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holorime

created by ailie

(idea) by Aerobe (3.4 hr) (print)   ?   (I like it!) 4 C!s Fri Apr 04 2008 at 2:58:03

 

Étonnamment monotone et lasse
Est ton âme en mon automne, hélas!

- Louise de Vilmorin

A particularly clever poetic form. In a holorime (or holorhyme), lines or even entire verses sound identical when spoken, but are composed of entirely different words. See the example above. There are a lot of these in French, some of them quite ingenious, but English has a few clever ones, too, even though it doesn't lend itself quite as well to homophonic phrases. Here are a couple by Howard Bergerson, whose holorimes are composed of identical series of letters:

Flamingo: pale, scenting a latent shark!
Flaming, opalescent in gala tents — hark!

O fly, rich Eros — dogtrot, ski, orbit eras put in swart
Of lyric heros. Dog Trotski or bite Rasputin's wart.

Holorimes were popular in the Oulipo movement, which believed literary constraints encouraged creativity.

My absolute favorite holorime, by John Hulme, is as follows, and corresponds not to itself but rather to a famous English speech. Read it slowly and see if you recognize it.

Freine ce romance qu'un trime haine, laine demi yeux hier ce.
Ail comme tout béret six ares note tout près cime.
De Yves; elle dattes mène d'où livres safre; te sème
De gourdes, hisse oeuf tines tertre vite, d'air Beaune ce.

For more fun with homophones: oronym, mondegreen, The Chaos, Anguish Languish and even Shíshì shishì Shi Shì, shì shi, shì shí shí shi.


printable version
chaos

Clerihew ladle rat rotten hut recreational linguistics Spoonerism
Why is a raven like a writing desk? oronym Elfchen spoonergram variation
The Clarendon Code How is poetic form going to help me scream about revolution wordplay Jianjian
Shíshì shishì Shi Shì, shì shi, shì shí shí shi The Chaos atan2 thunderword
homophone crossword puzzle anagram word games
The 6 Minute War Mondegreen mots de faux coeurs Anguish Languish
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