and done it, in "Frolic and Detour" (though in the original we do find "God" and "gatto", not to mention "Kattegat", so-). The other
December 12, 2024 at 2:50 PM
7/ and, importantly, the consonants themselves admit variations, especially in voicing, so that:

coulter→gelder
truck→drag
Baba→Papae

These are all true Muldoonian yarrowrhymes, and the reason why "cat" and "dog" don't rhyme, but "cat" and "god" do!
November 25, 2024 at 8:42 PM
6/ vowel nucleuses. But it's more complicated in Muldoon, since consonants can travel, both in clusters and across them. So for instance the template KLTR is realized in the yarrowrhyme poems in various ways, including the most basic:
coulter→kilter→culture
but also:
kilter→clitoris→Killeter→clatter
November 25, 2024 at 8:39 PM
5/ forms, including couplets, octaves, italian sonnets, and terza rima. The predominant rhyming convention is pararhyme, also called consonantal rhyme. That's when "cat" and "cut" rhyme, or "fact" and "fucked", i.e. the terminal syllables match CXC, with identical onsets and codas, and variable ..
November 25, 2024 at 8:36 PM
4/ of Muldoon's capacious rhyming grammar (and vocabulary). To give a sense of the scale of the yarrowrhyme poems, to 2018 they counted over 3200 lines, with 3400 rhyme-words, all generated from 90 syllabic templates. The poems themselves are in a variety of conventional, adapted, and suigeneris ..
November 25, 2024 at 8:32 PM
3/ Muldoon can rhyme "cat" and "dog" suggests a heroic rhyming power, and also an element of the unnatural, and also the sense that any syllable, seemingly, can produce a deluge of rhyming pairs. In yarrowrhyme, you can't rhyme "cat" and "dog", but you /can/ rhyme "cat" and "god", because ..
November 25, 2024 at 8:29 PM
2/ this is still a productive template -- given the length and complexity -- and seemingly entrenching its early associations with elegy and sorrow. The elements of virtuosity are themselves worth parsing out, and for me anyway the payoff of the exercise. The hyperbole that ..
November 25, 2024 at 8:25 PM