Pressing Poetry Health Issue

I have a low Doggerel Threshold.

I recently received an invitation to a baby shower. Well and good. Accompanying it was a little card with this bit of verse (I find it also on various shower/party planning websites, but no specific author is credited):

To add a little extra glee
And help the parents-to-be,
Please bring a little extra
     From the heart.
An unwrapped pack of diapers,
     To give them a good start!

And I say...um...OK.

Leaving aside the important question of whether diapers, while necessary, are likely to fill expectant parents with 'glee,' or really be a gift I'd consider 'from the heart,' it must be plainly evident that this is dreadful verse.

I know, it's very hard to actually write good verse. I'm not saying I could do better. (It's easy to criticize. Fun, too.)

But good people, please.

There's no way this scans. It is painful to the mind's ear to try to recite it. It has leaped over my low Doggerel Threshold and into my Verse Hatred Lobby.

See, you can't just throw rhymes at the end of lines and call it a day. Each line needs to have a basic rhythm. In simple verse like this, each line should basically have the same number of syllables, with the accent in the same places in each line.

Nursery rhymes are fantastic examples of this--and very appropriate for a baby shower, too! ("Baa baa black sheep, have you any wool? We need some quickly, baby's diaper's full!")

You don't necessarily have to get obsessed with the meter and the different types of foot (although I certainly recommend it because it's wildly interesting), but you have to be able to say it out loud without having to think about it.

That's my basic level of acceptability for short greeting card/invitation verse. If I have to consider where to put the accents, and whether it might work if I run some words together, it's just no good.

Take "To add a little extra glee/And help the parents-to-be." The first line has eight syllables, and the second has seven. Already not a good sign.

The accents in the lines are off too: the first works OK as iambic quadrameter* ("to add/a lit/tle ex/tra glee"), but the second doesn't because it gets all messed up on 'parents-to-be' ("and help/the pa/rents-to-be"?).

You can try the first as an anapestic line with a missing final syllable ("to add a/lit-tle ex/tra glee"), but that doesn't come out well in the next line either (and help the/par-ents-to/-be"). There's a basic problem, which is that the two lines do not have the same rhythm.

Your lines must have the same rhythm, unless you are doing it on purpose or writing free verse, which is most likely not the case here.

Let's see how this might work a little better:

To add a little extra glee
And help the happy 'rents-to-be

I'm not claiming this is now good verse (oh my no), but at least these lines scan: you can read them both with the same rhythm. Each syllable in the first line matches up with one in the second line.

See?

To add a lit- tle ex- tra glee
And help the hap- py 'rents- to- be

And when the rhythm matches up like this, you really don't even have to worry about what kind of foot it is or where to stress the syllables, because it just comes out that way. (Unless I am badly miscalculating the way most people pronounce these words, which is possible.)

Now you will note that this version relies on another horrible feature of bad verse (in addition to the bad meter I have been raving about), which is the weird abbreviation of a word in order to make it fit the rhythm of the line.

In this case I think it's OK, because "'rents" is a kind of college-ism that might fit amusingly in the context of young people who are soon to be parents themselves but who not long ago were using this kind of language. If your parents-to-be are stolid, literal-minded folk in their late forties, perhaps not.

Anyway, can I continue ranting? Of course I can, it's my blog.

So the third line is actually OK as it is, because two rhyming lines, followed by an unrhymed third line, possibly with a different rhythm, is a very common verse structure.

We could say with no problem:

To add a little extra glee

And help the happy 'rents-to-be

Please bring a little extra from the heart

I'm making the third into one longer line instead of breaking it up--I think it might have only been that way because of the size of the piece of paper, and it flows better in one.

Now for the last line/s, which again present a serious scansion issue. As I said, two rhyming lines followed by [something] is a very common structure for verse, but I cannot emphasize enough that what follows must also have poetic rhythm. (Again, unless you're totally doing it on purpose for effect.)

"Please bring a little extra from the heart./An unwrapped pack of diapers, to give them a good start" does not scan.

"Please bring a little extra from the heart" is fine. In fact, it's the classic rhythm in English-language poetry, iambic pentameter.** But the fourth line is completely off; it has entirely too many syllables to match up with the third line.

Behold:

please bring a  lit- tle ex- tra from the heart
an un- wrapped pack of dia- pers to give them
or
an un- wrapped pack of di- a- pers to give  

depending on how you pronounce "diapers."

Either "a good start" or "them a good start" are just trailing off there at the end, matching nothing in the preceding line. Orphan syllables! It breaks my heart.

You have to either race through the whole fourth line to try to cram it into the rhythm of the third, or just abandon the rhythm entirely, and then throw a lot of emphasis on "start" at the end, because hey, if you throw rhymes at the end of lines you can call it a day, right?

Wrong, consarn it, weren't you paying attention up at the top of this post? You cannot just throw words that rhyme with other words at the ends of lines that otherwise have no common rhythm and consider it verse!

What I would do here is basically scrap the entire last line as is and try to make something with a little more structure. Remember "Baa baa, black sheep"? It's a good example of two rhyming first lines followed by [something] that also has poetic rhythm.

Baa baa, black sheep, have you any wool?
Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full.
One for my master, and one for my dame,
And one for the little boy who lives down the lane.

That's the version I remember--slight word variations may be found--and in it we have a very simple, solid verse structure: two lines that rhyme (a couplet, we might say, if we wanted to throw around English Major terminology), followed by two more lines that also rhyme (with each other, but not with the first two).

The second couplet has a slightly different rhythm than the first--the lines are longer, for example--but it's still internally consistent (I demand this of my fictional worlds, and I demand it of my verse couplets). You may see this described as A, A, B, B structure.

The syllables in each line match up with the ones in the other, and it is very easily recited aloud in rhythm. Hence it being a nursery rhyme dating back hundreds of years.

The bit of baby shower doggerel I am here addressing seems to be trying for this A, A, B, B form, but misses badly on account of those orphan syllables at the end of the fourth line.

We could just compress the fourth line, adjusting a few words to make it fit:
A pack of diapers for a good clean start!

Or we could go for a more complex A, A, B, C, C, B structure.

Diapers every parent uses,
On those baby-soft cabooses,
So bring a pack to give them a good start!

Clearly the options are legion, as are my devoted followers. Again, I'm not saying this has become good verse (oh my no), but it's plainly possible to get the point across with lines that possess that all-important poetic rhythm.

You must have rhythm in your doggerel, my legions. Remember this, and you will go far in horrible yet neatly scannable verse.


*An iamb being a foot composed of two syllables, the second of which is stressed, as in the words 'delay,' or 'around;' quadrameter meaning there are four such feet in the line.

**An iamb continuing to be a foot composed of two syllables, the second of which is stressed, as in the words 'announce,' or 'behold;' pentameter meaning there are five such feet in the line.

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