A Rhyming Non-Palindrome
Over the past few days our friend Frank Haller – ex advertising creative director and golf essayist – has been part of an exchange we were having about palindromes. Most of ours were so bad we decided that they were actually Sarah Palindromes. Finally Frank gave up that pursuit and burst into verse:
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Tortured rhymes are made by fools like I am
And that Persian guy named Omar Khayam.
He liked to buy boats and the best one he bought
Was a nifty little gem he called the Ruby Yacht.
*
To which and to wit, Steve Alber, a fellow member of the palindromatist cabal, soon responded in kind:
*
I’ve sailed upon the Ruby Yacht! … a lilting, soggy version
Of quatrains of the bounding main, translated from the Persion.
They form the watery set of rhymes that actually seem to herald
The threads that form the fabric of a suit that might fitz Gerald.
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Bravo! These may be the first newly minted ancient sea chanties to pay tribute not only to the epic and its author but also to its translator — and the first Fitzgerald celebrated in maritime rhyme since the Edmund Fitzgerald foundered.
Comment by Al — December 16, 2009 @ 8:31 pm
Excellent verse, and so erudite. I remember seeing the Ruby Yacht joke on ‘Rocky and Bullwinkle’ in 1965!
Comment by Mark — December 19, 2009 @ 7:17 am
Brilliant, both of them!
Comment by Barb — December 21, 2009 @ 4:49 am
Thanks again for the blog post. Will read on…
Comment by Alisha Takacs — January 16, 2012 @ 5:35 am