I’ve completed the first major revision of my 2018 field guide to Paul Muldoon’s “soundprint” [see original post here]. Now with the title “Yarrowrhyme, or, Paul Muldoon’s Soundprint”, this update adds three new yarrowrhyming poems published since 2018: “Frolic and Detour” (Frolic and Detour), “The Triumph” (Howdie-Skelp) and “Near Izium” (Joy in Service on the Rue Tagore). Together these poems count 649 manifestations of the 90 rhyme templates that first appeared in “Incantata” and “Yarrow” in The Annals of Chile (1994), published thirty years ago.
[Yarrowrhyme, or, Paul Muldoon’s Soundprint PDF]
In my original post I commented on Muldoon’s pararhyming strategies, and joked that while CAT and DOG don’t make a muldoonian rhyme, CAT and GOD sure do. So I was amused to see that in “Frolic and Detour” just that rhyme appears, realizing the K/G-V-T/D, or “Kid” yarrowrhyme template (J8 in my address system):
–though to be fair thirty years ago, in “Yarrow”, the J8 set included “God” and “Gato”, which is as close as you get without going for it (also “Kattegat”). Here’s the full J8 template as it gets realized over the years:
| J8 | [Y: Kid, Keady, God, Gates, Gato, Good, gods°, cut, quoits, Kattegat, Connecticut, kodeia, delicate, Mosquito; Ye: kedlock] [I: potato-cut°, Quito, Etiquette, cahoots] [M: brocade, Kyoto, she-goat, skates] [3ET: cut°] [B(SR): quits, Muscadet, toccatas, coquette] [SBH: coat, cut°, ghetto, borghetto] [SS: goatee, cicadas, renegade] [SP: goat°, cat] [HH: wildcat, good°] [FD: cat°, God°] [T: dovecote, guide, goods°] [NI: quits°, cats°] |
Cute, right? But not by a longshot the most farfetched set. Observe the final L6 “flutter-kick” set:
| L6 | [Y: flutter-kick, Hickok, Queequeg, caïque, powder-keg, cake; Ye: gowk’s] [I: Belacqua, Acacacac-, quaquaqua, Quoiquoiquoiquoiquoiquoiquoiq] [M: whirligig, agog] [3ET: haycock] [B(SR): gawk, cooks, cake°, muskeg, cock-*, kick-°] [SBH: gawk°, kayak, keek, lollygag] [SS: kick°, coke, Whisky A Go Go] [SP: geek, cock°*] [HH: geiko, quag] [FD: Mohawk, Agway] [T: Caoch, earthquake, Tullyhogue] [NI: cock°*, gig, gig°] |
or the most diverse of all the sets, I6 (“Excalibur”) with only two repeaters out of thirty-six manifestations (other sets have more unique manifestations, but more repeaters too):
| I6 | [Y: clabair, Excalibur, clobber-clobber, “{Caleb, er}”, clipper, Calabar, baccarat, clabber; Ye: gulder-gowl] [I: clabber°, Calaber, hedge-clippers°, clappers] [M: even-clabber°, Kaliber] [3ET: collabor] [B(SR): clapiers, coolibars, nightclubbers, collopers] [SBH: glabrous, interlopers, kohlrabi, Colibri] [SS: caliber, labors, scalpers] [SP: slobbers, gulper] [HH: galloper, calipers] [FD: clippers°, Calabria*] [T: Culpepper, tear-gulper°] [NI: clabber°, Kalibrs] |
And among the CAT-DOG (or GOD) style antithetical rhymes, from “Near Izium”, Putin→Biden (I4, “beaten”, also includes “poutine”) works just fine. [Another non-yarrowrhyming poem in Frolic rhymes Putin→button (“Superior Aloeswood)”]
Back to that quatrain from “Frolic and Detour” for a moment, where if you listen closely you may hear other glabrous interlopers from the soundprint:
Sure, “Tink-” may pass by unobserved, as a subterranean A2 (“link”) rhyme, but “Sparrow” is pure A1 (“yarrow”), and indeed is a manifestation of A1 in “Frolic and Detour”, as well as “Yarrow”. Other potential internal rhymes include “loss” (A3 – “all of us”), Thomas Merton (E5 – “stone”), “great” (G5 – “grate”), and, who knows, maybe somehow my some Muldoonian magic “capriciousness” via J8 (“goat”). Skelton, elsewhere, is J6 in this poem and in the next (“The Triumph”).
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