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| Quotes fill the walls at Planet Word, Washington, DC (highly recommended) |
This month's challenge is another game, or as Mary Lee puts it, "a word puzzle." Bouts-Rimés is an old game, played by poets since the early 17th century. The name means "rhymed ends" and the game is played by giving a poet a list of rhymed end words, and challenging her to write a poem to fit. Supposedly, the harder the end words, the better the game. We weren't too cruel to ourselves, but the list did have a few doozies:
A: profuse/abtruse/chartreuse/truce
B: incline/shine/resign/supine
C: various/gregarious/hilarious/precarious
D: ceasefire/quagmire/higher/dryer
E: transform/barnstorm/uniform/conform
F: humility/futility/nobility, tranquility
G: perturb/superb/reverb, disturb
We also decided to use these rhymes in any form of a sonnet. I always have to look up the variations, so here they are:
Petrarchan: ABAB ABAB CDE CDE or ABBA ABBA CDC DCD
Shakespearean: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG
Spenserian: ABAB BCBC CDCD EE
Other: AABB CCDD EEFF GG
And of course, we should try to work in our theme for the year of transformation (conversion, alteration, metamorphosis, mutation, growth, evolution, revision, modulation, change)
Whew. Enough with the rules...on to the game! What would you do with these words and that theme and these rhyme patterns? I chose to pick an A word, ask a question with it, and use the "other" sonnet form to think out my answer.
