Skip to main content

A Tantalizing Tautonym Poem

Tautonyms are  words containing two identical or similar parts that share a rhyme (a segment, syllable, or morpheme).

 Tautonyms are also referred to as 'rhyming reduplicatives.'  These wonderful word pairs provide a poet with opportunities to indulge in a little word play. They are everyday utterances that deliver delight. So, without hesitation, I dived straight in for some tautonym tomfoolery.

May I be so bold as to advise you to read the poem aloud? It adds to the experience of these tautonyms tripping off the tongue.

Focus On The Hocus-Pocus

Don’t shilly-shally

Not even for an itty bitty.

In the hurly burly,

Just remember to razzle dazzle.

Holy moly,

It’s easy-peasy.

Jeepers creepers,

Use your peepers

Don’t boogie woogie

Or be arty-farty

And all higgledy-piggledy.

Forget the mumbo-jumbo

Avoid double-trouble

Don’t be wishy-washy

And everything will be super-duper.

Just make sure silly-billy

Doesn’t get the heebie-jeebies

When it comes to the nitty-gritty.

Okey-dokey?

Alan j Wright


It's Poetry Friday! Carol Labuzzeta hosts this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at The Apples In My Orchard


 

Comments

  1. Alan, Thanks for sharing this fun to read (and probably, write) poem. It reminds me of my mom who loved word play and is also something I would have used while substitute teaching to make the children laugh and converse.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Pleased you enjoyed this little piece of wordplay, Carol. It was certainly fun in the making.

      Delete
  2. Alan, as usual you provide a new poetic idea in the form of a truly fun poem. You are right. Reading the poem put loud was a pleasure.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Glad you invested in a read aloud, Carol. Double the fun. Thank for your positive remarks.

      Delete
  3. Thanks for this fun poem, Alan! Delightful!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Wowie zowie, Alan! :) Fun stuff!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. So glad you had a little fun with this, Karen. That was certainly my aim in sharing it.

      Delete
  5. So fun! I love that these have a name!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There's something quite re-assuring that language features we readily identify have an actual name attached to them, Marcie.

      Delete
  6. I love learning about language -- another -nym! Who knew? And SUCH a fun poem!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Another nym indeed, Mary Lee. Glad you enjoyed the poem.

      Delete
  7. But I love to shilly-shally! :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Feel free to indulge your need to shilly-shally, Patricia.

      Delete
  8. Okey-dokey those are funzy-onesie, thanks for all the smiles Alan! 😊

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You're on a roll. Michelle. Glad they made you smile.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Poetry Inspired by Images and Objects

There are many ways pictures and photographs can be conscripted to support the writing of poetry. Allow me to share a few ideas with you: Old photographs are a great source of inspiration. Cynthia Rylant explored this idea with great success in her book 'Something Permanent' where she employed the Depression era photographs of Walker Evans to add a new voice to the starkness to the lives of people experienced under extreme circumstances. I have used this strategy to spark many individual poems. In ' I Bet There's No Broccoli On The Moon,' I used a photo I had taken in 2004 while living in New York to inspire a poem. The poem was based on a story related by a friend who grew up in New York.  I regularly combined poetry and pictures in my writer's notebook, drawing on inspiration from the photograph and my personal memories. We can also utilize existing cartoons and illustrations to create ekphrastic poems. I frequently use the illustrations of Jim Pavlidis to co...

Peter Dixon -Teabag Poem

Today I'm highlighting the poetry of Peter Dixon. Peter Dixon was not just a poet. He was a performer, educationalist and artist.   He grew up in London during WW2, and as a boy his schooling was far from successful. He struggled with spelling and the understanding of word, form and grammar, so he tended to write secretly at home, drawing and writing of things largely ignored by schools.   Despite this difficult phase of his life, Peter eventually became a school teacher and then a senior lecturer in education. It often mystified him as to how all of this came to pass. As a teacher, he strived to be unbiased and did not neglect the children who experienced learning challenges.   Peter Dixon became a full time children’s writer and educational consultant. His first book was published in 1978. Whilst living in Winchester, Hampshire, with his family, he   contributed to over 100 poetry anthologies and had seven collections of his own work published including Grow Your O...

Poetry Friday 'Storm On The Island' Seamus Heaney

Given the fact that we recently celebrated St Patrick's Day, it seems appropriate that I take this opportunity to continue the Irish focus and recognize one of Ireland's leading literary figures... Seamus Heaney was born in County Derry in Northern Ireland in 1939 and died in 2013. He became a multi award winning poet. His first collection of poems, 'Death of a Naturalist' appeared in 1966 and helped to establish Heaney as one of the major poets of the 20th century. From that first anthology, I have chosen 'Storm On The Island.' This poem tells us about the stoic resistance of people and structures to an incoming storm. The island is not named. Poetic scholars believe this is a poem that can be taken literally, as a monologue on the life and attitude of island people facing a storm, or it can be understood as a  metaphor of political struggle on the island of Ireland. Heaney knew both worlds.  The poems of this first collection are grounded in the soil...