Coloring Outside the Rhymes

Singing & Drowning

By Janet Kenny

“I am basically a formal poet who ignores the rules. Music has always dominated anything I do, and music is something I can’t escape in poetry. As an ex-singer who was obliged to perform singing translations of opera libretti, I was delighted to discover Vladimir Nabokov’s extended, ‘cranky,’ critical argument about translations of Pushkin’s ‘Eugene Onegin.’ Although I am incurably married to rhyme, I was convinced by his arguments for rejecting it in translation. The subtlety and depth of Pushkin’s characters is lessened when they are forced into an alien rhyming pattern.”—Janet Kenny

POINT VERNON Australia—(Hubris)—January/February 2026—I am basically a formal poet who ignores the rules. Music has always dominated anything I do, and music is something I can’t escape in poetry.

As an ex-singer who was obliged to perform singing translations of opera libretti, I was delighted to discover Vladimir Nabokov’s extended, “cranky,” critical argument about translations of Pushkin’s “Eugene Onegin.” Although I am incurably married to rhyme, I was convinced by his arguments for rejecting it in translation.

The subtlety and depth of Pushkin’s characters is lessened when they are forced into an alien rhyming pattern. In contrast with Nabokov’s own unrhymed translation, the other rhymed translations seem unnatural and superficial. That inevitable line end that must rhyme gradually waters down the integrity of the original.

By losing the rhyme but keeping the form, Nabokov has found an acceptable compromise.    

I don’t read Russian and until reading Nabokov’s translation of “Eugene Onegin” I had learned more from Tchaikovsky’s wonderful opera than from any English verse translation. Tchaikovsky’s “Letter Scene” is Tatiana herself.

Anyway, I love the way Nabokov takes on the establishment. He is like the child who tells the world that the Emperor is naked. 

I decided to unite two points of view in one poem. I did my best to employ Pushkin’s own rhyming stanza form while I simultaneously expressed Nabokov’s defiant argument against forcing an English translation into rhyme. 

There are two basic poetic experiences: The poem that insists on being written and the poem we decide to write. I have tried to supply both kinds in this selection.

I live near the inescapable sea. “Sea Shanty” just turned up.

“Felony” lives across the street and I don’t trust him.

My nonsense poem “Gymnopédie” did write itself with the aid of Karel Capek’s ageless Emilia Marty, whom I am hoping to emulate.  

(I had the good fortune to know Nabokov’s nephew, so it is with certainty that I tell readers to accent the second syllable in “Nabokov.”)

Nabokov Hits His Stride
(in rhymed Pushkin stanzas)
By Janet Kenny

“Some paraphrases may possess the charm of stylish diction
and idiomatic conciseness, but no scholar should succumb
to stylishness and no reader be fooled by it.”—Vladimir Nabokov

How he raged when stylish diction
in translation overruled
honest meaning, making fiction
out of wisdom. Tricks that fooled
trusting readers who were cheated
of their birthright. Undefeated
he declared a war on style.
“Yes, by God, I’ll show them, I’ll
show what Pushkin really wanted.
Show how Russia tore apart
those who tasted foreign art,
never happy, always haunted
out of place in every land.
I will help them understand.

Nabokov wrote a free translation
Eugene Onegin, was the task.
Swiftly came the accusation
that his version wore a mask.
Pushkin’s dance of life had lost its
patterns, music, and acrostics,
“That,” he said, “is tommy rot!
Let me tell you what it’s got:
Character is what I’ve mastered.
I reveal Onegin’s soul
As indulgence takes its toll
on that selfish little bastard.
I show a man who had it all
then lost his world beyond recall.

He’d traveled, eaten, fornicated,
tasted, seen, and read the best.
Back at home the style was dated,
nothing there could pass his test.
Young Tatiana wrote a letter
full of love to this pacesetter.
‘I am unworthy,’ Eugene said.
And stricken, she wished she were dead.
He flirted with a silly pretty
girl, loved by his poet friend
whose duel with Eugene brought an end
to life and poems. Little shit, he
shot his happiness as well
and spent the next few years in hell.

And now I must admit I linger
with Tatiana, grown to be
a paragon. But on her finger
now she wears a ring, for she
is married to a prince, much older
than herself. When Eugene told her
in a letter of his love,
he found she was no turtle dove.
She pointed out his early failure
to appreciate her heart,
and now it was too late to start
again. He thought that her regalia
mattered to her. His mistake
was to reject the real for fake.

So we find sophistication
is the enemy of sense.
Lovers in the wrong location
fall the victims of pretense.
Eugene and Tatiana could have
loved and lived. Indeed they should have.
She knew better. He was shaped
by snobs whose silly ways he aped.
He could have been an intellectual-
giant with a perfect wife,
and lived a shared idyllic life,
instead of being ineffectual.
That is why I took the time
to show you Pushkin without rhyme.”

Sea Shanty
money for jam
By Janet Kenny

There was an old man caught a fish on the beach
(What a humdinger, I’ll have it for tea.)
He cooked it in butter then started to preach:
Now hear me, I’ve something to say of the sea.

Don’t splash it or smack it about when you swim,
it’s holding you up and it’s letting you go.
It’s nice in the summer but when it is dim
the sharks and the stingrays may drag you below.

Go dance on the seashells and dig for the crabs,
dance a bit, dig a bit, float on a log.
There’s likely a moment when memory stabs,
and faces float past but get lost in the fog.

No sand in the Marmite nor salt in the jam,
no prospect of finding a diamond in soap.
Put money in futures and travel by tram
to rattle your dentures and give yourself rope.

Felony
By Janet Kenny

Marmalade cat across the street,
huge monument to too much love,
you lick your arse and then your feet.
I know the prone, dismembered dove
is down to you, fat feline fraud.
Our eyes engage, you look away.
You want to show me that you’re bored,
your yawn, a needle-toothed display.
I know bad actors. I read guilt
in every line and swollen curve.
The collared dove whose blood you spilt
was dealt the fate you more deserve.
Your golden eyes squint mystery.
Inscrutable to some but not
to me you thug, you effigy,
brown-nosing creep, vile sans-culotte .
Somewhere inside your pampered brain
the pards of old demand the price
of hunt and kill. You still retain
their lust for living sacrifice.
Oh, bastard son of Bast, your line
is seeded with the skills to live
yet you submit to plates of Dine.
Shame on you, fatuous feline spiv.

Gymnopédie
By Janet Kenny

Let a hundred flowers bloom;
let a hundred schools of thought contend.
This may disappear quite soon.
We are all one in the end.
I am really Emilia Marty.
A matter of Czech and balance,
Enigmatic and under surveillance,
A devotee of Erik Satie.
Old as a baby cast up on the sand
And ready for a party.