Gobstopper.

 Gobstopper.  

The only one I interviewed that didn’t want to talk about the pain he was in, too,* was Bill Butler-Gates from SCPA, the Spottswood County Poets Association. Who didn’t want to talk about himself at all - or his organization - only about rhythm and rhyme. Particularly, he was wondering how far apart you could pull them before the rhythm fell down and couldn’t get up, before rhyme became no-rhyme-at-all.

More from the Ted Radio Quarter-Hour.
The views of our guests are strictly their own.

For example, I could hear dog/bog, right? I could hear fairly/barely. I could hear cynical/winnable, could I. In that case, surely I could also hear mystical/fisticuffs.

     I nodded, hesitantly. “What kind of rhyming would that be called?” I asked.

     He ignored the question: Wait! Then couldn’t I also hear hysterical/urinary,  larceny/Constable (the painter, not the office), resumption/plenary, fastidious/Bo-Peep, Wüstelei**/rainbow, graffiti/New Mexico, tinnitus/ramshackle? I could hear those? Right?

    I wasn’t so sure. “When do you come to,” I asked, “When do you come to the problem of your hearing what’s not really there?”

     “Almost immediately,” he said, “I mean barely/fairly - do they really rhyme? But
‘hearing-what’s-not-there’ is more the philosopher’s problem. Or the theologian's! It’s not the poet’s.”

“What’s the poet’s problem, then?”

     “None,” he said. The poet didn’t have a problem as long as philosophers and theologians left him alone - and linguists and grammarians and people who loved Billy Collins.

     “I thought everyone loved Billy Collins,” I said, “an American treasure.”

     “So was Eugene Fields.” And the red light came on.

There was only time to say, “We’ve been talking to Spottswood County Poetry Association vice-president, Bill Butler-Gates. Thank you, Bill. . . .”

04.20.19

_______________

  * On the Ted Radio Quarter-Hour, see here.

** The German for desert/chaos I found out later.