into our bones the heat of the day… cicadas drone — Peggy Willis Lyles, Frogpond 23:1, 2000
Closing our week of seven fine contemporary anglophone verses using natural rhyme and assonance or consonance, which I hope you have enjoyed, we have one (of a few) where Peggy Willis Lyles deploys an end-rhyme to great effect. Here, the ‘drone’ of cicadas is onomatopoeic, relentless as the heat piercing our very bones. The rhyming words, with their long drawn out sound, link and pair ‘bones’ and ‘drone’ across the verse, intensifying the heat, the penetrating vibrations.
If recalling Bashõ’s:
shizukasa ya iwa ni shimi-iru semi no koe.
what quiet! / penetrating the very rock / the cry of cicadas
…we note Bashõ using repetitive assonance in the ‘i’ (i as in itch) of the central part. The rhythmical repetition matches and intensifies the repetitive vibrations of the cicadas (cf. Oseko, Literal Translations vol.1 p. 156). Not by chance, from the master who urged his acolytes to sound their verses ‘a thousand times on the lips.’
Tomorrow we move on to classic and contemporary haiku that comprise statements, often didactic, aphoristic, or epigrammatic, yet which are insightful and leave plenty of scope for contemplation and reader engagement.
into our bones
the heat of the day…
cicadas drone
— Peggy Willis Lyles, Frogpond 23:1, 2000
Closing our week of seven fine contemporary anglophone verses using natural rhyme and assonance or consonance, which I hope you have enjoyed, we have one (of a few) where Peggy Willis Lyles deploys an end-rhyme to great effect. Here, the ‘drone’ of cicadas is onomatopoeic, relentless as the heat piercing our very bones. The rhyming words, with their long drawn out sound, link and pair ‘bones’ and ‘drone’ across the verse, intensifying the heat, the penetrating vibrations.
If recalling Bashõ’s:
shizukasa ya
iwa ni shimi-iru
semi no koe.
what quiet! / penetrating the very rock / the cry of cicadas
…we note Bashõ using repetitive assonance in the ‘i’ (i as in itch) of the central part. The rhythmical repetition matches and intensifies the repetitive vibrations of the cicadas (cf. Oseko, Literal Translations vol.1 p. 156). Not by chance, from the master who urged his acolytes to sound their verses ‘a thousand times on the lips.’
Tomorrow we move on to classic and contemporary haiku that comprise statements, often didactic, aphoristic, or epigrammatic, yet which are insightful and leave plenty of scope for contemplation and reader engagement.