rhyme scheme

Recently, I had the great good fortune of having a poem appear in The Guardian Unlimited's January Poetry Workshop.

Being a braggart, I posted on same here. Besides the usual (and much appreciated) congratulatory comments, there was also a greeting from Anna Hansell, whose rhyming poem An old British passport up on the shelf was also included in Julia Copus' shortlist.

Among other things, Copus had this to say of Hansell's technique:

The a-b-b-a rhyming scheme works well, and the rhymes are unobtrusive. You have managed to avoid "the jingling sound of like endings" of which Milton complained in his prefatory note to Paradise Lost, and you also (for the most part) steer clear of the sort of rhymes Keats had in mind when he wrote his sonnet "If by dull rhymes our English must be chain'd"! In other words, the sense of your poem hasn't been compromised (as is so often the case) by your decision to use end-rhyme - which is no mean achievement.

As a result, once we'd traded compliments on each other's poems, I asked Hansel to speak to her use of rhyme schemes in her poems.

Weeks passed with nary a reply and soon the post was lost to the blogosphere (which is exactly as it should be).

The other day, however, Anna returned.

Since her comment was both considered and highly amusing (in which she rhymes 'fast' with 'ass'!), I thought I'd draw your electronic eye to it...