Flamenca

The flamenca is another Spanish form, although not as complicated as the Ovillejo. This form is written in quatrains (five-line stanzas) with a staccato rhythm reminiscent of the flamenco dance. It can be any number of verses, constructed with a 6–6–5–6–6 syllable count. It does not rhyme, but lines 2 and 5 should share assonance.

Assonance isn’t precisely a rhyme, it is the repetition of the same or similar vowel sounds within words, phrases, or sentences.

Schematic:

x x x x x x
x x x x x x (assonance)
x x x x x
x x x x x x
x x x x x x (assonance)

I’m not sure I mastered the art of assonance, but I think my example works anyway.


Dancer

arms raised above the head
wrists loose, hands at rest
the music begins
staccato rhythm starts
feet move as though possessed

head held high showing pride
you move with fluid grace
dance the flamenco
desire comes alive
as feet keep up the pace

Ovillejo

The Ovillejo is a somewhat complicated Spanish form, dating back to the 1600s. It consists of ten lines – three rhyming couplets and a quatrain written as a redondilla. There is also a strict syllable count.

The first line of each couplet is eight syllables long, and presents a question. The second line is three or four syllables, and presents an answer or an echo.

The first three lines of the quatrain have eight syllables, summarizing the couplets, while the final line consists of the repetition of lines two, four, and six. But wait! That’s not all. The first line of the quatrain rhymes with the last couplet, and the next two lines of the quatrain rhyme with each other.

Got it? Maybe this will make it a little easier:

x x x x x x x a
x x x a

x x x x x x x b
x x x b

x x x x x x x c
x x x c

x x x x x x x c
x x x x x x x d
x x x x x x x d
line 2, line 4, line 6

This was actually an interesting form to work in. The question and answer. Once I got my head wrapped around the question/answer thing, I found the long/short lines had an interesting rhythm. And I really liked the way the last line wrapped it all up.


Searching For Answers

Where have all of the answers gone;
conclusions drawn.

How many questions left unasked;
intrigue unmasked.

Who is keeping the answers true;
they have no clue.

I have questions with answers due,
I seek the truth, it eludes me.
The truth is meant to set us free.
Conclusions drawn. Intrigue unmasked. They have no clue.

Midlenting Monday

midlenting ~ custom of giving gifts to parents on mid-Lent Sunday

So . . . I was wrong about not having the opportunity to wear the winter jacket I talked about in my last post. I got to wear it when I went out for coffee Sunday morning. And why was that? Because after a week of spring-like weather I woke up to snow yesterday. SNOW!

I was not a happy camper.

However, this is Canada and the weather is nothing if not unpredictable, especially this time of year. Years ago it was pretty common to have snow right through the March Break and I can remember one year we had a record breaking storm on April second.

But take heart! I was down at the waterfront recently and as you can see by the picture I took, the ice and snow are receding. Those aren’t hunks of rock on the breakwater, that’s just really dirty ice/snow accumulation that’s melting away. At least now they have a thin coat of white on top to pretty things up.

Last week I did something I haven’t done in ages – I went to a poetry gathering. Members of the Cobourg Poetry Workshop, both old and new, got together to honour Eric Winter, Cobourg’s Poet Emeritus and the man who started the workshop many years ago. We started out taking turns reading poems written by Eric, then some members shared poems they’d written about Eric.

I had a great time and I realized how much I’d missed these once a month gatherings. This could be in part because the two more, shall we say, contentious members who tried to turn the group into something it’s not are no longer part of the group.

Anyway, it was enough to make me think about signing up again. Maybe even attend the poetry reading this month. Maybe write a poem or two of my own.

Maybe you’ll even find me upstairs at the Cat and the Fiddle for the next meeting.

The Poet Tree

About four years ago I was invited to join a group of poets who were giving eulogies to a tree. Yes, that’s right, a tree. This wasn’t a protest, this was saying goodbye to the last elm tree in Victoria Park before it was cut down. The occasion was even videoed and uploaded to YouTube. Good luck finding it. ;-)

Afterwards we tucked our poems beneath a string wound around the tree so that passersby could read them. I just recently saw in our local news that the first of several benches made from the wood of the tree are ready to be placed in the park. Apparently the wood needed to season before it could be used.

At any rate, this is the poem I came up with for the occasion:


The Poet Tree's Tale

Hear my tale that you may see
The dream I dreamed beneath this tree
Whose rich enchantment captured me;
While I was sitting in its lee.

There was a sweet tranquility
Of visions that were sent to me
By this majestic poet tree
Whose life is filled with history.

Ages of serenity
Years passed by in harmony
Such innocence and purity
It caught me up, then set me free.

"But peace no more," alleged the tree,
"The world has changed, and so have we.
Life is just uncertainty -
A storm is coming, wait and see."

"Earthquakes leave behind debris,
Earth and fire, wind and sea,
The heavens weep unnaturally,
For what is past and still to be."

"The warnings come by two and three
Ignored by those too blind to see.
And you, the guardians, meant to be
Abandoned us, ignore our plea."

And when I woke, beneath the tree
I wept for what would come to be
I wept for all life's frailty
And the dream I dreamed beneath this tree.

Terzanelle

Well, would you look at that, I actually remembered to repeat my poetry post this week. :-D

This form is a little ... shall we say ... challenging. It was invented by Lewis Turco in 1965, and for those of somewhat familiar with poetry forms, it combines the villanelle’s refrain with the terza rima’s end line patterning. What truly makes it challenging is the number rules for it:

1. It is a fixed form of 19 lines - five triplets and a quatrain.
2. The body is comprised of tercets that each refrain the second line of the preceding tercet for its third line.
3. The first line of each of these tercets is rhymed with its refrained line.
4. The first and third lines of the opening tercet are refrained as the second and fourth lines of the closing quatrain.
5. The closing quatrain refrains the second line of the last tercet as its third line and rhymes its first line with that refrain.
6. Lines may be in any length or meter within reason.
7. Terzanelles may be written on any subject.

Got that now? There’ll be a test later. ;-)


Dragonflight

The wind is sighing through the trees,
The warmth of summer shimmers ‘round;
Magic‘s found in days like these.

A forest pool, a wild playground,
Where water lilies are abloom,
The warmth of summer shimmers ‘round.

A wafting scent of rare perfume;
The air is soft with ambient light
Where water lilies are abloom.

Who directs your soaring flight,
Free spirit wandering where it will.
The air is soft with ambient light.

You dip and weave and fly with skill -
I’d follow if I only could,
Free spirit wandering where it will

I watch you flitter through the wood;
The wind is sighing through the trees.
I’d follow if I only could -
Magic is found in days like these.


If you’d like to learn more about the Terzanelle, try one of the following links:
Shadow Poetry 
Writer's Digest 
The Poet's Garret  
Popular Poetry Forms 

If you give it a try, I’d love to see what you come up with. If you email it to me at carolrward(at)gmail(dot)com, I’ll post it on my writing blog next Wednesday and here on Friday. And if you don’t, then you’re going to be stuck reading a couple of poems that survived junior high school.

How’s that for incentive? :-D

The Blitz

Even if you’re not into poetry, you really need to give The Blitz a try. It’s the most fun you’ll ever have with a poetry form.

The form was invented by Robert Keim. The lines are super short - just a couple of words each. There’s no punctuation and it doesn’t rhyme. The first two lines both start with the same word. Lines 3 and 4 begin with the last word of line 2. Lines 5 and 6 start with the last word of line 4, and so on until you’ve written 48 lines. Line 49 is the last word of line 48, and line 50 is the last word of line 47. The title is only three words - the first word from the 3rd line joined to the first word from the 47th line by a preposition.

When writing a Blitz poem, it helps if you write it as quickly as possible. It’s a lot like one of those word association tests psychiatrists are reported to use, only faster. Give it a try, I guarantee you’ll have lots of fun.


Red With Clouds

Rose in bloom
Rose red
Red queen
Red and white
White as snow
White wine
Wine in a glass
Wine and cheese
Cheese whiz
Cheese log
Log on
Log off
Off and on
Off and running
Running amok
Running late
Late for work
Late in life
Life mate
Life and death
Death comes
Death mask
Mask your feelings
Mask the man
Man and woman
Man alive
Alive and dead
Alive for now
Now and then
Now and again
Again with this
Again with that
This and that
This and the other
Other than that
Other wise
Wise man
Wise woman
Woman rights
Woman power
Power up
Power down
Down town
Down below
Below zero
Below the clouds
Clouds of white
Clouds of blue
Blue
White

Bingo Blues

One of my jobs when I worked in the Municipal Office of our town (many years ago) was to record the bingo results from the weekend games. I was pretty surprised by the number of charities that ran bingos to raise funds. And even more surprising was how little they actually made from it.

But bingo was big business in our town, especially with the seniors. I can’t remember exactly when I visited one of the bingo halls one night - taking a message to someone, picking someone up, I have no idea. I know I wasn’t there long and I wasn’t there to play. The one thing I do remember is walking into the pervading cloud of smoke.

It was shortly after that that legislation was passed banning smoking in public places. It caused a pretty big stir at the time, but despite the artistic license in my poem, nothing stops a die-hard bingo player.


Bingo Blues

The room’s filled with fog
From the chain smoking grannies
Don’t mess with their luck
Or you’ll find yourself
Out on your ear

The concentration is fierce
Daubers flying furiously
Hearing aides at the max
Canes within reach
To snag a new card

It’s Saturday night
At the Bingo Hall
Truck on over
And don’t forget
Your pension cheque.

Then the hammer falls
In the form of a by-law
Banning the cancer sticks
Causing an uprising
Of the blue hair set.

Now it’s Saturday night
And they meet at Timmie’s
Walkers parked outside
While they reminisce
Over a cup of joe.

Caffeinated Dreams

This is a fairly new poem, written just a few weeks ago. I got the idea for it while, you guessed it, sitting on the pier sipping an iced coffee with a friend. The car was facing towards the beach and I made a comment about how nice it would be to sit under one of those trees to write.

The reality is that it wouldn’t be that all that conducive to writing. It was a weekend and there were hoards of screaming kids everywhere. Plus I’d probably do more people watching and looking at the scenery than actual writing.

But I came home and wrote the following poem:


Caffeinated Dreams

I sit on the pier
sipping my iced coffee
and I have a vision:
I sit in the park
under a tree
back against the rough bark
big floppy hat on my head
doodling, scribbling, writing in
a notebook propped up on my knees
words spilling over
right off of the page
racing away
with a shout of laughter
but I am unaware
that my story is escaping
and I keep writing
until it’s too dark
to see.
Anchored in reality
I take the last sip of my coffee
and with a wistful sigh
go home.

Poetry Anyone?

A few years ago I used to have a separate poetry blog and I would repeat the weekly post on this blog, just to share my love of poetry. But then I got away from poetry for a while (you can read the story about why HERE.

I’ve written a few poems over the last few years but haven’t shared many until Jamie and I did our poem a day challenge in April. It brought back fond memories of poetry, and gave me the urge to do more with my poetry going forward.

I decided I’d start including a poetry post once a week on Writing Blog and then I thought, why not repeat it here like I was doing before? Therefore, the first Friday of the month (Wednesday on the writing blog) will feature a poetry form, the following Fridays will be just random poems - some new, some old, some of my old favorites.

So... without further ado, I’d like to share this month’s form, the sestina.

The sestina was one of the most challenging forms I’ve ever encountered. It has 39 lines in total, divided into six verses of six lines each, and a three line envoi at the end. Sounds easy enough, right? Especially since it doesn’t have to rhyme. But here’s the thing. You start off by coming up with six words, and each of these words is used as a end word of one line in each of the six verses and the order changes in each verse.

For my sestina, I used the words: truth, grave, life, night, death, and stone.

Night Dweller’s Truth

In every breath there is a truth
that overshadows every grave,
a truth not found within a life
that shines its beacon into night,
a knowledge brought about by death
and graven into hardest stone.

A thought that’s carved in precious stone
contains what we perceive as truth,
unsuppressed by certain death,
as cold and alien as the grave,
deep and dark as empty night
just before it bursts to life.

If I’d but know how sweet is life,
not just a pathway strewn with stone,
perhaps I’d not embraced the night
that fills me with its awful truth
and takes me far beyond the grave
out of reach of even death.

And what is that which we call death?
Perhaps another way of life,
the end is more than just the grave,
a fresh turned mound that’s capped with stone.
Perhaps we’ll never know the truth
before we pass into the night.

Come and share this sweetest night
where we can stand abreast of death,
and we will seek the perfect truth
of what is that which we call life
that gathers round us like a stone
and leads us blindly to the grave.

You look at me with visage grave -
accept my words, accept the night,
accept that fate’s not carved in stone.
Turn away from Lady Death,
her promise of the afterlife,
and know what’s in my heart is truth.

We’ll find our truth without the grave
and make our life within the night,
then vanquish death with shattered stone.



If you’d like to learn more or better yet, try your hand at your own sestina, here are a couple of sites that I’ve found helpful in the past:

Baymoon
The Poetry Foundation
Shmoop

Attention all Poetry Lovers

If you're on my Facebook or already read My Writing Journal then you know that my best bud Jamie challenged each other to write a poem a day for the month of April to celebrate National Poetry Month.

I chose to follow an A to Z theme of poetry forms while she is following prompts supplied by a workshop she participated in. While I can't exactly say I had fun writing all those poems, it did get me writing every day, which is a really good thing.

To keep each other honest, we emailed each other our poems on a daily basis and today we've posted our whole week's worth of poems on our respective blogs.

You can find Jamie's poems HERE and mine are HERE.

Enjoy!

Still Celebrating Poetry Month

When it comes to writing, I'm a pantser all the way. That is to say, I don't do a lot of planning ahead of time, I just sit down and start writing. But when it comes to poetry, I'm pretty much the opposite - I prefer the structure of forms.

As frustrating as it can be to work within a frame-work of syllable counts and rhymes, there's something comforting about it as well. I've explored over a hundred different poetry forms and while some of the poems produced weren't my best, it was still an interesting experience.

However, the one form I cannot seem to master is the Free Verse. This is the form that has no form - no syllable counts, no rhyme scheme . . . and it just feels wrong to me somehow. I have a confession to make. I just don't get free verse. I didn't understand it in high school, I don't understand it now. It just seems so . . . undisciplined!

That being said, I do try my hand at it from time to time. And one of those times presented itself when I had to create a poem for a young adult story I was working on. It's a romance between a football jock and a nerdy girl, and early in the story he went to one of her poetry readings. So naturally I had to create a poem for her to read, and here it is:


Judgement

You do not know me
and yet you judge me
you form your opinion
without knowing the facts.

I'm the woman in the corner
sipping her latte
wearing long sleeves
to hide her shattered dreams.

I'm the man whose hand trembles
ever so slightly
as he reaches for his coffee
wishing it was something else.

I'm the life of the party
everyone's darling
hiding the emptiness
behind a cheerful facade.

I'm the girl in the corner
alone with her book
the words her armour
keeping the world at bay.

I'm the fat girl in high school
I'm the boy with the acne
I'm the man with the ragged coat
I'm the woman with scars.

I'm the blind man with the tin cup
I'm the woman sleeping in the alley
I'm the kid on the skateboard
I'm man playing sax in the subway.

I speak and my words fly away
you listen, but you do not hear.
You do not know me
yet you judge me
still.

What I'm Reading

Reading? Are you kidding me? Who has time to read during National Novel Writing Month?

But I didn't want to just skip Friday altogether, so I decided to entertain you with a little poetry. You can thank me later. LOL

So what brought this on, you might ask? Wednesday I participated in the annual Poet in the Classroom at one of our local highschools. That's not really what it's called, that's just what I call it. One of the teachers has a class called Writer's Craft, and when he comes to the section where he's teaching his students poetry, he gets in touch with a few of us local poets and we visit his class and try and impress his students with how great poetry is.

This year, the school wasn't offering the Writer's Craft class, so instead we spoke with just regular English students. We normally do a bit of a workshop with them, but since they weren't even learning poetry at this juncture, our leader poet (I don't know what else you'd call him) presented a seminar on Haiku, and we broke up into groups to write some.

Do I really need to explain Haiku to you? Japanese in origin, no rhyme, 17 syllables? *sigh* Tell you what. If you really don't know what it is and want to learn all about it, I'd advise you to visit the Shadow Poetry site, which has the most well written explanation I've seen yet.

Anyway, not being one to turn down a challenge, I wrote a few Haiku myself, just to show the kids how easy it was.


Dark clouds scudding fast -
weak winter sun under siege
until spring returns.

Nothing left inside
autumn winds sweep words away -
silence in its wake.

A midnight moonscape
trees tucked under their snow quilt -
mother nature sleeps.

Dandelion head
reflected in the night sky
mirror of the moon.


And there you have it. Four Haiku, just for you, fresh off the pen. :-)

On Finding Poetry . . .

My book nook is all but finished. I just need to sew up the cushion for my back, find a light source for inside it (because my hubby wants his clip on light back), and stash the boxes I have sitting all around my office in the bench. If I can get all that done by next Wednesday, maybe I'll do a post about it then. But in the meantime . . . I "found" a poem I'd like to share. :-)

This isn't a new poem, it's one I wrote a couple of years ago. Or maybe "wrote" isn't quite the correct word - I didn't write it so much as create it because it's a Found Poem. A Found Poem uses words and phrases from another source, generally some kind of everyday written material (e.g. headlines, lines from a television program, advertisements) but combines them in new ways.

A pure Found Poem (which is what mine is) consists entirely of outside texts: the words of the poem remain as they were found, with few additions or omissions. Decisions of form, such as where to break a line, are left to the poet.

Writing a Found Poem is like an artist making a collage. You take bits and pieces that are pleasing to the eye and join them together to make something new and beautiful. It can really spark your creativity as you put together things you wouldn't normally think of as fitting.

There are all kinds of sources for Found Poetry: Newspaper or magazine articles, books, horoscopes, textbooks, letters, notes, spam e-mails - I even know a poet who created a beautiful Found Poem from graffiti.

I have not been able to discover what the etiquette is regarding citing the source for a Found Poem, however I “found” my poem in the introduction of the book, Women Who Run With the Wolves, by Clarissa Pinkola Estes.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

The Wild Woman

We may have forgotten her names,
we may not answer when she calls ours,
but in our bones we know her,
we yearn toward her;
we know she belongs to us and we to her.

A sense of her comes through vision;
through sights of great beauty.
I have felt her when I see
what we call in the woodlands
a Jesus-God sunset.
I have felt her move in me
from seeing the fishermen
come up from the lake at dusk
with lanterns lit,
and also from seeing my newborn baby’s toes
all lined up like a row of sweet corn.
We see her where we see her,
which is everywhere.

She comes to us through sound as well;
through music which vibrates the sternum,
excites the heart;
it comes through the drum,
the whistle, the call, and the cry.
It comes through the written and the spoken word;
sometimes a word, a sentence or a poem or a story,
is so resonant, so right,
it causes us to remember,
at least for an instant,
what substance we are really made from,
and where is our true home.

The longing for her comes
when one happens across someone
who has secured this wildish relationship.
The longing comes
when one realizes one has given scant time
to the mystic cookfire
or to the dreamtime,
too little time to one’s own creative life,
one’s life work or one’s true loves.

We eventually must pursue the wildish nature.
Then we leap into that forest
or into the desert
or into the snow
and run hard,
our eyes scanning the ground,
our hearing sharply tuned,
searching under,
searching over,
searching for a clue,
a remnant,
a sign that she still lives,
that we have not lost our chance.

The Wild Woman has no name,
for she is so vast.

On Poetry . . .

Wow. When I sat down to write this post I thought I'd be dashing off a quick explanation of my take on poetry, adding a poem, and that would be that. But then I started getting into this whole convoluted thing about writing poetry and this nice little Wildcard post was threatening to spiral out of control. So let's see if I can pare it down to the essentials.

Long before I wrote fiction, I wrote poetry. I think there's very few people who took English in high school who didn't. ;-)

I never really thought of myself as a poet - writing poetry came far too easily to me for that. And I have the reams of it to prove it. But I enjoyed writing poetry, and I enjoyed reading it, mainly the dead poets - modern poetry was not my thing, mostly because I didn't understand it. Furthermore, I still don't.

I'll let you in on a little secret. Poetry, to me, is like art. I either like it, or I don't. I don't try to interpret it or dissect it or figure out what the creator meant by it, it either appeals to me or . . . it doesn't.

So, what has all this got to do with my little tale? I was thinking about a poem I wrote in high school that got many, many compliments (and still does today), and how astonished I was that everyone thought it was directed at a boy I'd broken up with over the summer. I even had a couple of his friends come up to me and tell me point blank that he didn't want to get back together with me.

Here's the thing: it was just a poem. It came to me out of the blue. I wasn't thinking of anyone when I wrote it. It was just words on the paper.

I know you're probably expecting me to post that poem here, but I'm not. That's not the point of this little rant. The point was to share the poem that popped into my head while I was thinking about that other poem and people's reactions to it, and how I've never felt like a real poet.

Confusing? Yeah, maybe. But I didn't want to just post the poem without an explanation. :-)

Reality

Ideas
like tongues of flame
scorch their way up
and out through my pen.
But that's not right.
A real poet would say:
"Burnished topaz, flaming amber, rarest ruby. . .
these ideas of mine spill forth
like hot lava
spewing from the volcano of my soul.
I stand upon the precipice,
my kinship to Athena intact.
Such incandescent brilliance
must be carved in precious stone
and preserved for all eternity."
That's what a real poet would say
to make it personal
all about them.
While I
hoard these pieces of myself
like a miser with his gold.
So what
does that make me?

Hyangga

Hyangga was the first uniquely Korean form of poetry. The word hyangga means "native songs," from Korea as opposed to Chinese songs. Hyangga poetry was written in Korean using a system called idu, literally "clerk's writings. Idu was a system whereby Koreans would use Chinese characters to express Korean.

The key to the system was to use some Chinese characters for their intended purpose, their meaning, and others for their pronunciation, ignoring their pictographic meaning. On the surface, it appears to be a complicated, even incomprehensible system, but after using the system one become comfortable with certain characters consistently standing for Korean words, and others representing Chinese.

Fourteen poems in the Hyangga style from the Shilla period have been preserved in the Samguk yusa (Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms). This poetic form was passed down to the Koryo Dynasty, and 11 poems from that period are preserved in the Kyunyojon (Tales of Kyunyo).

Many of the poems are elegies to monks, to warriors, and to family members. The Silla period, especially before unification (668) was a time of warfare and the hyangga capture the sorrow of mourning for the dead while Buddhism provided answers about where the dead go and the afterlife.

Hyangga can be seen as 4-line, 8-line, and 10-line poems. It is thought that the 4-line poems with their ballad-like attributes may indicate that the poets came from a broad range of backgrounds. The 10-line poems, with the most developed poetic structure, are divided into three sections of 4-4-2. Most of the 10-line poems were written by priests or by the Hwarang ("flower warriors"). These warriors were the backbone of the Shilla aristocracy. The 10-line poems reflect the emotions of the aristocrats and their religious consciousness.

Schematic:
The hyangga can consist of 4, 8, or 10 lines.
Syllable count in each line: 4 – 15
When using 10 lines, it is divided into three verses – 2 verses of 4 lines and a couplet.

I have to confess that when it came time to create an example, my mind went blank. I did, however, find several interesting examples:

Seodong-yo" (The Ballad of Seodong), which is the oldest known hyangga, is a simple, four-line song whose lyrics tell the love scandal of Princess Seonhwa of the Silla Kingdom (57 B.C.-A.D. 935). The song was composed by Seodong, a witty, sweet potato-seller in the marketplace in order to trick the king into disowning the princess. The princess later married Seodong, who later became King Mu of the Baekje Kingdom (18 B.C.-A.D. 660). The song was enjoyed for the next 370 years.

Seodong Yo

Again the moon returns,
casting a light on the window.
Shortly, shortly, Princess Seonhwa
is to become Seodong's bride.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

A typical hyangga is the Ode for Life Eternal. The poem is a song that calls upon the moon to convey the supplicant's prayer to the Western paradise, the home of Amita (or Amitabha—the Buddha of the Western paradise). It was written by a monk named Gwangdeok or possibly his wife. It was translated by Mark Peterson in 2006

Ode for Life Eternal

Oh moon!
As you go to the west this night,
I pray thee, go before the eternal Buddha
And tell him that there is one here
Who adores him of the deep oaths
And chants daily with hands together saying
Oh grant me eternal life!
Oh grant me eternal life!
But alas, can any of the 48 vows be kept
While still trapped in this mortal frame?

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

Requiem for the Dead Sister

On the hard road of life and death
That is near our land,
You went, afraid,
Without words.

We know not where we go
Leaves blown, scattered,
Though fallen from the same tree,
By the first winds of autumn.

Ah, I will polish the path
Until I meet you in the Pure Land.

Written by Master Wôlmyông (c. 742-765), translated by Peter H. Lee.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

Ode to Knight Kip'a

The moon that pushes her way
Through the thickets of clouds,
Is she not pursuing
The white clouds?

Knight Kip'a once stood by the water
Reflecting his face in the Iro.
Henceforth I shall seek and gather
The depth of his mind among pebbles.

Knight, you are the towering pine
That scorns frost, ignores snow.

Written by Master Ch'undam (c. 742-765), translated by Peter H. Lee.

Monotetra

The Monotetra is an invented form developed by Michael Walker. It can have any number of stanzas of four lines each (quatrains), but must have at least two.

The “mono” part of the name comes from the fact that each stanza contains a mono-rhyme, so that the patter of the stanzas is aaaa, bbbb, cccc, and so on.

The “tetra” in the name of the form is because each line of each stanza is written in tetrameter – which means that each line has eight (8) syllables.

The other aspect of the Monotetra is that the fourth line of each stanza is a repeating four-syllable phrase, like an echo, to make it look like a refrain.

To be honest, I rather enjoyed this form, I find it very natural to write in tetrameter. This form is much easier than it looks.


The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

The dark night of the soul has come
I try my best not to succumb
But it’s too late, it has begun
What have I done, what have I done?

I delved in things best left alone
Done things for which I must atone
Released the demon from his home
Trapped in a stone, trapped in a stone.

I found the spells in books so old
The pages thick and soiled with mold
Some of the letters etched in gold
It was so cold, it was so cold.

Once loosed the spell can’t be contained
And in the end what have I gained?
There’s no one left who can explain
There’s only pain, there’s only pain.

No one to hear my silent screams
Or witness all my shattered dreams
This is what comes of all my schemes
The darkness gleams, the darkness gleams.

Monchielle Poetry Form

Finally, I found a poetry form that is neither from the troubadours nor the orient! :-)

The Monchielle form was created by Norwegian poet, Jim T. Henriksen. Somehow, when I think of Norway, poetry does not immediately spring to mind.

It consists of four, five line stanzas.
The first line in each stanza is a refrain.
Lines three and five rhyme, the others do not.
Traditionally, there are six syllables to a line, but this is not a strict observance.

Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? In fact, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it looked at first glance. The hardest part was actually coming up with the first line, which is repeated at the beginning of each stanza.



Dreamer

I long to live a dream
In dreams I can be free
To wander where I will
A troubadour of old
Living by my skill.

I long to live a dream
In dreams we can be free
Unfettered by the past
Ghosts all laid to rest
And time will ever last.

I long to live a dream
In dreams my life’s my own
I’m fit to no one’s mold,
Restrictions touch me not,
No longer be controlled.

I long to live a dream
In dreams my spirit soars
No fear of the unknown
Nor cowering in the dark;
No longer all alone.

Poetry Form of Trolaan

Trolaan is an interesting form created by Valerie Peterson Brown. It consists of four quatrains (a stanza of four lines, each line having a similar number of syllables). Each line of the quatrain begins with the same letter and the rhyme scheme is abab.

Starting with the second stanza you use the second letter of the first line of the first stanza to start each line of the second stanza.

On the third stanza you will use the second letter on the first line of the second stanza to begin each line of the third stanza.

On the fourth stanza you will use the second letter on the first line of the third stanza to begin each line of the fourth stanza.

My example turned out a little darker than I’d intended, but that’s just the way it goes sometimes.



Fallen Angel

Cold wind snaking through the night
Cutting the air with a wicked knife;
Capering snowflakes, like a blight
Cover a world devoid of life.

Obsequious spirits dance and sway,
Oft cast shadows looming near,
Ousting warmth they seek to stay,
Oblivious to the dangers here.

Balefire moon shines high o’er head
Bewitching in its awesome light.
Beguiling ice is swiftly spread
Banishing dreams in a blaze of white.

Abandoned hopes lay scattered ‘round
Adorning landscapes bleak and sere;
Angel lost and gone to ground
Alone, betrayed by life and fear.

The Form of Parody

A parody, in contemporary usage, is a work created to mock, comment on, or poke fun at an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation.

According to Aristotle, Hegemon of Thasos was the inventor of a kind of parody; by slightly altering the wording in well-known poems he transformed the sublime into the ridiculous. In ancient Greek literature, a parodia was a narrative poem imitating the style and prosody of epics "but treating light, satirical or mock-heroic subjects"

Roman writers explained parody as an imitation of one poet by another for humorous effect. In French Neoclassical literature, parody was also a type of poem where one work imitates the style of another for humorous effect.

To compose the parody poem you start by choosing a poem as a source of inspiration. The original work may be a classic or a contemporary piece. It is best to use poetry that is well known and that you love. Ideally, you should have parts of the original committed to memory.

Study the style and tone of the original. As you learn how to write a parody poem, you also learn a greater appreciation to the poetic devices found in the original. Make note of the rhyme and meter but also look out for other patterns in the language that makes the work unique.

Read examples of other parody poetry. Note how the parody imitates but uses the language to completely transform the text.

And now, my example:



A Visit From the Computer Tech

’Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, just the optical mouse;
The cords were all strung to the PC with care
In hopes the technician soon would be there.
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of interwebs danced in their heads;
The wife couldn’t take any more of this crap
So she went to bed while I took a nap.
When there on the screen there arose such a clatter
I sprang from the chair to see what was the matter.
Away to the keyboard I flew like a flash,
Grabbed up the mouse and gave it a bash.
The monitor gleamed with a brilliant blue glow
Seeming to mock me as I lowly moaned, “No!”
And what to my wondering eyes should appear
But a security warning that made my eyes tear.
With an attack on my drivers, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment my computer was sick.
More rapid than eagles the popups they came,
And I whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;
“Now Trojan, now Wormy, now BankerFox vixen!
A technician’s coming, my computer he’s fixin’.
By installing protection ,a blocker, a wall!
And then he’ll delete you, delete one and all!”
And then, in a twinkling, I heard it oncemore,
A van pulling up, then a knock on the door.
I opened the door with a feeling profound,
And into the house came the tech with a bound.
He was dressed all in blue from his head to his toe
And his jacket was covered with a sprinkling of snow.
A box full of tools was grasped in his hand
And he looked like an angel, come down to land.
His eyes, they were bloodshot, his face was unshaven
From his pocket he pulled a business card graven.
He was balding and old, and I think he had fleas,
And I said to him, “Sir, this way, if you please.”
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And in a few moments pulled the plug with a jerk.
“The mother board’s fried,” he said, shaking his head.
“And the rest of your hard drive looks like it’s dead.”
Then he packed up the tower and picked up his tools
“Gotta watch these old ‘puters, they’re stubborn as mules.”
He walked to his van, my computer in hand
And I had to admit, this did not go as planned.
And I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
“Happy Christmas to all, no more surfing to-night.”


Had I but known what the future held before I started my parody, I might have chosen The 12 Days of Christmas. Something along the lines of:

On the first day of Christmas my bad luck gave to me
a virus for my lap top PC.

Yes, that's right. My Precious is having problems again. I was halfway through writing the parody last night and started getting security pop-ups. And honestly, I have no idea where they came from this time. Anyway, I ran my spyware software and got rid of it all, but when I rebooted I had no internet connection. *sigh*

Is it just me, or does my luck with computers seem exceptionally bad?

Shadorma

The Shadorma is a Spanish poetic form made up of a stanza of six lines (sestet) with no set rhyme scheme. It is a syllabic poem with a meter of 3/5/3/3/7/5. It can have many stanzas, as long as each follows the meter. Little is known about this poetic style's origins and history but it is used by many modern poets today. This variation of the haiku, which is evident by its syllable pattern, can been seen in use in many writing venues.

Schematically:

xxx
xxxxx
xxx
xxx
xxxxxxx
xxxxx


Also, you can link multiple shadorma (shadormas? shadormae?) like in my example below:


Tis the Season

Christmas comes
Time to celebrate
With our friends
And our kin
It’s the season of giving
And sharing our hearts

Coloured lights
Brighten the pine tree
Standing guard
O’er the gifts
While the stockings hang empty
From the fireplace.

Snow begins
Drifting gently down
Winter’s gift
On this night
To celebrate the season
And lighten the dark.

Stars above
In the silent night
Sparkle bright
guide the way
For the weary travelers
To find their way home.