This summer, I began working my way through Stephen Fry’s The Ode Less Travelled. Yes, Jeeves has written a wonderful book on the mechanics of prosody. At the end of each section, Fry provides a writing exercise. In these early chapters, Fry is clear to say that “verbal or metaphysical brilliance” is not the goal. With that in mind, I share these examples of the doggerel I constructed in response to Poetry Exercise 5. The given topic was “television.”
5a: 2 quatrains iambic tetrameter
Astronomers have sought for years
With telescopes and satellites
For evidence of gravity’s
Devouring black parasite.
My starry friends, arise! Resist
Celestial gazing misapprised,
Your laboratory waits aglow
For evidence now televised.
5b: 2 quatrains alternating iambic tetrameter and trimeter
From television, actors fled
To cinematic fame,
Nocturnal creatures seeking out
The screen’s eternal flame.
But now the humble box attracts
Artisianal fireworks
Where I can watch in comfort sans
The pimply soda jerk.
5c: 2 quatrains trochaic tetrameter: 1 straight, 1 with docked weak endings on lines 2 & 4
Bombs and kittens nightly battle
Sports and weather on each channel,
Striving, selling, pacifying,
Distancing ignoble passions.Postman warned us of the pleasures
Found in TV’s psychic touch.
Now this disenchanting measure
Doesn’t sound like quite enough.
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