The Library of Spanking Fiction: Wellred Weekly


Wellred Weekly
Volume 1, Number 5 : February 7, 2012
 
Articles
Items of interest regarding all things spanking

My Approach to Spanking Verse
by barretthunter

It is rather hard to spank verse, so I'm writing this about how I approach writing verse on a spanking theme and giving some tips on how to do it. Many of these apply to any kind of verse.

I'm looking mainly at how I approach writing spanking verse, but there are several other expert writers on the Library of Spanking Fiction whose verse is great fun. Flopsybunny, for example, writes neat and funny original pieces largely without the supernatural elements that appear in many of her stories. Angelmischief has written excellent poems in a similar vein, and opb's many clever verses include numbers that imitate nursery rhymes and the like.

How to browse poetry on the Library
Go to Search, ignore categories like TITLE and use the drop-down menu for TYPE, which includes poetry. Add any specifications you like, the same as for any other search, and Robert is your parent's brother.

Why "verse" rather than "poetry"?
Poetry to me implies something serious and with depth. It can be lively and funny too, it may well be passionate, it may be about spanking, but it's different from what's called "light verse". Verse includes this, but also light verse not to be taken very seriously. When I look at my own spanking verse, I'd classify nearly all of it as verse but not poetry, with just two or three exceptions. For other verse writers on the Library, much the same holds true.

What's distinctive about verse and poetry?
Many people think the answer to this is very simple: it rhymes. But rhyming is only one of the ways you can hold a poem together. Verse comes from things that were sung or chanted, perhaps even going back to the chants of ancestor apes, and the sound of the words is still as important as the meaning. In spanking verse, this means a good outing for words like swat, swish, squeal, sob, spank, sting, slice, wobble, waddle, rasp, bark, and wail.

Poetry is held together by some kind of pattern or structure. This may not be obvious or predictable, and some people call this "free verse". It is also possible to rely on alliteration ("wiry and white-fiery and whirlwind-swivelled snow", Hopkins) and rhythm and dispense with rhymes. Nearly all light verse, though, and thus nearly all spanking verse, uses regular rhyming plans. The problem with rhyme in serious poems is that it can sound trite. In light spanking verse, that's not a problem - and contrived, strained or ingenious rhymes add a lot to the humour: for example:
"Desist from violence and from coarse vocabulary
Or I'll arrest you all, for I'm from Lancashire Constabulary!"

Generally speaking, if you start rhyming, you'd better keep on rhyming in the same pattern or the reader will feel you've failed. There are several possible patterns, but leaving aside the unusual and the complicated, there are four common patterns, all of which apply to verses of four lines each (all sorts of alternatives are possible, but let's start simple).

AABB: two rhyming couplets - for example,
I crept into Miss Wharton's class
And there I saw Miss Wharton's arse:
She'd bent to help a boy retrieve
His pen - but I would make her grieve!

ABAB:
Some like a nurse, and some a majorette
Some find a schoolgirl uniform excites
But Keith police girls' bottoms loved to pet
And spank and strap and ply the cane that bites.

?A?A: a variant of ABAB in which only the second and fourth lines need to rhyme, as in:
She rode upon the bridleway
All in her jodhpurs cream
And as she rode, she puzzled on
Her most disturbing dream

ABBA: Not a Swedish pop group and the least common of the four, but used by Tennyson for In Memoriam and by Barretthunter for Proud Hilary, for example:
O red was the gamekeeper's face
And red were Hilary's new shorts
She wore for runs and other sports
And red her rump beneath the lace.

The problem about AABB, is that it often seems TOO neat. This matters much less if the aim is to amuse. It also tends to chop up the poem into a series of couplets, though this effect is reduced if you use verses of many lines, as I did in Sweet Susan's Comeuppance:
Sweet Susan round the town patrols
With massive rump and secret holes:
She seeks the townsfolk to protect,
Her unclad face, to crime detect.
Her clad face surely crime invites,
As stripping, lashing, driving, bites.
With every step each cheek gyrates
Around the grail of her nates;
In trousers tight her arse is trapped -
But all who see it wish it rapped.

For those reasons the second and third patterns are the ones most often used to tell a story - which is what a lot of spanking verse does. ABBA is a bit of a favourite of mine. Somehow the rhyme in that third line comes as a bit of a surprise and gives the impression of things rushing on; but a pitfall is that a lot of emphasis is thrown on to that last line, so it really has to be good or the verse falls flat.

There is actually any number of other possible patterns, but most of them are either more complicated or more demanding, such as AAA, three successive end-words rhyming with one another, which I used in Sweetest Penny, for example.

The lines can be of any length (though eight or ten syllables are most favoured) but again, in regular verse, you need to be consistent. If the first and third lines of verse 1 are eight syllables long while the second and fourth are six syllables long, the other verses should follow the same pattern - unless you're aiming for a particular kind of comic effect based on the supposed incompetence of the poet, as in my McGonagall pastiche:
Now on the tragic day of the great upheavals (12 syllables)
Which visited Lancashire in England with terrible evils (15)
There chanced upon one another two murderous enemy crews (15)
Both fired by long-established hatreds and the demon booze (14).

For some reason, spanking verse often comes to me when I'm driving, which presents a practical difficulty of remembering it till I can record it.

If you are rhyming, then finding the rhyme is a great challenge. Sometimes it comes to me unforced, but sometimes I'm running through the alphabet: "A rhyme for spatula? Atula, batula, catula, chatula...can I call it a spoon? Boon, coon, choon, croon, doon, droon..." So it helps to plan things with rhyme in mind, for example to choose a personal name or place name that offers some spanking or at least sexy rhymes. Braine or Frayn, for example, rhyme with cane and pain, and Sutton rhymes with button and cut on, while Roberts doesn't rhyme with anything I can think of. It's fortunate that there are so many words for the posterior and for its punishment, as some of them are difficult to rhyme - bottom, for example, which I rhymed with Miss Cottam and which could be combined with spot 'em and shot 'em, but that's little help compared to bum, which rhymes with many common words, or arse (class, pass, grass, farce, even alas: Northern English people will need to pronounce arse as ass to make most of these work); but I know of only one surname which rhymes with arse, namely Carse.

Every bit as important as rhyme is rhythm.
When people who know little about verse try to write it, this is usually where they come most obviously unstuck. It's harder to recognise and explain than rhyme, and one test quite simply is whether, when you read it aloud (could be problematic if you're on the train or plane, especially if it's spanking verse, but you never know, it could be the start of a wonderful relationship) or at least read it aloud in your mind, it races along (good) or it sounds gawky (bad). There are several good types of rhythm, but the simplest and commonest follows one stressed syllable with one unstressed, then one stressed and so on (or it may start with an unstressed one).

What's this stress thing?
Here's an example:
I wandered down the dreary street
And kicked a can of beer
But then a copper on her beat
Approached me with no fear
She said she would conduct a search
And so her rump received the birch.

If you read this out it's obvious it goes: i WANdered DOWN the DREAR y STREET/ and KICKED a CAN of BEER/ but THEN a COPper ON her BEAT/ apPROACHED me WITH no FEAR/ she SAID she WOULD conduct a SEARCH/ and SO her RUMP reCEIVED the BIRCH. It goes with a rhythm, doesn't it? You can almost see those two guys at the start of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" clopping together their coconut shells.

By contrast, this rhymes in the same way and has the same number of syllables:
Darren and me wandered down this
Naff old street and kicked stuff
This policewoman took the piss
She was talking all guff
She intended searching for gear
So him and me like whacked her rear.

That said, varying the stresses can be very effective because it's surprising. One of the most-quoted couplets in poetry is from Andrew Marvell:

Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade.


(anNIhiLATing ALL that's MADE - that's as expected...
To a green THOUGHT in a green SHADE - wow!)

Two variants of spanking verse quite common in our pages are the Limerick (Luimneach for Gaelic-speakers) and the parody or pastiche. The Limerick probably doesn't need explaining - and if you don't know the rules, just look at some (I have a whole lot in a sub-heading under Poems) and it'll soon be clear. With a limerick you have only five short lines to say what you want, which is a real challenge - but it's ideal for composing while driving (a car). One word of warning: the last line needs to be an effective punchline or the whole thing falls flat. Ideally it brings in a new, unexpected twist - for example in A Callipygous Copper From Burton, the fact that she had no skirt on for the very good reason that she was wearing trousers only appears in the last line.

A parody is a piece of writing that brings out weaknesses or quirks in someone else's text through writing something similar but exaggerated. There are lots of spanking versions of non-spanking poems, but most of them are pastiche: they imitate the original for comic effect, but not with the idea of telling you anything new about the original. An example would be my Ode to Ms Nightingale, which is based on Keats' Ode to a Nightingale. In general I like to do this to poems I really like and value. I follow the structure and line of thought of the original as closely as possible, which means I can appropriate, as it were, some of the original's strengths. For example, though my Nightingale poem is about a man dreaming of spanking a policewoman and fearing the consequences (or has he actually spanked her?), it is not only very close to Keats line by line, but follows the same sequences from enjoyment of the present to a final confusion about where he is and what's happening.

Gerard Manley Hopkins
Another poem I wrote to be very close to the original was The Won Jogger. Several people admired this but hadn't realised it was a very close pastiche of Gerard Manley Hopkins' The Windhover, his most famous poem. Comparing the two can make some points about how to write poetry without a regular rhyming plan: it's definitely not just a matter of writing prose and arranging it in short lines.

Here's Hopkins' original about a Kestrel (windhover): it rhymes, but really it doesn't need to. I've highlighted the bits that echo other bits, by alliteration (same first letter or consonant), rhyme or half-rhyme, excluding the rhymes at the end of the lines:
I CAUGHT this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, -the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

Now compare my pastiche of this, The Won Jogger:
I caught this midnight's midnight's minion, sports-
girl of darkness danger, burning beat big bottom, in its bending
To the bothersome undone underneath her trailing lace, and mending,
Quivering, how she wobbled in the waddle of her skin-tight shorts
To my ecstasy! Then rise, then rage my thoughts
As her tight cheek swings smooth on a broad bot: then joy as rending
Revealed the dark crease. My cock distending
Stirred for a bird - the entrapping, the mastery of her ports.

Bent beauty is paddled and whacked, oh, whip, switch, swat here
Splatter! AND the fire that burns on thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my constable!

No wonder of it: poor plod takes swat posterior
Sizzling. Blue-bleak trousers, ah, my dear,
Fall buttock-free and I'm her superior!

Can you see how I've tried to imitate not only the alliteration and other internal connections of the poem, but also the flow of thought? Actually I felt guilty writing this one: it seemed like lese-majeste towards Hopkins, whose poems I admire passionately. But in fact, writing it gave me a much better understanding of why Hopkins' original worked so well.

Here's an extract from a spanking poem, Obsession, which I wrote without a regular rhyming plan:
It floats into my sight - no, it gyrates,
Each sweet cheek cheekily, urgently, lewdly
Presses against the other, squeezes, shifts,
Sisters in conflict, wriggling sinuously around
That deep mysterious dark cleft I hardly see
Suggested by the slight, tight valley
Between the magnificent haunches, her high hills.

Notice the similarities of the sounds - "sweet cheek cheekily", squeezes/shifts/sisters/sinuously/suggested/slight, "slight, tight", haunches/high/hills. I don't think this would work with something light and jokey, but this competition entry was quite passionate and serious, albeit with a humorous ending.

It tends to be hard to get people who say they don't like poetry to explain why, but I suspect trauma from school in some cases, fear of seeming wet in others and too determined an attempt to understand everything in others. Even in light spanking verse it can be hard to explain all you'd like to within the confines of the lines, so the reader is left to make a few guesses. The best advice I can give is to make the guesses and not worry. No-one is going to thrash you for getting it wrong - unless you so want!



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