Bare assonance bear-faced chic
What I Do That's New is a series of articles in which poets share their trade secrets with the rest of us i.e. they describe aspects of what they do that is either innovative or just plain clever.
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Well, I’m sure it’s all actually been done before. So here is something that I like doing with my poetry that I think makes it, if not unique or novel, at least interesting. I’m very into homonyms, where two words have the same sound/spelling but carry different meaning. Such as ‘brown bear’ contrasted with ‘bear the load’ or even ‘bare arse’.
It gives you an automatic totally concordant rhyme and adds emphasis to the part of the poem with the recurring sound/word. It also looks good and tricksy on the page. One drawback is that it can be hard for the audience to understand in a performance setting, as people aren’t sure which meaning you intended. One way around this is to use body language and actions to convey the meaning for each occurrence of the same-sounding word.
For example in my poem Anthem for Dead Youth, based on seeing the original manuscript of Wilfred Owen’s Anthem for Doomed Youth (I nicked the original title which was changed after Siegfried Sassoon’s suggestions, visible on the manuscript), the first stanza is:
So, his hand rested there,
On that leaf there,
Framing this first draft,
Misspelt draught,
As though it was but beer and laughs.
(From Anthem for Dead Youth by Sean Kavanagh)
Owen’s misspelling, corrected by Sassoon, gave me the idea for the homonym couplet and an appropriate and associated rhyme to the second occurrence of the sound. When I perform this one I sometimes mime pulling a pint when uttering the second ‘draught’ to convey my meaning.
There is another homonym couplet within a line in the last stanza of the same poem which goes:
Dead youth that learns so slow,
Better shops and sweeter drugs will keep you low,
Stand up and tell them they are full of shit,
Rise from your trenches, building peace by piece,
And bit by bit.
(From Anthem for Dead Youth by Sean Kavanagh)
I tend just to let this one pass as I think it’s meaning comes across. Occasionally I’ll do the two-finger ‘peace man’ sign to convey the first meaning, then indicate ‘little bit’ with finger and thumb for the second.
Sometimes I’ve homonysed part of a word, such as in my poem Running on empty. In this case I cheated a bit by inventing a word, but that’s ok if the poetry is reasonably good and the word conveys a real poetic meaning.
One stanza runs:
So bulbs bulboused up to efflorescence,
And dehiscence of a soulscar,
Peels down deep inside.
(From Running on Empty by Sean Kavanagh)
I hope that it gives the phrase extra emphasis and a nice beating rhythm.
I often do these things by accident, as many poets do, or nearly do them, then later redraft the poem to bring it out after noting the possibility when reading it aloud. I advise all poets to read their stuff out loud to themselves, then redraft, repeatedly, as nothing gets you more in feel with the rhythm and meter of your poems and you can then hone and refine them.
