Forms
Dream Song
ce, each poem incorporates a rhyme scheme that Harry Mathews unearthed in the first of John Berryman's dream songs. The rhyme is distributed over three verses. In the first, Jouet posits a stressed consonant (or consonants), in the second, a tonic vowel; the third verse conflates them. As unusual as it may be, the effect achieved by this technique is nonetheless that of rhyme: "In a manner of speaking, then, the third verse is in consonance with the first, and in assonance with the second. It rhymes with the sum of the two" (12). Such a device points to Jouet's deep interest in rhyme as a general literary principle, an interest that colors in one way or another many of his major works, whether the "rhyming" function hinges on sounds, on themes, or on structures.