Vernon Scannell – master craftsman

Extract from Chapter 12, Walking Wounded – the Life and Poetry of Vernon Scannell

The Loving Game was nominated by the Poetry Book Society as its Christmas Choice for 1975 – an important accolade. Like all Scannell’s work, its poems are accessible and subtle and speak with a direct and colloquial voice, but they are also technically highly innovative, as the first verse of Enemy Agents demonstrates:

“Expert in disguise and killing-blows,

Fluent in all languages required,

They wrote me ardent letters, but in code.

My vanity and ignorance combined

To make me perfect victim for their game:

I took them at face-value every time.”

The final vowel sound of the first line (the “oh” of “blows”) and the final consonant of the second (the “d” of “required”) are brought together in the final word of the third (code), in a pattern which is repeated throughout the poem.

“I call it “triadic rhyme”, “triadic” because, unlike pure rhyme, it requires not two but three elements for its composition … My intention is to impose upon myself a discipline every bit as exacting as pure rhyme, but the effect of which should be less predictable and less obviously euphonious.”

It is more than just showing off, being difficult for difficulty’s sake. Few, if any, readers would notice how the effect is achieved if it were not pointed out to them, but the echoing sounds in each group of three lines bind the lines together almost subliminally, in a way that gives the poem a diffident, tentative quality. This perfectly matches its depiction of a man helplessly bemused by intimacy…

… The extra demands of the “triadic” rhyme impose an even harsher discipline on the poet. It is a reminder that when Scannell inveighed, as he often liked to, against pop poetry, doggerel and birthday card rhymes as “not inferior poetry, but the antithesis of poetry”, he was speaking not as some pompous old buffer grumbling about standards in general, but as a craftsman who delights in the fine detail of his craft. It is the contempt of a master carpenter for a flat-pack chest of drawers cobbled together out of chipboard and plastic jointing blocks. 

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