[Glenn Wright]

One minor nit. . .
“Impelled” or “compelled” in L1?
I think of “impelled” as being given purpose and direction.
“Compelled” suggests action done because of one’s inability to do otherwise.

[Roger Slater]

Why are bad poets impelled to use rhymed couplets?
I like kids, but I wouldn't want octuplets.

The problem with the second line is that the first line didn't ask why do poets use so many, or too many, rhymed couplets. Your first line doesn't frame the question in terms of quantity, but asks why they use rhymed couplets at all. That is the main reason L2 struck me as almost a non-sequitur. L2 simply does not follow logically from L1, in my opinion.

Leaving that aside, I also think the couplets/octuplets rhyme is weak. I know it is technically a perfect rhyme. But just because it qualifies as a perfect rhyme doesn't mean it's one that sounds good. It's subjective, I know, but I'd be slightly happier with "quintuplets", based on how it sounds. Also, when I first read the first two lines I found myself dividing eight by two to see if you were doing something along those line. If you'd used "quintuplets," being an odd number, I wouldn't have been drawn along that dead-end train of thought.

[Susan McLean]

Glenn, no one is forcing the poets to write couplets, so "impelled" was the meaning I intended. But I have tried changing that to "drawn" to imply that it is an attraction, not a compulsion, at work. Anyone who has read any poetry at all knows that there are other options for rhyme schemes. I am curious about why rhymed couplets seem to be preferred the vast majority of times. I suspect that it is because it is the easiest and most obvious rhyme scheme, not requiring much planning, and that naive poets assume that emphasizing the rhymes by putting them close together shows that it is a "real" poem.

Roger, couplets always come in twos, so quintuplets, as an odd number, doesn't fit the context. Octuplets is the highest number of births at one time that I have heard of, so it sounds like a possible number.

Susan

[Rick Mullin]

Hi Susan,

The quality of rhyme has a second dimension after sonic exactness, doesn't it?

I didn't find your poem offensive, by the way.

Rick

[Orwn Acra]

It doesn't work as satire because it's the exact sort of poem it's purportedly satirizing... and isn't in on the joke.

[Susan McLean]

Rick, rhyme works on many different levels at once. That is what I like about it.

Orwn, thanks for letting me in on the joke.

Susan

[Julie Steiner]

I didn't follow the logic between L1 and L2, either.

Would the poem work better with LL1-2 cut? Probably not. The enjambment seems to need an end-stopped preamble to set it off, and without an introductory joke of some sort, the poem feels even more preachy than it already is.

Invoking Pope and Nash sets the bar pretty high for wit and for surprising rhymes, and most readers won't be able to refrain from asking themselves if this poem is closer to the level of Pope and Nash or to the level of the bad poets sneered at in L1.

One of my pet peeves is when I write about one of my pet peeves and a reader expresses surprise that, of all the things to be annoyed about in the world, my subject is in my top ten. But on this particular week, I can't help wondering if this particular issue is worthy of my limited attention and capacity for empathy with the narrator's annoyance. (Yeah, yeah, I know, that sort of judgmental attitude is absolutely deadly to the enjoyment of light verse, and muses are capricious. Maybe tomorrow I'll be in a more receptive mood.)

[Susan McLean]

Julie, humor either makes you laugh or it doesn't. It's good for the writer to know either way about which parts of light verse amuse and which don't. Often, it's a mixed call. I tried to make the first few couplets end-stopped to show how deadly that pattern could be if it continues very long, so that the reader would see how much better the lines flow when they aren't end-stopped. I guess I expected more readers to share my lack of sympathy for rhymed couplets, but tastes differ.

Susan

[David Callin]

Hi Susan. I found getting through the first six lines a bit of a struggle - which could, cleverly, have been your intention - but one result of that is that the section on enjambment seemed greatly liberating. Lines 7 to 13 really swing. I enjoyed them.

Cheers

David

P.S. Nice title too.

[Susan McLean]

David, yes, I meant the first six lines to feel like a slog, so that the readers would understand what I dislike about rhymed couplets.

I have tried one more version of L1 to see if I can hit the wry tone I am aiming for, while clarifying that the poets in question don't tend to stop at just one couplet.

Susan