slow rhyme

[lidiavianu]

What is 'an adventure in slow rhyme'?

Lidia

[jno]

I'd guess that slow rhyme involved poetry with long vowel sounds, as in Alexander Pope's parody:

A needless alexandrine ends the song
That like a wounded snake drags its slow length along.

An alexandrine was a line with an extra beat, like that one. He's written it with words that take a long time to say. But of course it doesn't need to sound as dreary as Pope deliberately makes it; it can be slow and romantic, or even adventurous, as your line suggests.

[lidiavianu]

In Romanian we do not have a word for that. Would 'ample' rhyme be similar, I wonder?

[jno]

I think 'slow' just means that the words are fairly long and can't be read quickly (I'm not certain, though - it might be a technical term that I don't know about, in which case perhaps someone else can help). What would be the Romanian term for music played slowly, for instance, as opposed to fast rock music? Maybe the same word could be applied to poetry?

[lidiavianu]

like a slow dance? slow waltz? we have 'lent', as in French...

Lidia

[lidiavianu]

I know: it has to be long, prolonged. would that work?

[jno]

not quite... it doesn't have to be long, just not fast... I think lent probably does have the sort of meaning that this line has in mind (is this Peter Ackroyd again?)

[lidiavianu]

Yes, it's Ackrod all right. I am translating his 'Diversions of Purley'. I wonder if you have any idea why he chose Tooke's title for a bok of poems... If anyone can make you feel inadequate where words are concerned, that's Ackroyd all right. great writer.

Lidia

[jno]

quite right - his vocabulary is rather larger than mine. He is an expert on London and its history, in particular, but as well as a historian and critic he is also a novelist with a great poetic imagination. An old-fashioned 'man of letters', in fact. I have no idea why he chose the title, though.