... not that you'd know it.
I've gone and backed myself into a bit of a corner with Heart of Flame: I'm going to have to write some cod-Arabic poetry.
Why do I do these things to myself?! Luckily it doesn't have to be good poetry, which is fortunate because I have no talent for it at all. And I'm not even going to attempt the fine detail of the meter (which involves counting consonants - Arabic poetry is highly technical and complex and makes Shakespeare look like McGonagall). A quick scout around on Wikipedia (All hail Wikipedia!) has provided a suitable template. We're talking couplets with the rhyme scheme AA BA CA DA etc. Where "A" has to be the same word, mind.
This'll slow me down.
You're completely insane!
ReplyDeleteMind you, that seems to be the norm for writers. :-)
Can't argue with that, Madelynne!
ReplyDeleteI suspect that because we don't work in an office where people dump crap on us all day, we have to dump it on ourselves.
:-D
Or maybe that's just me!
ReplyDeleteIf it's a ghazal you're thinking of, I understood the rhyme pattern to be something like...
ReplyDelete------------A
------------B
------------C
----------A-B
------------D
----------A-B
------------E
----------A-B
English doesn't time its speech patterns by consonants, so it's normal to substitute heavy syllables for consonants. (Iambic with six feet works well, I found.)
Spot the English graduate...
ReplyDelete:-)
One thing I really wish I'd had the benefit of at school was a proper grounding in poetic meter. I wouldn't know an iambic pentameter from a limerick.
Oh, and I wish I'd done Latin too.