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Christmas is over, but Hanukkah is still going strong. The new year is just around the corner. I'd like to write about endings and beginnings, so a form written from two perspectives sounds like a good idea.
The somonka is a Japanese form that consists of two tanka written in tandem. The first tanka is usually a declaration of love, with the second a response to that declaration. While this form usually requires two authors, it is possible for one poet to write from both perspectives.
Writing somonka requires that we revisit the guidelines for tanka. Tanka is a form of Japanese poetry that has been practiced for more than 1000 years. Tanka are composed of 31 syllables in a 5/7/5/7/7 format. Most tanka focus on nature, seasons, the discussion of strong emotions, or a single event of some significance.
Tanka, meaning ‘short song’, is a 1300 year old Japanese form of lyric poetry. Non-rhyming, it is composed in Japanese in five phrases of 5/7/5/7/7 syllables.
In English, tanka are normally written in five lines, also without (contrived) rhyme, but in a flexible short/long/short/long/long rhythm. Due to dissimilarities between the two languages, it is preferable not to apply the thirty-one syllable standard of the Japanese poems, to tanka in English. Around twenty-one plus/minus syllables in English produces an approximate equivalent of the essentially fragmentary tanka form, and its lightness. To achieve a “perfect twenty-one”, one could write five lines in 3/5/3/5/5 syllables. If the resulting tanka sounds natural, then that’s fine. However, the syllable counting does not need to be so rigid. Though no line should be longer than seven syllables, and one should try to maintain the short/long/short/long/long rhythm, variations such as 2/4/3/5/5 or 4/6/3/6/7 or 3/6/4/5/6 syllable patterns can all make good tanka.
Here is an example, translated by one of my former colleagues at the University of Richmond. These tanka were sent back and forth between a nobleman named Mikata No Sami (Active C. 700) and his young wife, the daughter of Omi Ikuha (N.D.)
Tied up, it loosens,
untied, it's too long
my love's hair --
nowadays I can't see it --
has she combed it together?
Everyone now says
my hair is too long
and I should tie it up --
but the hair you gazed upon
I'll leave in tangles
Translated by Stephen Addiss in The Art of Haiku: Its History through Poems and Paintings by Japanese Masters (pp. 19-20)
I hope you'll join me this week in writing a somonka. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.
Since we wrote a sonnet variation last week, I thought I continue with this theme. In Avis Harley's book
Fly With Poetry: An ABC of Poetry, she include the bite-sized sonnet. This form follows the rhyme scheme of a "traditional sonnet," but it's not written in iambic pentameter. Instead, each line contains only ONE syllable. Here's Avis' poem.
A Bite-Sized Sonnet
House
sleeps.
Mouse
creeps
in
through
thin
flue.
Spots
cheese;
stops.
Sees
cat.
SCAT!
Poem ©Avis Harley. All rights reserved.
I hope you'll join me this week in writing a bite-sized sonnet. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.
Sorry I missed you all last week. I got caught up in the end of the semester and it was Friday before I realized I hadn't scheduled a post for writing. Mea culpa. I am back and have a number of stretches ready to go to see us into the New Year.
The curtal sonnet (or curtailed sonnet) was invented by Gerard Manley Hopkins. The poem Pied Beauty is a fine example of this form.
Pied Beauty
by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
The curtal sonnet is composed of a sestet and a quintet. It is written in iambic pentameter, with the exception of the final line, which is a spondee (a foot consisting of two long (or stressed) syllables). The rhyme scheme is:
- sestet: a/b/c/a/b/c
- quintet: d/c/b/d/c or d/b/c/d/c
I hope you'll join me this week in writing a curtal sonnet. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.
Don't fret, this isn't a sestina! Today I have a different six-word poetry challenge.
In the book
I Am Writing a Poem About . . . A Game of Poetry, Myra Cohn Livingston writes about three of the assignments she gave to students in her master class in poetry at UCLA. The third assignment Livingston gave was to write a poem that included six assigned words. Here is a description from the book's introduction.
About the last assignment--a six-word-based poem--there was some debate. Everyone agreed that hole, friend, candle, ocean, bucket, and snake presented possibilities, but a few preferred the word scarecrow to bucket, so a choice was given. Hole, friend, candle, ocean, and snake were mandatory, but one could choose either bucket or scarecrow as the sixth word.
Now, that is a challenge! Let's follow Livingston's directions and write a poem that contains the five words hole, friend, candle, ocean, and snake, as well as either bucket or scarecrow as the sixth word. I hope you'll join me in writing this week. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.
I'm a day late this holiday week, but I'm here and glad you are as well.
So, what do you get when you cross a terza rima and a villanelle? The answer is a poetic form called a terzanelle. A terzanelle uses the villanelle’s form of five triplets and a quatrain with the interlocking rhyme scheme of the terza rima.
Here is the line pattern and rhyme scheme.
1 a1
2 b1
3 a2
4 b2
5 c1
6 repeat line 2
7 c2
8 d1
9 repeat line 5
10 d2
11 e1
12 repeat line 8
13 e2
14 f1
15 repeat line 11
16 f2
17 repeat line 1
18 repeat line 14
19 repeat line 3
You can read more about the terzanelle at
Form and Formlessness.
I hope you'll join me this week in writing a terzanelle. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.
If you read the title of this exercise aloud, you will hear a quadruple rhyme. But if you examine the words themselves, you will notice that there is something special about this rhyme scheme. The sound shun is contained in ocean, the sounds of both shun and ocean in motion, and shun, ocean and motion can all be folded into emotion. Such a rhyme scheme, which incidentally was favored by the seventeenth-century poet George Herbert, is called diminishing rhyme because the rhyme words get smaller as you move from emotion to shun. But I prefer the term nesting rhymes because the words nest one inside the other like Russian wooden dolls.
Here is an example of this form from the George Herbert poem "Paradise".
I bless Thee, Lord, because I grow
Among the trees, which in a row
To Thee both fruit and order ow
Read the poem in its entirety.
So, that's it. Your challenge is to write a poem that uses diminishing rhyme. Won't you join us? Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.
In
celebrating my blogiversary yesterday (10 years!), I went back and looked at all the poetry stretches we've done since I started posting them in August of 2007.
It's been more than two years we wrote poems in the form of macaronic verse, so it seems like a good time to revisit the form. The Handbook of Poetic Forms defines macaronic verse in this fashion.Macaronic verse is a peculiar, rare and often comic form of poetry that sometimes borders on nonsense. It is a mixture of two (or more) languages in a poem, in which the poet usually subjects one language to the grammatical laws of another to make people laugh.
The definition is a poem in a mixture of two languages, one of them preferably Latin. Usually the mixture of languages is a bit absurd. The word of one language may be terminated with common endings in the other.
So, your challenge for this week is to write a poem that uses more than one language. I hope you will join me this week in writing macaronic verse. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.
Since it's Halloween, it seemed appropriate to suggest we write about this image.
Shapes of Fear by Maynard Dixon (1930-32)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
So, there's your challenge for the week. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.
The list poem was used by the Greeks and in many books of the Bible. But two of the most popular American poems, Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” and Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” are list poems. So what is a list poem?
Basically, a list poem (also known as a catalog poem) is a poem that lists things, whether names, places, actions, thoughts, images, etc. It’s a very flexible and fun form to work with.
What is it about list poems that makes them so accessible? Perhaps it's because the list is so ubiquitous in our lives. Everyone makes lists, so finding them in poetry is not unexpected and makes them seem familiar.
The list poem or catalog poem consists of a list or inventory of things. Poets started writing list poems thousands of years ago. They appear in lists of family lineage in the Bible and in the lists of heroes in the Trojan War in Homer's Iliad.
Characteristics Of A List Poem
- A list poem can be a list or inventory of items, people, places, or ideas.
- It often involves repetition.
- It can include rhyme or not.
- The list poem is usually not a random list. It is well thought out.
- The last entry in the list is usually a strong, funny, or important item or event.
Your challenge for this week is to write a list poem about fall, or Halloween, or something October-y. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.
The rondeau redoublé is a French poetic form composed of 25 lines with only 2 rhymes, whole repeating lines, and a hemstitch.
The lines of the first stanza reappear in order as the final lines of the next four stanzas. The hemstitch appears as a half-line at the very end of the poem. Each stanza rhymes either abab or baba.
Here's one example of the form.
When I'm first working with a new poetic form, I use a guide like this. You can
download my template if you want to try it.
Want to know more about the roundeau redoublé? Check out this comprehensive bit of background Kelly Fineman shared at
Writing and Ruminating.
I hope you'll join me this week in writing a rondeau redoublé. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.
The rondeau is a French poetic form that uses only two rhymes and hemstitch. Here are the basic guidelines:
- Composed of 15 lines
- Lines of 8 syllables, except the refrain, which is 4 syllables
- Refrain (hemstitch) is the first 4 syllables of the first line
- Two rhymes with three stanzas and rhyme scheme of:
- quintet - a, a, b, b, a
- quatrain - a, a, b, R
- sestet - a, a, b, b, a, R
Here's an example of a rondeau.
We Wear the Mask
by Paul Laurence Dunbar
We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile
And mouth with myriad subtleties,
Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.
We smile, but oh great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile,
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!
You can learn more about the rondeau at
Shadow Poetry.
I hope you'll join me this week in writing a rondeau. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.
The Magic 9 is a relatively new 9-line poetic form. Here's what the Poets Garret has to say about it's inception.
Typing too fast is often the cause of spelling mistakes and one day Abracadabra was typed as abacadaba and right away a poetry form appeared.
So that's it. This week the challenge is to write a 9-line poem with a rhyme scheme of:
a. b. a. c. a. d. a. b. a.
I hope you'll join me this week in writing a Magic 9. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.
The haibun is is a poetic form first created by Matsuo Basho. It is a form that combines two modes of writing—prose and verse.
Here are some of the "rules" of writing haibun, as suggested by the Haiku Society of America.
Prose in Haibun
- Tells the story
- Gives information, defines the theme
- Creates a mood through tone
- Provides a background to spotlight the haiku
Haiku in Haibun- Moves the story forward
- Takes the narrative in another direction
- Adds insight or another dimension to the prose
- Resolves the conflict in an unpredictable way, or questions the resolution of the prose.
- Prose is the narrative and haiku is the revelation or the reaction.
In a haibun, the prose can come first, last, or between any number of haiku.
Haibun also have a title, something haiku generally do not.
You can read some examples and see different haibun forms at
Writing and Enjoying Haibun and
More than the Birds, Bees, and Trees: A Closer Look at Writing Haibun.
I hope you'll join me this week in writing a haibun. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.
Late again! I can't seem to get my act together this semester, so please forgive the late post.
The landay is an Afghan poetic form. It's described as "an oral and often anonymous scrap of song created by and for mostly illiterate people." Formally, a landay is composed of couplets, with 9 syllables in the first line and 13 in the second. Sometimes the couplets rhyme, but there is no requirement to do so.
You can learn more about the landay and read some fine examples in this Poetry Magazine feature.
I hope you'll join me this week in writing a landay. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.
Since I've just been working on Welsh poetic forms, I thought I'd continue on with another Welsh form this week. The Englyn penfyr is a poetic form consisting of any number of tercets. In each stanza, the lines are composed of ten and seven syllables, with all lines sharing a rhyme pattern.
The first line has ten syllables and the seventh, eighth or ninth syllable of the first line introduces the rhyme. This rhyme is repeated on the last syllable of the second and third lines. The fourth syllable of the second line echoes the final syllable of the first through either rhyme or consonance. Here's what the pattern looks like.
x x x x x x x a x x
x x x x x x x x x a
x x x x x x x x x a
You can read more about a variety of Englyn at Wikipedia.
That's it. Easy-peasy, right? I hope you'll join me this week in writing an Englyn Penfyr. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.
Hello all! I'm back after a bit of a hiatus and hopefully am in the swing of things now that we are in week 2 of the fall semester.
The haiku sonnet is a form developed by David Marshall, an English teacher and writer living in Chicago and blogging at Haiku Streak. Essentially, this form combines four haiku with a final two-line “couplet” consisting of seven and/or five syllable lines.
You can read some examples of David's work at Haiku Sonnet. While his poems don't rhyme (as haiku do not), I'm thinking I may attempt to include rhyme in my stretches.
So, there's your challenge. I hope you'll join me this week in writing an haiku sonnet or two. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.
The Espinela is a Spanish poetic form composed of 10 lines, each written in eight syllables. It is named for the poet Vicentre Espinel who created the form. Here are the guidelines writing an espinela.
The first stanza is a quatrain with the rhyme scheme a b b a.
There is a break at the end of this stanza, so line 4 should be end stopped.
The next stanza is a sestet with the rhyme scheme a c c d d c.
So, there's your challenge. I hope you'll join me this week in writing an Espinela. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.
We've written in the form Ottava Rima a number of times. It is an Italian form that consists of any number of eight line stanzas with the rhyme scheme abababcc. In English, the lines are usually written in iambic pentameter. Ottava rima is generally associated with epic poems (like Don Juan), but can be used for shorter poems.
The Octava Real is the Spanish version of this form. It is also stanzaic and written in any number of octaves. Instead of iambic pentameter, this form is hendecasyllabic, or written in lines of 11 syllables. It carries the same rhyme scheme (abababcc). Like it's counterpart, it is also a narrative form, generally used for telling a story.
So, there's your challenge. I hope you'll join me this week in writing an Octava Real. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.
The ovillejo is a Spanish poetic form made popular by Miguel de Cervantes. It is a 10-line poem composed of 3 rhyming couplets and a final quatrain written in the form of a redondilla. In addition to rhyming, this form is also syllabic.
The first line of each couplet is 8 syllables long, while the second line is 3-4 syllables. The lines of the redondilla are 8 syllables each, with the final line composed of a repetition of lines 2, 4, and 6.
Here's what the poem looks like.
1 - x x x x x x x a
2 - x x x a
3 - x x x x x x x b
4 - x x x b
5 - x x x x x x x c
6 - x x x c
7 - x x x x x x x c
8 - x x x x x x x d
9 - x x x x x x x d
10 - line 2, line 4, line 6
You can read more about the ovillejo at Poetry Forms. You can read about the redondilla at Poetry Magnum Opus.
So, there's your challenge. I hope you'll join me this week in writing an ovillejo. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.
I know, it's Tuesday again. I'll just chalk my lateness up to my summer schedule.
I've been thinking a bit about this excerpt I read in this interview with Max Ritvo.
"I’ve never really understood the point of poetry, if not to expose you to different forms of mentation. You can write about whatever you want to write about, it’s your prerogative as a poet, but at the end of the day, what a poet does is let you inhabit a different way of thinking for a brief moment of time. For a very very brief bit of time, logic tacks together in ways it never has, and you’re able to have a series of free associations that’ve never been in your brain, or hopefully in any brain, before. I think that this endures so much more than the message of any poem."
I like thinking about poetry as a different way of thinking, though I've always thought of it as a different way of seeing. I write (usually) with a scientist's eyes, practicing the art of looking closely. I also write with the heart of a mathematician, because I love to puzzle through form and structure.
This week let's puzzle through the form
Golden Shovel. This form was invented by Terrance Hayes. In writing a golden shovel, you must first borrow a favorite line or lines from a poem to create your own. The words in this line become the end words of your poem. If you choose a six word line, your poem with have 6 lines. If you choose a 12 word line, your poem will have 12 lines. You get the idea. Remember to credit the original poem/poet in the title or an epigram.
Here's an excerpt from Hayes' poem.
The Golden Shovelby Terrance Hayes after Gwendolyn Brooks
I. 1981
When I am so small Da’s sock covers my arm, we
cruise at twilight until we find the place the real
men lean, bloodshot and translucent with cool.
His smile is a gold-plated incantation as we
drift by women on bar stools, with nothing left
in them but approachlessness. This is a school
Read the
poem in its entirety.
Hopefully you can see Brooks' poem (We Real Cool) in the end words of each line.
So, there's your challenge. I hope you'll join me this week in writing a golden shovel. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.
If orange is the new black, then Tuesday is the new Monday! My apologies for failing to post yesterday. I got caught up in the end of summer school and grading.
The Englyn cyrch is a Welsh poetic form consisting of any number of quatrains. In each stanza, the lines are composed of seven syllables, with lines 1, 2, and 4 sharing an end rhyme. The end rhyme of line 3 rhymes with a middle syllable (3rd, 4th, or 5th) or line 4. Here's what the pattern looks like.
x x x x x x a
x x x x x x a
x x x x x x b
x x x b x x a
You can read more about Englyn at Wikipedia.
That's it. Easy-peasy, right? I hope you'll join me this week in writing an Englyn cyrch. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.
If orange is the new black, then Tuesday is the new Monday! My apologies for failing to post yesterday. I got caught up in the end of summer school and grading.
The Englyn cyrch is a Welsh poetic form consisting of any number of quatrains. In each stanza, the lines are composed of seven syllables, with lines 1, 2, and 4 sharing an end rhyme. The end rhyme of line 3 rhymes with a middle syllable (3rd, 4th, or 5th) or line 4. Here's what the pattern looks like.
x x x x x x a
x x x x x x a
x x x x x x b
x x x b x x a
You can read more about Englyn at Wikipedia.
That's it. Easy-peasy, right? I hope you'll join me this week in writing an Englyn cyrch. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.
I've been searching a bit online for some "new" and different poetry forms. I discovered a site, The Writer's & Poetry Alliance Club, that not only explains traditional poetic forms, but includes numerous invented forms as well.
The diatelle is syllabic form with a rhyme scheme. It looks a bit like a double etheree, but it is different. Here are the guidelines.
syllable pattern: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 6 / 8 / 10 / 12 / 10 / 8 / 6 / 4 / 3 / 2 / 1
rhyme scheme: a b b c b c c a c c b c b b a
That's it. Easy-peasy, right? I hope you'll join me this week in writing a diatelle. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.
Climbing Rhyme is a form of Burmese poetry containing a repeated sequence of 3 internally-rhymed lines consisting of 4 syllables each. Since Burmese is monosyllabic, this works well, but in English this might be difficult. Instead of 4 syllable lines, let's try writing in lines of 4 words. (If you're feeling brave, go ahead and try four syllables!)
The rhyme scheme for climbing rhyme is internal. That means the position of the rhyming word changes. The rhyme appears in the 4th word of line one, 3rd word of line 2, and 2nd word of line 3. The pattern continues as a new rhyme appears in the 4th word of line 3, the 3rd word of line 4, and the 2nd word of line 5. This continues on, giving a stair-step feel to the poem, hence the name climbing rhyme.
For those of you who need to see this visually, here it is. Each x stands for a word. The letters stand for rhyming words. Just remember the 4-3-2 pattern.
x x x a
x x a x
x a x b
x x b x
x b x c
x x c x
x c x x
I hope you'll join me this week in writing a climbing rhyme. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.
Today's form comes from the mind of Jane Yolen. A septercet is her newly invented form, a modified tercet. An actual tercet is composed of three lines of poetry, forming a stanza or a complete poem, though this one also has a line syllabic count of seven.
Here's an example.
Human Work
“The wild can be human work.”—Helen Macdonald
The wild can be human work
If we reset the balance,
Keeping our thumbs off the scales.
If we bring back, return things,
Not just take it all away,
The wild can be human work.
Restoration is hard graft,
Almost more than creation,
Which is why God needed rest.
But we humans dare not rest
Till we’re done with restoring:
Eagles in their high aeries,
Whales singing in their sea lanes.
Wolves commandeering forests.
All the wild come home again.
©2016 Jane Yolen. All rights reserved.
Cool, isn't it? I love syllable counting, so this should be fun. I hope you'll join me in writing a septercet. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.
And thanks to Jane for sending this and allowing me to share it with you!
View Next 25 Posts
Year’s End<br /><br />Outside my window<br />two blackbirds perch on branches.<br />Cold closes the year<br />with its white gloves, like a book<br />closing its last pages.<br /><br />They say there are seeds<br />and bulbs hidden beneath the snow.<br />My blackbirds will look<br />different in the spring, far less<br />portentous, building their nest.<br /><br />—Kate Coombs, 2016<br />all
Conversation with A Ghost<br /><br />One fourth of our lives<br />together is the new count:<br />the time you’ve gone.<br />The tick and tock of your flight<br />cannot measure my deep grief.<br /><br />This measure of grief<br />has no meaning under ground.<br />Do not weep for me.<br />You still walk all our old trails.<br />Now blaze new ones for yourself.<br /><br />©2016 Jane Yolen all