/lit/ - Literature

Limericks have the best rhyme scheme, objectively speaking

>>19740816
I like both (ABAB and ABBA)

>>19740816
I prefer ABBA. Sometimes I even go for ABCCBA

>>19740816
ABAB is much more popular and there must be a reason for that. I think it's more natural-sounding and hence more flexible.

Of course there are some great ABBA poems too. Usually Auden is a bit smart-aleck for my taste but damn this has a good last stanza:


---


THE FALL OF ROME
by W.H.Auden

The piers are pummelled by the waves;
In a lonely field the rain
Lashes an abandoned train;
Outlaws fill the mountain caves.

Fantastic grow the evening gowns;
Agents of the Fisc pursue
Absconding tax-defaulters through
The sewers of provincial towns.

Private rites of magic send
The temple prostitutes to sleep;
All the literati keep
An imaginary friend.

Cerebrotonic Cato may
Extol the Ancient Disciplines,
But the muscle-bound Marines
Mutiny for food and pay.

Caesar's double-bed is warm
As an unimportant clerk
Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK
On a pink official form.

Unendowed with wealth or pity,
Little birds with scarlet legs,
Sitting on their speckled eggs,
Eye each flu-infected city.

Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.

>>19740844
ABAB
I fucked your mother
right in her ass
God, what good lass
it's worth the bother

ABBA
I can't write for shit
what rhymes with shit?
This was a cringe attempt
I'm worthy of contempt

>>19740870
>mother
>bother
Anon...

AABBchads, we here?

>>19740816
ABCD

>>19740859
I prefer ABBA over ABAB because ABAB seems so... rudimentary? Everyone knows that poems are supposed to rhyme, right?

I just don't like ABAB. I'm not trying to be smug about it or anything, it just ended up like that. Maybe I just prefer ABBA because it lends itself better to the way I compose.

>>19740816
Of course, as any good Hegelian knows, when you're given two options and asked which to choose, you should choose both. Suppose we had five stanzas? We could go
ABBA
ABBA
ABAB
ABBA
ABAB
Now let's just half-rhyme some of it so as not to be too obvious, and move one rhyme ("cage") to the beginning of the next line . Take it away, Ted:


THE JAGUAR
by Ted Hughes

The apes yawn and adore their fleas in the sun.
The parrots shriek as if they were on fire, or strut
Like cheap tarts to attract the stroller with the nut.
Fatigued with indolence, tiger and lion

Lie still as the sun. The boa-constrictor’s coil
Is a fossil. Cage after cage seems empty, or
Stinks of sleepers from the breathing straw.
It might be painted on a nursery wall.

But who runs like the rest past these arrives
At a cage where the crowd stands, stares, mesmerized,
As a child at a dream, at a jaguar hurrying enraged
Through prison darkness after the drills of his eyes

On a short fierce fuse. Not in boredom—
The eye satisfied to be blind in fire,
By the bang of blood in the brain deaf the ear—
He spins from the bars, but there’s no cage to him

More than to the visionary his cell:
His stride is wildernesses of freedom:
The world rolls under the long thrust of his heel.
Over the cage floor the horizons come.

>>19740895
The first Toads poem was ABAB, but he went AABB for the sequel:


TOADS REVISITED
by Philip Larkin

Walking around in the park
Should feel better than work:
The lake, the sunshine,
The grass to lie on,

Blurred playground noises
Beyond black-stockinged nurses —
Not a bad place to be.
Yet it doesn't suit me.

Being one of the men
You meet of an afternoon:
Palsied old step-takers,
Hare-eyed clerks with the jitters,

Waxed-fleshed out-patients
Still vague from accidents,
And characters in long coats
Deep in the litter-baskets —

All dodging the toad work
By being stupid or weak.
Think of being them!
Hearing the hours chime,

Watching the bread delivered,
The sun by clouds covered,
The children going home;
Think of being them,

Turning over their failures
By some bed of lobelias,
Nowhere to go but indoors,
Nor friends but empty chairs —

No, give me my in-tray,
My loaf-haired secretary,
My shall-I-keep-the-call-in-Sir:
What else can I answer,

When the lights come on at four
At the end of another year?
Give me your arm, old toad;
Help me down Cemetery Road.

>>19740816
The best option is to utilize both within the same poem in an intelligent pattern i.e. the way Baudelaire and other French Symbolists did.

«ABAB» IS TOO SIMPLISTIC, THEREFORE JARRINGLY MONOTONOUS; «ABBA» IS SLIGHTLY MORE COMPLEX, THEREFORE MORE STRIKINGLY DYNAMIC.

For me, it's ABABCBACCABBCACA

>>19741458
EXACTLY

>>19741458
Quevedo or Góngora?

>>19740816
ABAB just sounds so generic and cliche nowadays due to it being the rhyme scheme in the vast majority of pop music in the las century.

>>19741536
pop music is way better than pretentious assholes assume. Sometimes a body just wants a nice song, you know`?

>>19741485
I think he will say he likes Quevedo more, but that Gongora is better.

>>19741485


I LIKE BOTH EQUALLY, BUT THE FORMER MORE.

>>19741568
Una consulta, ¿que poetas se asemejan o comparten el estilo de Ramon de Campoamor? Estoy buscando y no encuentro otros. Gracias.

>>19741642


NUNCA HE OÍDO DE ÉL.

>>19740816
ABCB

I like ballad meter in general, it has such a natural rhythm for English, makes sense it's so common in folk pieces.

>>19741545
We are talking about rhyme schemes, not all pop music uses ABAB specially nowadays but it’s just boring. Lyrics with ABAB tend to be lifeless without any backing music, though of course there are exceptions.

>>19741536
akshually most popular music is written with internal rhyme and complete disregard for the meter, as it should be since the rhythm of the music acts as a metrical device in itself.

>>19741458
This.

>>19740832
fpbp

>>19740816
>>19740859
ABAB
>drug abuser automated default setting entertainment consumer short term payoff
no wonder it's popular

ABBA
>self control of conscious long term payoff
the choice is obvious

>>19740877
mother and bother do rhyme depending on your accent.

>>19740914
haha

>>19740816
I don't think either is 'better'. Use what serves your poetry best and change it up. Anyone who limits their ability just because they think it's 'better' is crippling themselves with their own ego.

That's like if I were to decide the aeolian scale is 'better' than the other scales and only ever compose anything using that one scale.

Maybe for a few songs that will be fine, but it's such a restriction and for what reason? Just making yourself less of an artist for no real benefit.

tl;dr
Neither is better.

>>19740816
AAAA

>>19742272
>most
Wrong, specially pop music from the last century

Blank verse
Rhyme is for children

AABB

>>19740816
AABB > ABAB > ABCD >>> ABBA

>>19740832
yeah limericks are up there honestly

>>19740816
ossian used the first so the first

>>19740816
I like ababdcdcacca

>>19741001
>both
here's a favorite of mine, As Kingfishers Catch Fire, by Gerard Manley Hopkins

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.

I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.

>>19740859
>ABAB is much more popular and there must be a reason for that.
ABAB is just AA with an internal rhyme and shorter lines

>>19744276
>>19744351
AABB isn't all that common. What are your favourites? I cited Toads Revisited earlier. Here's another good AABB poem which everyone should commit to memory:


LOVELIEST OF TREES
by A.E.Houseman

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

>>19740816
What does a Swedish pop group have to do with literature?

>>19744476
"Life's a curse, love's a blight, God's a blaggard, cherry blossom is quite nice" -- Tom Stoppard's reflection on this poem

>>19744476
Of course, some of the best and funniest ABBA verse is also AABB.

Paradox? Not at all...


Over in the corner I could see this other guy
He was kinda flirty he was giving me the eye
So I took advantage of the fact that I'm a star
Shook my hair and took a casual stroll up to the bar

And as sure as hell this guy was coming up to me
He said who am I and who are you and who are we
What's our situation do we have some time for us
I said I was not exactly waiting for the bus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyxBYbfu6k8

Attention! alliteration alpha ITT alright

AAAA,AAAB,AABA,AABB,ABAA,ABAB,ABBA,ABBB,
AABC,ABAC,ABBC,ABCA,ABCB,ABCC,
ABCD.

>>19740816
ABBA, AABB and ABAB are all pretty good. There are people who prefer something involving Cs; but we do not talk to those people.

>>19745438
I've always had a soft spot for BCBC. It sounds like ABAB to the untutored ear, but after a while you get a vague sense there's something you're not being told.

>>19740816
>What's the superior rhyming scheme?
AAAA
Like in those spanish romances or mester de clerecía.

ABAB is great in the right hands

The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me,
And I cannot, cannot go.

The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow;
The storm is fast descending,
And yet I cannot go.

Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond wastes below;
But nothing drear can move me;
I will not, cannot go.

>>19744476
AABB works so well for more romantic strolling poems
WHN0T

Childe Roland aka the greatest poem in the english language, is written in ABBAAB

It is clear that ABAB is superior.

>>19740816
AAABABC repeat

>>19740816

>song by ABBA
>does not use the ABBA scansion

>>19740832
>>19742876
>>19744351

Rhythm and rhyming is fun
You may think it's over done
These postmodern dicks
Can bash limericks
But rhyming will always be fun

>>19740832
>>19747721

There once was a man from /lit/
and although he wouldn't readily admit
he would dream of Rupi Kaur
and at his computer his penis he would scour
if only on her bleached face to spit

>>19747721
>>19747769
Learn meter

>>19740816
ABAB feels satisfying

>>19740816
ACAB
ez
ggwp

>>19741458
>i actually agree with a pedophile tripfag
end me

>>19740816
The structure and sounds etc are decided by the word itself. Better word dictates better structure and sound

>>19748903
>HOW DARE YOU TOUCH HER SHE WAS ONLY 14 YEARS OLD WHICH WAS PERFECRLY LEGAL FOR 99% OF HUMAN HISTORY BUT NOW ITS NOT RIGHT BECAUSE UGH JUST BECAUSE OK?????????? YES I KNOW 25 YEARS OLD CHADS AND TEACHERS DO THAT ALL THE TIME AND THE BILLIONAIRES EVEN HAVE THEIR OWN UNDERAGE SEX RING BUT YOU CANT BECAUSE UGH B-BECAUSE THATS PEDOPHILE!!!!! YOU MONSTER
*sips basedmilk*
>YOU PEDO MONSTER HER FATHER HAS ALL THE RIGHT TO CHOP YOUR HEAD OFF AND YOU MUST BE LOCKED AWAY FOR LIFE AND ENDURE THE MOST TERRIBLE FORM OF TORTURE JUST BECAUSE YOU FOLLOWED YOUR INSTINCTS. US? NO WE DONT HAVE THAT INSTINCT BECAUSE THE MAN ON TV SAID ITS A BAD THING AND WE ARE GOOD BOYS AAAAAAAHSHDH!^#^#^

>>19746043
rhyming above with move glrkglrkglrk

>>19740832
If postmodernist works center around deconstructionalism, then limericks been thrown to the curb in order to promote so called "new age" poetry.

>>19744238
literally name one 21st century song with AABB arranged with metric consistency. The art of lyric poetry is long dead.

IF YOU CHANGE YOUR MIND

IM THE FIRST IN LINE

HONEY IM STILL FREE

TAKE A CHANCE ON ME

ABCDEFU

Obviously it's ABCB.

Like Celia, Celia by Adrian Mitchell.

When I am sad and weary
When I think all hope has gone
When I walk along High Holborn
I think of you with nothing on