NOTES ON POSTED NOTES: ‘Telephone Banking’ and ‘The Writer’
This is the first of a series of self-analyses of my posts on this blog. I’ll start with ‘Telephone Banking’ and ‘The Writer’.
The background: Telephone Banking is a poem arising from the seminal cause of frustration. Indeed, while wasting thirty minutes in increasing anger at the non-response of the so-called service – using a free to use phone at a branch of the unnamed bank that I use, one of the world’s largest – I penned this verse on one of the bank’s leaflets. I was tempted to leave it behind for the amusement of other customers, but then changed my mid. curiously, then, the bank’s non-response has allowed me to publish another verse. The detriment was mine, originally, ergo, the wasted time, then the time being used productively, for my revenge, the writer’s revenge, via the pen and key-stroke.
Scansion:
The poem consists of three triplets, and follows a rhyme scheme of aaa/aaa/aaa .
The end rhymes are true rhymes, pararhymes or homographs. Those with assonance, or homophones, are: you/through/do/two, and: though/dough/throw/hello; pararhymes, or homographs are: through/though/enough/dough.
Examples of internal rhymes are: St 1, listening/assuming; St 2, wonder/what/when; St 3, chair/there. Other rhymes include the assonance are found in recurrence of ‘you’.
The background to ‘The Writer’ is when someone at home (who shall remain nameless), who, frankly, in the same atavistic, anti-intellectual manner that this person goes about their life dispensing their own form of ‘wisdom’ said something similar in the opening lines of this poem , passing comment on the fact that I spend long hours at my desk. Naturally, this person is merely expressing a bourgeoisie prejudice about what one ought to be doing with one’s life. Time between jobs has given one time to write, and one has oneself put on the suit to commute to a job one despises. ‘The Writer’ is a tribute to those independent spirits who refuse to conform to the demands of ‘the market’ in today’s industrialised society. They’re called Writers and Artists.
Scansion:
The seminal poem consists of 5 couplets in the rhyme scheme aa/bb/cc/dd/ee, namely, day/say, writing/boasting, visibility/money-making, suit/commute, prejudices/mores. One could also suggest that the cc rhyme-scheme in Stanza 3 is also cb (visibility/money-making) as ‘money’ goes with ‘visibility’, and ‘making’ goes with ‘writing’ and ‘boasting’.
Internal rhymes are: nothing/sitting/reflecting/thing/contrasting and complement the –ing endings of Stanza 2. The homographic and homophonic ‘-y’ or ‘-ly’ pair off into their own assonance of: Luxury/starkly and satisfy/comply, and they are also assonant with day/say/visibility/money end rhymes.
The scansion of these two verses is not exhaustive, but therein I hope I have conveyed a sense of what can be achieved by using various rhyming schemes in even short poems. The effort is worthwhile, even for such seemingly simple themes, in the development of one’s craft. I hope to post more comment on scansion of other verses soon.
If you have read this far, thank you for your attention!
©RC Clermont 2016
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