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Friday, November 29, 2013

Inverted Refrain

  • Inverted Refrain is an invented form found at Shadow Poetry, created by the winner of their 2007 Chap Book Competition, Jan Turner and published in Faery Folk and Fireflies.
    I believe the form took its name from the rhetorical device, "inverted refrain", originally used by the ancient Greek poet Sappho. “Inverted refrain” is a writing technique in which the syntax of a line is reversed. eg ..the Sapphic line "I know not what to do". I am not sure that the composition instruction at Shadow Poetry exactly fits the literary definition of “inverted refrain” but the form could still be a fun challenge to conquer as long as it enhances the delivery of the poet’s thoughts,

    The Inverted Refrain as an invented verse form is:
    • stanzaic, written in any number of sixains, made up of a quatrain followed by an indented couplet.
    • syllabic, all lines are 8 syllables.
    • rhymed, rhyme scheme ababab or ababba, cdcdcd or cdcddc etc….
    • composed in the following manner, "the first four lines of a stanza create a statement from which the last 2 lines extract the meaning, and invert the way it is said." Jan Turner @Shadow Poetry

  • Finding Faeries by Jan Turner (stanza 1) the whole poem can be read at Shadow Poetry.
    A sprinkling shine of faery dust
    is mica-layered on the rocks
    Pretending to be nature's crust
    It really is a paradox:
    --------- A paradox of mica rocks
    --------- From faery dust on nature's crust.



Many thanks to Judi Van Gorder of PMO (PoetryMagnumOpus) for maintaining a wonderful resouce site.

Example Poem

White Man's Heaven      (Inverted Refrain)











He didn't know about the Lord
so was exempt from Cath'lic hell.
The church tried bringing him aboard
but he was fallible and fell.
        Instead of finding Lord's reward
        he now in mortal fear must dwell.

© Lawrencealot - November 28, 2013


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Landay

An Afghan form  has only a few formal properties.  Each has twenty-two syllables:   nine in the first line, thirteen in the second.                                 
The poem ends with the sound “ma” or “na.”

(One meaning of the word landay is short, poisonous snake.)

These are the specifications  I found at
Along with almost all of the examples below.
                                
Sometimes they rhyme, but more often not.                                 
In Pashto, they lilt internally from word to word in a kind of two-line lullaby                         
that belies the sharpness of their content, which is distinctive not only for                         
its beauty, bawdiness, and wit, but also for the piercing ability to articulate                         
a common truth about war, separation, homeland, grief, or love.                                 
Within these five main tropes, the couplets express a collective fury, a                                 
lament, an earthy joke, a love of home, a longing for the end of separation, a                        
call to arms, all of which frustrate any facile image of a Pashtun woman as                         
nothing but a mute ghost beneath a blue burqa.

The landays* are a way to subvert the social code in which women are prohibited
from speaking freely. Since the poems are collective and anonymous "women can
claim they just overhead the poems in the marketplace," says Griswold, "not
that they authored them."

*Authors note:  Even in this extensive site, we note Landays used as the plural, but
formally I read somewhere the plural is Landai.  That seems consistent with English usage.



"These poems are part of an oral tradition that goes back thousands of years, sung by nomads and farmers at wedding ceremonies or around campfires. Today, the landay form has in some ways gone underground, becoming a means of expression and defiance for oppressed Pashtun women."


Poetry to Die For.

Jim Fleming: In Afghan culture poetry is revered incompetent fact, you can find lines of famous poems graffiti-ed on sides of buildings.  There are though some poems that are secret, like this one: I call your stone, one day you'll look and find I'm gone.  There is a story behind that poem and Strainchamps is here in the studio with me, and you have the story.
Anne Strainchamps: Well Jim the story begins with a teenage girl named, Rahila, and she lived Helmound, which you know is one of the Taliban strongholds [xx].  Like a lot of real Afghan girls, she wasn't allowed to leave her home or go to school, her father pulled her out of school after the fifth grade and she found refuge in poetry.  The poem you just read is a landay, that's a folk poem part of a Pastian tradition of woman's poetry.  Rahila began to write and quote poems like this.  Then one day her brothers discovered that she was writing love poetry, and that is something that is considered very dishonorable and they beat her badly.  In protest, Rahila doused herself with cooking oil and she set herself on fire and she died.

Jim: Oh my Lord.  In our culture to imagine a culture where a woman dies for writing poetry.

Anne: Yeah, and the reason we know about [?] Rahila [?] Muska- her real name turned out be [?] Zirina - is thanks to American Journalist and Poet, Eliza Grizwald.  Eliza heard about Rahila, and she traveled to Afghanistan to try to find out more and she uncovered this hidden poetry tradition.  Poems called landay.




What I can tell you after personally visiting several educational and revealing sites is that the specified requirements are WIDELY ignored in the poetic examples I was able to find, and to no detriment to the form, and that there is on other poetry form that is used so exclusively by women.  Further,
 I think it is the most vital and socially functional poetry in the world today.


Here are some examples.  I rarely found a poem that met the line by line syllabic requirements.
I never found one with the "ma" or "na" ending.

See for yourself if the have "bite".

You sold me to an old man, father.
May God destroy your home, I was your daughter.

Making love to an old man
is like fucking a shriveled cornstalk blackened by mold.

The old goat seized a kiss from my pout
like tearing a piece of fat from a starving dog’s snout.

May God destroy the White House and kill the man
who sent U.S. cruise missiles to burn my homeland.

When sisters sit together, they always praise their brothers.
When brothers sit together, they sell their sisters to others.

Your eyes aren’t eyes. They’re bees.
I can find no cure for their sting.

Come, let’s lie thigh against thigh.
If you climb on top, I won’t cry.

My lover is fair as an American soldier can be.
To him I looked dark as a Talib, so he martyred me.

Be black with gunpowder or blood-red
but don’t come home whole and disgrace my bed.


Here are some from the Tenth Muse

What can a woman know of war?
Only how to weep angry tears and bury her dead.
*
I sing even under my blue hood.
My mother says I am a most determined songbird.
*
He says at home I am a flower
but to the world I should be as plain as a weed.
*


And finally, I am required to write one myself:

So poets, give structured writes a try,

but let your words cry for those who wrote then had to die.


Haikuette

  • The Haikuette is another seemingly, American answer to the haiku and was introduced by Louise Sipfle in the Caulkins Handbook and included in Berg's Pathways...

    The Haikuette is:
    • a tristich, a 3 line poem. Each line must be a separate entity, yet must contribute to the whole.
    • syllabic, 17 syllables or less. There is no specified syllable count per line.
    • written without verbs.
    • unrhymed.
    • titled.
      You by Judi Van Gorder

      fresh freckled Lily
      sweet fragrance, pink and spicey
      your face in the sun

A big thanks to the efforts for Judi Van Gorder for a wonderful resource at PoetryMagnumOpus

Related Forms: Alphabet Haiku,  Crystalline,  Haibun,  Haiga,  Haiku Haikuette,  KimoLune, PixikuRhaikuSijoUkiahZip

Example Poem

Brrrr!

early morning frost
etched crystalline windshield designs
frown on your face


© Lawrencealot - November 28, 2013

Grá Reformata

The Grá Reformata, created by Michael King, is based upon the Villanelle form.

Following the basic setting of the Villanelle, the a Grá Reformata has an extra couplet between each tercet. This couplet can be either rhymed within the structure of the rest of the poem, or in free verse, but always in iambic pentameter.

This is Stanzaic, consisting of alternating tercets and couplets, followed by a quatrain.
Meter is Iambic Pentameter
 Rhyme Scheme is AbA2 xx abA xx abA2 xx abA xx abA2 abAA2
where x is either rhymed or not, and A and A2 are Refrain lines.


Example Poem

Typhoon Flotilla     (Grá Reformata)













The mighty craft were built for wartime use
they're armed with weapons, they'll with luck, not need
and show their strength when faced with real excuse.

Typhoon Haiyan has stuck with natures force,
and man must bow to Gaia's strength of course.

The USA and Britain ships have cruised
to technologically intercede.
The mighty craft were built for wartime use

A corpse-choked wasteland stretches through the land
with isolation hard to understand.

The ships provisioned for a grand re-use--
with craft to reach the folks they need to feed
and show their strength when faced with real excuse.

The helicopters may again save lives,
by reaching rural land where some survive.

The water Britain's warships can produce
will be delivered with the greatest speed.
The mighty craft were built for wartime use.

The food and medicine that countries send
will find that structured order is their friend.

Relief efforts have no more time to lose
organization's what makes ships succeed
and show their strength when faced with real excuse.

They'll all work hard before their homeward cruise,
and try to help although their hearts may bleed.
The mighty craft were built for wartime use
and show their strength when faced with real excuse.

© Lawrencealot - November 27, 2013

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Florette

The Florette, created by Jan Turner, consists of two or more stanzas for either of the two versions.

Version 1 - Quatrain Stanazas
Rhyme schemeaaba , with interlaced rhyme in line four, where
                           syllable eight shares the "b" rhyme.
 Syllabic:           8,8,8,12 
Meter:               Iambic

Version 5 - Quintet Stanazas
Rhyme schemeaabba 
 Syllabic:             8,8,8,12 
Meter:                 Iambic


Sample Poem

Meeting for a Drink     (Florette)

While sitting near my fountain dear,
a pretty yellow finch appeared.
When he came by to say hello
it thrilled me much to simply know I wasn't feared.

He looked at me and seemed quite wise,
as seeing me was no surprise;
he groomed his feathers, and seemed to think,
then bowed to me and took a drink, just us two guys.

© Lawrencealot - November 28, 2013


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Essence


Stanzaic, consisting of any number of couplets
Isosyllabic, Hexasyllabic lines
Rhyme Pattern: xbxcxa xbacxa, where b and c are interlaced rhyme, AND c is optional.
      Note: The b and c rhymes can be found on any syllables.


  • Essence is a rhyming hexasyllabic couplet with internal rhyme with a twist. Normally in English prosody "internal rhyme" refers to a word within the line rhyming with the end word of that line or the end word of the previous line. However in this verse form internal rhyme refers to words from somewhere within the line rhyming internally within the next line, it could be 1 or 2 rhymes. (This could be tricky in only 6 short syllables.) Found at ShadowPoetry.com and attributed to Emily Romano, published in P.O.E.T. magazine in 1981.
    The essence is:
    • stanzaic, written in any number of couplets.
    • syllabic, hexasyllabic lines.
    • end rhymed as well as interlaced rhyme. x b x x c a b x c x x a The b and c interlaced rhymes may be placed in any position within the lines, the c rhyme is optional.

Two short lines with end rhyme
sort within, tend to time.
------
Judi Van Gorder




My great thanks to Judi of PMO, for the above.
II made one change in the description.  Instead of referring to the b and c rhymes as internal rhyme, I scalled them interlaced rhyme.

Rhyming a word in the middle of one line with a word in the middle of another is called interlaced rhyme.


Here, thanks to Bob Newman of Volecentral, is the most definitive list of rhyme types I have ever encountered.   http://www.volecentral.co.uk/vf/rhyme.htm



My  Example Poem

Bye Bye,  Bad Boy      (Essence)

Next time you reel me in
to climb and feel and sin,

I plan to take to bed
a man to slake instead.

© Lawrencealot - Thanksgiving day 2013


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Thursday, November 28, 2013

Dixdeux

  • DixdeuxFrench for ten-two, is illustrated by Anthony Fusco in Caulkins' Handbook on Haiku and Other Form Poems, 1970 . . . It appears to have developed as an alternative to the Haiku.

    The Dixdeux is:
    • written in any number of tercets. When written in more than one tercet, L3 becomes a refrain.
    • syllabic, with 10-10-2 syllables per line.
    • is unrhymed.
    • titled, unlike the haiku.
    •  
    • -------------- Hot Topic by Judi Van Gorder

      an unopened coke sits in closed up truck
      outside the summer temperature rises
      -------------- KABOOM!

      sticky brown liquid spatters upholstery
      meticulous owner finds mess inside
      -------------- KABOOM!

Thanks to Judi Van Gorder of PMO for reseacrhing this.


My Attempt

Thanksgiving Day Football      (Dixdeux)

The aroma of turkey, panoply
of pies, threaten little distraction to
The game.

Living room furniture placed horseshoe style
in front wide-screen keeping kids away from
The game.


© Lawrencealot - November 27, 2013

Clogyrnach

Clogyrnach clog-ír-nach, the 16th codified Welsh meter, an Awdl, is associated with what I can only assume is the name of an ancient poet, Cynddelw and is framed with a cyhydedd fer couplet combined with a longer form. It is rarely used by today's poets.

The defining features of the Clogymach are:
  • stanzaic, written in any number of quintets, combining a cyhydedd fer *(a rhymed couplet of 8 syllable lines) and a tercet of two 5 syllable lines followed by one 6 syllable line of 2 equal parts, 3 syllables each.
  • rhymed, rhyme scheme AABBA. The 1st phrase of L5 rhymes with the previous line and the 2nd phrase rhymes with cyhydedd fer couplet.
  • flexible, L5 of the cinquain can be added to the end of L4 creating a quatrain or can be broken into 2 separate lines creating a sixain.

    Clog Ear Nach by DC Martinson

    Inside my head there is a fight
    That leaves me void of sleep at night:
    My ear infected,
    By cure neglected.
    Dejected - Till dawn's light.
x x x x x x x A
x x x x x x x A
x x x x B
x x x x B
x x B x x A

x x x x x x x A
x x x x x x x A
x x x x B
x x x x B
x x B
x x A
x x x x x x x A
x x x x x x x A
x x x x B
x x x x B x x B x x A
Youth
Smooth lines with the color of peach,
time invites them to dream and reach.
Peer imitates,
lust lures, promise baits,
a world waits, ours to teach.
--- Judi Van Gorder
Prism
Within the gemstone, facets glint
like sun on snow with winter's tint,
sparkling colors fuse
in translucent hues
mark my muse with fired flint.
---Judi Van Gorder

Many Thanks to PMO, a fine resource,  for  the above information.


*Technically the cyhydedd fir has internal and linked rhyme so I would simply omit that
designation, with the rhyme schemes shown.

Example Poem

Thanksgiving Pies     (Clogyrnach)
Wife's made more pies than we'll have guests
Her cooking ranks among the best.
I'm inept - thus banned
can't cook things not canned,
Works great I must confess.

© Lawrencealot - November 27, 2013


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Blitz Poem

  • The Blitz Poem is an invented verse form found on line at Shadow Poetry, it was created by Robert Keim. As the name implies it is a rush of phrases and images with rapid repetition as if creating a sudden and intense attack on the senses. It is a kind of twisted Chain Verse. The Blitz is:
    • stanzaic, written in 25 couplets, a total of 50 lines.
    • unmetered. Lines should be short, but at least 2 words, like rapid fire.
    • unrhymed.
    • composed with words that are repeated from line to line in the following pattern:%5BLIST%5D.
      • L1 A short phrase, can be cliché.
      • L2 The first word of L1 is repeated as the first word of L2. From here on, the last word of the even numbered line is repeated as the first word of each line in the next couplet through L48.
      • L49 is the repetition of the last word of L48.
      • L50 is the repetition of the last word of L47.
    • unpunctuated.
    • titled, which includes the first words of L3 and L47.


Many Thanks to Judi Van Gorder for the above.



Here are the rules:
  • Line 1 should be one short phrase or image (like “build a boat”)
  • Line 2 should be another short phrase or image using the same first word as the first word in Line 1 (something like “build a house”)
  • Lines 3 and 4 should be short phrases or images using the last word of Line 2 as their first words (so Line 3 might be “house for sale” and Line 4 might be “house for rent”)
  • Lines 5 and 6 should be short phrases or images using the last word of Line 4 as their first words, and so on until you’ve made it through 48 lines
  • Line 49 should be the last word of Line 48
  • Line 50 should be the last word of Line 47
  • The title of the poem should be three words long and follow this format: (first word of Line 3) (preposition or conjunction) (first word of line 47)
  • There should be no punctuation
There are a lot of rules, but it’s a pretty simple and fun poem to write once you get the hang of it.




Many Thanks to Robert Lee Brewer for the above.

Example Poem:

Tarts to Party   (Blitz Poem)

pop some corn
pop some  tarts
tarts  tastes good
tarts needs heat
heat that tart
heat the cider
cider gets warm 
cider smell invites
invites the neighbor
invites neighbor's wife
wife is a tart
wife is a  friend
friend with benefits
friend indeed
indeed we're swinging
indeed we're singing
singing folksongs
singing Christmas Carols
Carol's the wife
Carol's now dancing
dancing on table
dancing with guys
guys like popcorn
guys like tarts
tarts are sweet
tarts get warm
warm the popcorn
warm the brew
brew some for me
brew some for you
you laugh and sing
you brought joy
Joy is single
Joy will mingle
mingle under mistletoe
mingle everywhere you know
Know she's a tart
Know fun's to start
start to hug
start to kiss
kiss the missus
kiss the miss
miss nothing
miss Trixie is here
here is the fun
here is the party
party on dudes
party hearty
hearty
dudes


© Lawrencealot - November 27, 2013

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Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Analogue

  • Analogue  is a metered invented form that is limited to 3 rhymes. It's source is Rena Ferguson Parks a 20th century poet and educator.

    The Analogue is:
    • a 9 line poem.
    • metered, all lines are iambic pentameter.
    • rhymed, rhyme scheme abbaabbcc.




When I searched this was the only information available on the web, a big Thank you to PMO and Judi Van Gorder!!

Example Poem

Ladies Choice     (A double Analogue)











A group of girls without their men espy         
a hotel; "Women only",  sign proclaims.         
"Hmm, let's discover if it meets our aims?".        
The bouncer was a most attractive guy.         
He told them how he hotel worked and why.         
Enjoy your choice of floors to please all dames         
each floor has signs instead of merely names.         
The first floor sign said "men are short and plain".         
The gals just laughed then went on up again.         

On two the sign said "Short and handsome here".         
Not yet said one, continue to ascend."         
"Floor three has tall and plain", one told her friend,        
"We need to go on up, I think that's clear."         
On four they saw the perfect sign appear:         
"All men are tall and handsome without end!"        
The girls were ready but could not pretend--        
What might they miss? So they went up to five.         
"Empty! You can't please any gal alive."         

© Lawrencealot = November 26, 2013

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Amaranth

Amaranth is an invented verse form that was probably created as a teaching tool by Viola Gardner. It makes deliberate use of the 9 most common metric feet. Each line is one metric foot, the pattern changing from line to line. 

The Amaranth is:
  • 9 line strophe. It is a stand alone poem.
  • metric, the 9 most common metric feet are used in sequence.
    L1 Spondee SS
    L2 Iamb uS
    L3 Pyrrhic uu
    L4 Dactyl Suu
    L5 Trochee Su
    L6 Amphimacer SuS
    L7 Choriamb SuuS
    L8 Anapest uuS
    L9 Amphibrach uSu
  • rhymed at the discretion of the poet, although the metric restrictions are probably enough to contend with in this verse form.

    On the Cross by Judi Van Gorder

    Behold!
    I am
    without
    sinfulness.
    Blameless,
    innocent
    guileless, bereft
    pleasing God
    forever.


With sincere thanks to Judi Van Gorder  for the above from the wonderful PMO site.

My Example Poem

Psychiatry     (Amaranth)

Wisecracks
are made
in the
analyst's
office
shedding light,
clearing the way
for a true
discourse.

© Lawrencealot - November 27, 2013


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