Word: rhymed
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...these, is the only excellent piece in the entire issue: Mr. Johnston uses the ballad form, which he handles so adroitly, to express something darker than the fancies of his earlier work. His poem is an extended metaphor, illustrating the sophisticated command of language and ironic use of rhyme which has previously engaged the attention of this reviewer. It is a great pleasure to see someone write about a highly personal subject with detachment, eschewing the offensive gurgle which so many Cambridge writers mistake for the plainsong of genius...
...revert once again to the program notes, "Jacques Bersani and T. Morris rendered into almost modern French, pretty much metrical" the original version of the play, and very elegant and amusing almost metrical modern French it is. They kept the octosyllabic line, the often complicated rhyme scheme, and, most important, the delightfully naive ironies and anachorisms of the original. And even I, who barely understood French 20 lectures, could make out nearly every line. The lines that I didn't understand all came in a few tire-some and unnecessary scenes, full of argot about crap shooting and in-group...
...author of Harvey has attempted another wistfully whimsical frolic, some further genially wacky escapism. But she has not pulled another rabbit out of her hat or even put enough bees in Tallulah's bonnet. Her sort of nursery-rhyme old crone scampering upstairs, downstairs and in my lady's chamber has in places a nursery-rhyme lilt, but far too often a thin, struggling farce's laboredness. The kinfolk and clubwomen who keep trooping in and out make the struggle even harder. The play has charming moments, but only moments; flashes of bright Harveyesque humor, but only...
Perhaps the most fragrant laurel of all belongs to Mr. Johnston himself, whose poems have appeared all too infrequently in Cambridge publications. It would be folly to attempt to describe the delicacies of Mr. Johnston's style, his skill in blank verse, his felicity of rhyme; I must pretermit all this, even decline to mention the phrasing of his narrative, the ingenuity of his conceit. I cannot, however, refrain from remarking with highest approbation--upon his obvious familiarity with the Lesser Celandine, a flower whose possibilities have never been adequately explored; and his accurate and steadfast belief in Nymphs...
...paber filled with holes./People, punched away by antic death...") and some few rough spots, Memento Mori, which won the Hatch Prize this year, is a fine piece. Mr. Holden succeeds in encasing a particularly unwieldly sentiment in a tight and carefully plotted structure. The skillful shifting of the rhyme scheme, and its complete abandonment at one point, reinforce the progression of Mr. Holden's ideas; and the entire poem (to commit sacrilege upon a hallowed text) is an admirable illustration of how a banal thought may be garnished with the irregular combinations of fanciful invention, until the product...