The Octo Verse Form

Usually when I settle on a form of the week, I like to try and find several sources of information about it and then distill it all down to something that makes sense. I have to tell you, wording really matters when it comes to this form.

“Octo Verse Form” gave me a couple of hits, one of which was a WiX site with a totally different version of this form. There were several sites listed with a definition for an Octastich, which is basically an eight line poem. And if you leave off the word “form” from your search, you get a pile of listings for an Octoverse software.

So then I tried to do a search for the creator of it, James Neille Northe, and I discovered he’s an American educator who also invented the Cinquino (another poem I could find very little about).

Anyway, as the name implies, the Octo Verse is an octastich, which means it’s an eight line poem. As well, all of the lines are eight syllables each. The nice thing about this poem is, it doesn’t rhyme. However (you just knew there had to be a catch, didn’t you?) at the same time, if you do a schematic it kind of does rhyme, because lines are repeated. The first line repeats as the last line, line two repeats as line seven, and line three repeats as line six. Lines four and five are kinda just there.

Here's a schematic:

xxxxxxxA
xxxxxxxB
xxxxxxxC
xxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxC
xxxxxxxB
xxxxxxxA

Despite all the confusion surrounding this poetry form, I kind of liked it. Which is why I wrote two examples. :-)


Poets

Do poets love as others do?
This is something we can ponder
when the candle burns low at night
and words lie still upon the page
while the restless dreaming fills us.
When the candle burns low at night,
this is something we can ponder –
do poets love as others do?


The Greening

The greening has begun again
as it does each year at this time,
when spring slides into the summer
and the days grow longer, brighter,
and the air begins to warm us
when spring slides into the summer
as it does each year at this time.
The greening has begun again.