how to insert <CR> in ratpoison -c colon command

I'm working on using DMENU for entering colon commands - it helps jog
the memory;-)

A problem I've encountered is with colon dialogs. For example
describekey.

Here is the crude dialog (after command has been selected from dmenu):

response="$(ratpoison -c "$item")"
if [ ! "$response" = "" ]; then
   ratpoison -c "echo $response"
fi

For a straight forward command like "info" this works. But if I run
"definekey" without giving the keymap, it does nothing - I get neither a
dialog appearing nor with the code above can I catch the error message
and display it so that I know why there's been no response.

I thought that by using the "colon" command, I could enter the "colon"
dialog and solve this problem. So I changed the code thus:

response="$(ratpoison -c "colon $item")"
if [ ! "$response" = "" ]; then
   ratpoison -c "echo $response"
fi

The problem here is that I have to press enter twice - once after
selecting from dmenu and then again when the colon prompt appears.

I've tried the following:
response="$(ratpoison -c "colon $item"\n)"
response="$(ratpoison -c "colon $item
")"

Neither works - in both cases (and variations, including \r) the
carriage return turns up as a literal on the colon command line.

I don't understand why I can't catch the error message with my original
coding above either.

Sorry if this sounds like a trivial question - I'm hoping there is a
simple answer that I've missed.

BTW - ratpoison is really the best wm I've encountered - but I think we,
here on this list, all know that - but still, I wanted to say it.:)

Michael