Five Easy Forms

I’m fairly sick of complex forms by now, so here’s some easier prompts from http://www.poetry-online.org/poetry-terms.htm.

1) The ABC poem. It’s composed of five lines. The first four lines create something, an emotion or feeling, a picture or smell, some kind of sensory appeal, or mood. Use words, phrases, and clauses, with the first word of each line in alphabetical order. The last line can begin with any letter. So actually it’s an ABCD poem. (Joke.) Tt looks like this:

Ax got home from work one night and
Began screaming. Dirty dishes everywhere,
Crusted food and broken glass.
Dirty dishes make her nuts…
Be glad she left the cattle hobbles and kick bar at work!

2) The Burlesque poem. This form can be a poem, but also can be treated as a story, play, or essay. The important part is that it takes a serious subject and treats it ridiculously or is set up as a serious thing and ends up as simply a trivial story. Try http://funny-poems.edigg.com/Burlesque/ for examples.

3) The Name poem. Take someone’s name and write it in a column.
A
X
I
E
Then use the letter to prompt the first word of each line. (Bonus points for someone who can find a good word beginning with X.)

4) The Carpe diem poem. Obviously, Latin phrase meaning "seize the day." This poem, much like the nightsong, evensong, or morning song, laud living, especially living for the day.

5) There is no fifth poem. I’m lazy.

Endings

More an ending to a verse, a tail, than an actual form, the bob and wheel can be one accented syllable or a couple metrical feet in length. The bob may work as an enjambment on the last line of the verse or enjamb into the wheel. The wheel is four lines, three metrical feet long. The rhyme scheme is “a baba” and may start to sound repetitious, a chorus of sorts.

The bob and wheel form is related to Adonics and the Sapphic stanza. Adonics is a line that consists of two metrical feet, another device usually used as a tagline. It’s Greek in origin, used in groups of five, so five lines of two feet, plus any verse other than the Adonics tagline.

The Sapphic stanza is similar, also Greek, and made up of three Sapphics and one Adonic line. Spondees can set off trochees in lines 1 and 2. The schematic looks like this:
Xx Xx Xxx Xx Xx
Xx Xx Xxx Xx Xx
Xx Xx Xxx Xx Xx
Xxx Xx

So that’s as clear as mud, I’m sure. This poetry stuff sure gets sticky, doesn’t it?

Infinite Gloss

PoetryBase calls this the ugliest form to create and implement. There’s a lot of math involved and I’m sort of math challenged so we’ll see how this works. The poems gloss each other. PoetryBase explains it like this, “six lines, three a rhymes and three b rhymes, and you want to create an infinite gloss in envelop tercets.”

Huh?

Tercets are three lines, usually a complete poem. In this case, the tercets envelope, or lock together. Up to 36 tercets can be put together, based on a rhyme scheme and the original six lines. Each tercet line links to a glossing tercet. There’s at least 108 connection possibilities and the reader has to be able to recognize the link.

The combinations are endless, one of the strengths of this form, but it’s also big and hard to implement. I couldn’t find much information on the infinite gloss outside of PoetryBase, so exploit their entry further if you want to attempt this form. I probably won’t be, but don’t let my fear stop you. :)

Glose form

A glose, or glosa, originated in Spain and Portugal. It works like a conversation, one poem with two perspectives, even two separate authors. The first half, the texte or cabeza, is written from one perspective and sets the poem’s theme. This part of the poem can quote or paraphrase work from a well-known poem or poet, though writing your own is perfectly acceptable. Quoting or paraphrasing serves as a homage to a respected poet, using their words to amplify your own. Some warn to select a poet and their words carefully, something where you complement one another, not allowing their work to overshadow your own.

The second part, the glose or glosa, explains the first part, expanding the initial argument, so to speak. It’s written like an ode, one stanza per line of texte. Each stanza expands on the corresponding line of texte, ending with a repetition of the corresponding line.

http://www.volecentral.co.uk/vf/glose.htm explains it better. Also try http://www.poems-and-quotes.com/discussion/topic.html?topic_id=115346

A double glose takes the texte portion and uses each line in the texte twice in the poem, so, basically, double the fun. There seems to be quite a few variations on the glose, so do some research of your own. The glose is related to the sonnet form, with the sonnet being the basis, fourteen lines, that can be used over and over, expanded into a glose.

And tomorrow, get ready for the infinite glose. That’s just plain trippy.

Catalogue Poem

Today’s poem of the poetry challenge is called a bestiary or catalogue poem. A catalogue poem tends more toward prose than verse, listing a catalogue of things, thus the term catalogue poem. A bestiary is a type of catalogue poem, usually listing fantastic beasts, dragons, demons, unicorns, and other beasties, and was popular in the Middle Ages in illustrated volumes that outlined natural, and unnatural, history. A catalogue poem is based on anaphora, a poetic device that calls for repetition of structure, which basically means a certain phrase, theme, or line is repeated. Neither have to rhyme and there’s no rule about length.

Weird weather here in Michigan. Tornado warnings yesterday and the temperature alternated from cold to muggy all day. Spent most of the day in the parlor. Guy I was milking with was on his fourth shift in a row, so pretty slaphappy after 20 of 24 hours in the cow barn and only an hour and a half of sleep. FYI: two five-hour energy drinks do not equal ten-hours of sleep.

F-f-f-free verse!

Okay, I’m tired today and feeling pretty basic after all the form poems. So today I’m giving everyone, including me, a break. Cows didn’t give me much of a break today, but that’s a whole other issue.

The form of today’s poem in the April Poetry Challenge is free verse. There’s no set structure, no meter, no rhyme scheme, no rules whatsoever really. A free verse poem can also be called a prose poem and usually is recognizable as a poem due to its line phrasing, prose composed in the form of lines rather than paragraphs and sentences.

Poets.org has more on the prose poem.

Here’s an example of free verse by poet Nikki Giovanni. Enjoy. I’m out.

Winter Poem – Nikki Giovanni

once a snowflake fell
on my brow and i loved
it so much and i kissed
it and it was happy and called its cousins
and brothers and a web
of snow engulfed me then
i reached to love them all
and i squeezed them and they became
a spring rain and i stood perfectly
still and was a flower

Awl what?

An awdl gywydd (double dd’s make a “th” sound) is a Welsh form of poetry. It’s pronounced owdl gow-widd, or at least that’s the closest my non-Welsh speaking talent can get it.“Awdl” means ode and when I figure out what gywydd means, I’ll let you know. Unless we have some Welsh speakers among the readers, which feel free to correct my dumb American ass. :p

The stanzas are quatrains, meaning four lines to a stanza. Each line has seven syllables with end rhyme and couplet binding. So it looks like this:

* * * * * * A
* * A * * * B (A could shift to 3rd or 4th syllable)
* * * * * * C
* * C * * * B (B could shift to 3rd or 4th syllable)

Guidelines: Mid-line rhymes can be half- or off-rhyme, using various elements of consonance and assonance, but the main rhyme (B) should be perfect.

Hey, I don’t make the rules.

Again, this was from PoetryBase, but Celtic Poetry offers lots of good stuff.

There’s a ton of Welsh poetic forms out there and while I haven’t read much Welsh poetry, I’ve liked what I have read, if that’s any endorsement. At risk of starting to sound like an advertiser for PoetryBase, at their page they have a function to search poetic forms by origin and again, Celtic Poetry offers a wealth of resources for Welsh forms. Maybe I’ll try to branch out tomorrow and do sestinas or something. But anyone can do a sonnet. How fun is it to work with a form you can’t pronounce? (I just became a geek, didn’t I?) Oh well.

Happy poeting.