STRATFORD-UPON-AVON – Looking to spice up the poem they’re in, a rhyming couplet has posted an online classified that says “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall and had a great fall, but now we’re waiting for your phone call.”
“It’s not that I mind coupling with Fall, it’s just that I’ve been doing it for 224 years,” Wall said. “I’m totally committed to my relationship with Fall, but I want to know what other rhymes are out there.”
“We were really nervous about posting the ad,” Fall said. “But now that it’s out there it feels like the right move. I think this will actually give us a better sense of how to rhyme together and make each other sound good. And honestly, I’m excited to watch Wall rhyme with another word.”
While rarely discussed among rhymes, it’s not unusual for long-term couplets to seek a new poetic adventure. “When you’re part of a power couplet like me, you can start to feel trapped by fame,” the Tyger said. “So we decided to just burn off some steam. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that in this day and age.”
The Tyger’s ad reads, “Bright burning tyger and nighttime forest seek rhyme to contemplate the duality of human existence and have a little casual fun. Let’s meet up, get to know each other, and see where the poem takes us. Single syllable rhymes preferred, must be typo-free.” Several weird words that don’t meet the requirements responded almost immediately.
Some couplets are describing themselves as “eye rhyme curious,” while others are seeking to move beyond “vanilla” rhyming and into alternative poetic devices. One ad, for example, read, “Double your fun? Toil and Trouble, Cauldron Bubble looking to experiment with enjambment and pyrrhic foot play. Please be experienced, and no onomatopoeia.”
At press time, the closing lines of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 were working up the nerve to ask “three” if they’d ever been the three in “threesome.”
