Poetry Friday: Let's play with Bouts-Rimés

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. 

My solution is below:

Change (no, you change)

What is the nature of our truce?

Is our pause deadly quiet or sharply profuse?

If we decide to lie, hand in hand, supine,

unspeaking, could we still re-sign

with anxious fingers passionately gregarious

the terms to end this battle; quit this precarious

stumbling over words, un-mine this quagmire

and declare, with silent volumes, a ceasefire?

Or must we open with a hail of words, barnstorm

mutual defenses, stun by direct apology, and with uniform

speed, sheath every confession with disarming humility,

and wordily, warily, negotiate renewed tranquility? 

Either—but choose, no truce lasts undisturbed,

Speak then the piercing language of love, superb.

                                                        ---Sara Lewis Holmes (all rights reserved) 

My poetry sisters' solutions to this poetry puzzle can be found here:

Mary Lee

Liz

Tanita

Tricia

Laura

Kelly 

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Carol Labuzzetta at The Apples in my Orchard.