Wordplay/Poetry question

Cafe Society
1

What is the name for the technique used to embed the poets names in this puzzle/‘poem’?

I’m thinking of putting together a chapbook for my family and would like to properly identify what’s been done here. You’d think because I did it, I’d know but, old age and memory are not good companions… I have a memory of doing these types of puzzles in elementary school. A whole bunch of years later that memory inspired this piece, though I have yet to re-identify the technique’s name. Eight years later it has occurred to me that Dopers know everything - so, I’m asking.

P.S. I will post the answers to this blank-verse puzzle, if anyone’s interested but, I hope my question can be answered, too. Thanks in advance!

2

I would call it using a paronomasiac constraint, but there may well be a much neater term for it.

It’s outstanding work, whatever you care to call it. Are there really fifty poets hidden in there? So far, I’ve only found 30, and they are not all modern by any means.

3

Le M, there are indeed 50 ‘notable’ surnames embedded in this mess of failed pentameter. (Granted, they may only be notable to poetry nerds, like me.) ‘Modern’ is a reference to free-verse.

Paronomasiac Constraint (what a mouthful!) might be the term I end up using but, it certainly isn’t ringing any bells from my schoolday memories. Maybe the school/magazine – wherever I remember these puzzles from – used a made up term to describe them… I wish I could recall. Thanks very much for helping with my search.

4

That’s really neat. I don’t know poetry well enough to get many, but I had fun finding the 20 easy ones. (My favorite was the one I found in the last line.) Great stuff! Excellent job.

5

Could you please PM me the answers? So far I have 38, but I know I’m missing some really obvious ones (probably people I would have heard of if I were American). Thank you!

6

I’m up to 42! but now I feel like I might lose my mind.

7

OK, third post in a row but whatever. I got 49 and now I give up. I still want the answers though!

8

So glad some of you are enjoying the puzzle itself. I will post the answer list tomorrow. Teacake, 49 is an impressive number of finds! I’m curious which one you’re missing. I also still have hope that someone knows the name for this puzzly technique.

9

Glance over the basics for cryptic crossword puzzles here: Cryptic crossword - Wikipedia . You’ve got a mixture: some homophones, some embedded words, some straightforward puns, and a few direct references as well.

10

Thanks for helping, Sam. I’m guessing there is no proper name for it, and I’m delusional to think I ever knew one. I appreciate everyone’s time and effort, though.

Here’s the answers for those who asked.

[spoiler]In the order they appear:
Poe, Wordsworth, Kees, Emerson, Sandburg, cummings, Browning, Frost, Hughes, Shakespeare, Shelley, Shaw, Pound, Nash, Dickinson, Holmes, Lovelace, Keats, Yeats, Longfellow, Williams, Rumi, Elliot, Thomas, Ginsberg, Barret, Plath, Asimov, Chaucer, Parker, Thoreau, Bronte, Lawrence, Neruda, Bishop, Arnold, Burns, Gluck, Housman, Kooser, Stevens, Ovid, Milton, Howe, Coleridge, Tennyson, Millay, Kipling, Whitman, Bukowski.

Alphabetically:

  1. Matthew Arnold
  2. Isaac Asimov
  3. Elizabeth Barret (Browning)
  4. Elizabeth Bishop
  5. Emily Bronte
  6. Robert Browning
  7. Charles Bukowski
  8. Robert Burns
  9. Geoffrey Chaucer
    10.Samuel Coleridge
    11.ee (edward estlin) cummings
    12.Emily Dickinson
    13.T.S. (Thomas Stearns) Elliot
    14.Ralph Waldo Emerson
    15.Robert Frost
    16.Allen Ginsberg
    17.Louise Gluck
    18.Oliver Wendell Holmes
    19.A.E. (Alfred Edward) Housman
    20.Susan Howe
    21.Langston, or Ted Hughes
    22.John Keats
    23.Weldon Kees
    24.Rudyard Kipling
    25.Ted Kooser
    26.D.H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
    27.Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
    28.Richard Lovelace
    29.Edna St. Vincent-Millay
    30.John Milton
    31.Ogden Nash
    32.Publius Ovidius Naso
    33.Pablo Neruda
    34.Dorothy Parker
    35.Sylvia Plath
    36.Edgar Allen Poe
    37.Ezra Pound
    38.Jalaluddin Rumi
    39.Carl Sandburg
    40.William Shakespeare
    41.George Bernard Shaw
    42.Percy Bysshe Shelley
    43.Wallace Stevens
    44.Lord Alfred Tennyson
    45.Dylan Thomas
    46.Henry David Thoreau
    47.Walt Whitman
    48.W.C.(William Carlos) Williams
    49.William Wordsworth
    50.William Butler Yeats

In the poem:
When po/’ little Dick writes words worth/ reading
we find keys/ to immerse on/ beachy dunes,
which form like sand-berg/s against the comings/
of tone and tide. Browning/ in frost/ed hues/,
his soul shakes pier/s on shelly/ shore/s of sense.
We pound/ our fists, gnash/ our teeth at Dick. In
sun/ soaked homes/, where they love lace/ and pink eats/
what the fairy eats/, this long fellow/ can
will yams/ to eat his roomy/. Hell, he ought/
to mass/ produce the one that begins Burg/.

‘Bare it/.’ says Plath/, which soon has him off/ to
gnaw chaws, her/d ma to park her/ off the ro/ad.
Brown tea/ drips lore, ens/nared in a rude a/rc,
his job is: shop/ for that darn, old/ rhythm.
It’s stubborn s/tuff, but with big luck/ he will
house man/y haikus, er/, um, poems - the best!
Even s/o, no vid/eos pummel ton/nage of this image.
When asked how/ coal ridge/s can play* tennis,
son*/ said, “M’la/dy, skip ling/uistics, use
your wit, man/. Say ‘Boo cow. Ski/.’ and it will.”
[/spoiler]

11

Ooh, you sneaky so and so! I had

Dick instead of Howe, and missed out Burns - in my defence for missing such an obvious one, I don’t think it works in my accent, though I boggled my eyes looking at that line because I KNEW there was something in there!

Very well done. You provided some precious frustration for my Saturday evening (which would otherwise have been irritatingly placid with only a workout, “Mystic Pizza” and a curry).

12

Thank you, Teacake. I’m happy to provide ‘frustration’ - as long as that’s a good thing!

13

Incidentally, there’s a Chinese poet named Li Po, so you now have 51!

14

I have to say, one of those names sticks out as not being like the others.

Asimov? Did he even write any poetry? Certainly nothing he’s remembered for compared to his fiction and even non-fiction. That one must have been a sentimental choice for the OP.

Anyway, that was a cool puzzle. There were a couple of poets I hadn’t heard of.

15

Sam, thanks for the tip. He’ll share a line w/ Edgar Allen - like Langston and Ted do - keeping the 50 matching sounds.

Erdosain, I appreciate the compliment. Thanks. Isaac wrote his fair share of poems. He was fairly clever with limericks, which I have no examples of at the moment. But, you’re right that he’s a sentimental favorite. Scientific poets are a rare breed which I greatly admire.

16

“A honeymoon couple named Kelly
Spent their honeymoon belly to belly
Because, in their haste,
They used library paste
Instead of petroleum jelly.”

is the first one of Isaac Asimov’s limericks that comes to mind.