#poetic forms

[poemsbybuddie]

here is a list of different poetic forms that might help you get started if you’re feeling a bit stumped, unsure, or it might give you a challenge if you want to try something new! <3

Blank verse: Blank verse is poetry written with regular metrical but unrhymed lines, almost always in iambic pentameter.

Examples:

Villanelle: The villanelle is a nineteen-line poetic form consisting of five tercets (3 lines) followed by a quatrain (4 lines). There are two refrains and two repeating rhymes, with the first and third line of the first tercet repeated alternately at the end of each subsequent stanza until the last stanza, which includes both repeated lines.

Examples:

do not go gentle into that good night by dylan thomas

10 villanelle poem examples to study

Haiku: The haiku is of ancient Japanese origin. It usually contains 17 syllables in 3 lines of five, seven, five (though modern examples do not systematically follow that pattern). Haiku poems typically contain references to nature.

Examples:

Sonnet: Traditionally, the sonnet is a fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter, employing one of several rhyme schemes, and adhering to a tightly structured thematic organization. The two main types of sonnets are the following:

• Shakespearean (or English) sonnet: three quatrains (4 lines) and a couplet (2 lines). Rhymes are ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG

• Petrarchan (or Italian) sonnet: divided into two stanzas, an octave (8 lines) followed by a sestet (6 lines). Rhymes are ABBAABBA + CDECDE or CDCDCD

Limerick: A limerick is a form of verse, usually humorous and frequently rude, in five-line, predominantly anapestic trimeter with a strict rhyme scheme of AABBA, in which the third and fourth lines are typically shorter.

Examples:

Elegy: A melancholy poem that serves the purpose of a lament for or a celebration of a deceased person.

Examples:

Elegies, Book One, 5 BY CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

Lycidas, BY JOHN MILTON

Because I could not stop for Death, BY EMILY DICKINSON

Ode: An ode is a lyrical poem that expresses praise, glorification, or tribute, with the subject matter being a person, event, or idea. Classic odes contain three sections: a strophe, an antistrophe, and an epode—effectively a beginning, middle, and end.

Example:

Ode on a Grecian Urn, by JOHN KEATS

Concrete poem: Also known as visual poetry, it is essentially poetry which is shaped in a certain way which adds to its meaning.

Found poem: Found poetry is a form of poetry in which you create a poem by cutting up, remixing, or otherwise transforming an existing piece of text. (you can use dialogue from the show/scripts?)

Blackout poetry: Blackout poetry is the process out taking an already existing piece of text and blacking out the words save for a few select ones that take on new meaning.

[morningcatreport]

Morning Cat Than-Bauk

I am a cat. What is that, you ask? pat me, and suffer my teeth.

*morning cat than-bauk is presented "as is," with no guarantees of entertainment or literary value. Consume at your own risk.

[pebblegalaxy]

Vignettes in Verse: A Journey Through Life's Moments in Japanese Tanka Poetry

Given the word ‘Vignette’, I’ll use the tanka form, which is a bit longer than haiku and allows for more elaboration. Tanka traditionally consists of five lines with a syllable pattern of 5-7-5-7-7. I’ll create a sequence of tanka poems to form a longer piece centered around the concept of ‘Vignette’. Here’s the poem: Vignette, a glimpseMoments frozen in time's frameBrief yet poignant…

[kristinawkelly]

Exploring Poetry - Poetic Forms

Kicking off this month's poetry blog is this a post on poetic forms. Guest Mona Mehas talks about three forms with examples from her poetry.

Kicking off this month’s poetry blog, as it is National Poetry Month, is a post on poetic forms. I’m having a guest come and post on my blog each month talking about poetry from the various poetic forms to what poetry means to them. To start, I have Mona Mehas posting today about forms with examples from her poetry. Like me, Mona is also a member of the Poetry Society of Indiana. Her work has…

[martyncrucefix]

New podcast discussion on Between a Drowning Man

I’m very pleased to announce that Mark McGuinness’ excellent poetry podcast, A Mouthful of Air, which has recently featured poets such as Mona Arshi, Judy Brown, Rishi Dastidar, Ian Duhig, Mimi Khalvati, Clare Pollard, Tom Sastry, and Denise Saul, has recorded a discussion about my new Salt collection, Between a Drowning Man. Mark’s method is to focus on one particular poem and between us we…

[santandreas]

Repost-Symetrelle – Not Stagnant

sky is not at all stagnant as a sulphur scented pond can be forever still and oxygen free nor is she monochrome, devoid of a life as shrilly as the tune of a fife spread upon a canvas with a palette knife by a painter or poet full of strife and flailing fish impossible there […] Symetrelle – Not Stagnant

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 187

Clockwork would openly admit that he couldn’t see Danny’s timelines. Not since the moment he stepped into that portal and became something more. A child of Infinity, of the very Realms itself. 

But he’ll also admit that it always meant that the child surprised him all the time. This just happened to be a startling surprise, and an admittedly amusing one, even if Danny was openly complaining about the situation. 

“It’s not fair! You have to be able to fix this, right? Right?!” the ghostling, quite literally now, practically yanked at his cloak. “Clockwork, I was going to graduate, I can’t be two! Please, you’re the master of Time, you can fix this right!?” 

No, no he could not, seeing as young Daniel was in fact, immune to timeline machinations, doubly so for his own. To the ghostling’s open distress, which he did his best to soothe. What he could do instead, was stop time in his home dimension, and instead let him age back up again. 

Which the young halfa wasn’t happy about, but it was the best thing they had, so Clockwork supposed he had a ghostling now. A tiny adorable ghostling who kept pouting each time his much younger body had any sort of effect on his behavior. 

He’d never exactly had a ghostling before, nevermind one who was part human, but he would admit he honestly was enjoying it. Most time was spent alone, something he hadn’t realized until Danny ended up crashing into his unlife. 

Honestly he would openly admit that he absolutely adored his little ghostling. Who was now around four, at least physically, and had gotten into the adorable habit of curling up in the pendulum in his chest. Which was honestly the safest spot in Long Now, he’d admit. 

The singular issue however, with this habit, was that when someone attempted to summon him, they got his ghostling as well. And well, normally he could very much control himself for these summonings that happened every few hundred or so years, but well. There was a reason why even the Observants had stopped popping in the moment they realized he had a ghostling. 

Nesting ghosts do not mess around should they feel one is messing with their very vulnerable child, and really it’s not his fault the mortal cultists woke up and startled Danny. Perhaps deleting them from the timeline was a bit too far, if the other mortals rapid paling was to go by, but oh well. 

[theotherpages]

Alzheimer's as a Villanelle

I visit the theme of memory often in my writing, and since medical events are written into the plotlines of my books from time to time, I have had the unsettling experience of reliving a scene I’ve written. Perspective can also shift with time, our stage in life, or our position in a relationship. In Ion, book six of The Republic of Dreams, during a scene intended to evoke memories and the emotions they carry, Sparrow observes to Meredith, “I have learned that much of life is spent revisiting the same events, over and over, from different viewpoints.”

A few years ago, I traveled north to Ohio and Michigan, and had an opportunity to visit with Ms. Elizabeth Papps, my AP English Literature teacher from high school. It had been four decades, and I was pleasantly surprised to learn that she was still around (she has since passed) but saddened to learn she had suffered a stroke. Her body was a pencil-thin version of the person she used to be. Her memory, and her attention span, likewise, were thin slivers of what they used to be, making conversation challenging. Challenging, but not impossible.

I explored things she might remember from teaching, from childhood, from travel, and especially on the topic of food. Food memories are rich from a sensory standpoint, and I guessed correctly that childhood memories of her favorite foods would be a good topic. She grew up in a Greek household, and the savory and sweet dishes are the kinds of things that have unique tastes and textures and fill a home with inviting aromas: avgolemono (lemon-chicken soup), pastitsio (a lasagna-like dish with a bechamel sauce and cinnamon), kourabiethes (sugar cookies that melt in your mouth), baklava (flaky pastry with honey and cinnamon). Food led to places she had been, people she had known, and things she had done.

The doorway to memory opened and closed repeatedly. She remembered traveling to Greece, Israel, and Egypt in detail, but could not remember it again twenty minutes later. She would correct me on the pronunciation of a Greek word, and forget that word ten minutes later. She wanted to be called Bess, because that is what her friends always called her. Friends she couldn’t remember.

Her favorite book to teach was A Tale of Two Cities, because she liked how the places and storylines paralleled and contrasted with each other. Her favorite play to teach was Hamlet, because, similarly, he stood in two worlds: his outward public life, and his tortured inner life. She remembered only a few teachers, but remembered more when prompted. She remembered Patricia Osborne fondly, a former journalist who taught English in an adjacent classroom for many years. She remembered only two students from all her years of teaching: Beth Perkins and Jim Calhoun. She didn’t remember me (not surprising - even without the stroke, it’s been forty years).

Her own questions and observations were simple, and recurring. Sometimes they repeated exactly, and sometimes with variations. More than anything, it reminded me of the structure of a villanelle. A villanelle is a poem with a very simple rhyme scheme in which two of the lines become an alternating refrain, as in a pair of comments or questions repeated multiple times, sometimes with slight changes to evolve their meaning.

A conversation with someone who has suffered memory loss can be that way. The same is true with some individuals on the autism spectrum. Maybe there is a certain reinforcement, or reassurance in the repeated refrain. The variations along the way can add depth to the conversation, as can approaching things from different directions. I am not an expert on these disorders in any way, but in a very human sense, she was happy to have company and was very engaged in the conversation. Did she remember my visit the next day? I don’t know. I suspect not.

I think the concept of a villanelle prepares us for the fact that the same ideas, subjects, and specific questions will repeat themselves, and that with patience, we can still communicate on some level. It may be a recursive conversation, and the content may be more in emotions than in words, but in truth, in most one-to-one personal conversations, isn’t that the most important part?

If you have not experienced this scene, odds are that you will, some day. If you write it or imagine it beforehand, don’t be surprised to find that it turns out differently. Be relieved, in fact. There is a certain eeriness when fiction is too close to reality. In the field of artificial intelligence (another recurring theme in The Republic of Dreams) there is a similar concept referred to as the Uncanny Valley. For the Alzheimer’s patient, I wonder which is the greater frustration - the thing that seems unknown (“Do I know you?”), or the thing that seems familiar, but just not quite right? (“Why do you look so old?”)

-- Steve

⌘ Alzheimer’s as a Villanelle

Time slips away, as all things do. Drop by drop, and then a torrent. Who am I? Do I know you? I thought I told you we were through? Or was that another country, another lover? Time slips away, as all things do. I was brilliant once, and beautiful too, But memories, like mirrors, are blurry now. Who am I? Do I know you? I was married one time, or maybe two, I raised three wild children, or was it four? Time slips away, as all things do. I had a home once, shiny and new, Built on a lake, or was it the seashore? Who am I? Do I know you? Time chases everyone, even you. Why do you look so old? Who was I? Did I know you? Time runs away, as all things do. --Steve Spanoudis

[firstfullmoon]

okay hold on this is so cool. bear with me

1) read this terrance hayes poem

2) read this gwendolyn brooks poem

3) go back to the terrance hayes poem and pay attention to the ends of lines

[blossoms-phan]

guys I’m actually going insane like they’re literally in love with each other

[thedansemacabres]

Now that I return once more, something I have been thinking deeply about with Dionysus—now that the grapes are ripening—is him and the grapevine. One of the beautiful ‘paradoxes’ in mythology is the way he was said to have discovered wine, but then also is the ripening force of the vine—Dionysos Veraison—as I would call him is the one that transmutes the bitter grape acids, tartaric and malic, into sweet sugars.

In order for wine to ferment, veraison must occur. In becoming a wine god, did his red fingertips touch the vine and cause it to bloom, with the cluster falling to the earth, bursting forth, and fermenting into ethanol? Did in discovering wine and creating it did he understand the way the sun and vine vitality creates the conditions necessary? Or if we follow the myth of Ampelos, did his grief make him realise the eternal gift his love’s shorn form now possess?

mythology is truly so fun. Dionysos the winemaker as a man of grief and careful understanding of a natural process—does one become what they do, if they tie themselves to it so closely?

[gale-gaze]

my game keeps crashing currently and I had to give up for the evening, but to cope with that stress I put slutty little glasses on images of Gale and I am not normal after doing so

dork wizard vs dilf wizard

have mercy, for I am weak

o Captain, my Captain - give me Dead Poets Society Gale

[waywardwritesstuff]

A man who longs for a woman who knows will never be his.

Her heart belongs happily to another and his heart belongs to her.

He wants her and he can never have her.

And he wants him. He sees the longing he had for her and wants that longing to be his.

He wants to be wanted the way he wants for her.

But the unrequited love he fills will never be met.

Not if he keeps it hidden behind a different face that he never shows.

He wants her and he can't have her.

He wants him and doesn't think he deserves him.

[cogentsummoner]

you don't understand i NEED to fuck him while he's wearing his now baggy as hell hero costumes

[thenatashapulleyuniverse]

okay LOOK i know i'm the resident pulleyverse fanatic on this goddamn site but if you think watchmaker is criminally underrated with the masses wait till i tell you about the spear cuts through water by simon jimenez i am using my platform to advertise this book with all of you please get on this please please please please i know this fanbase will fuck with it so hard

[usertoxicyaoi]

“You deserve a lot of credit.” Huang You Ming As Ye Bai Yi + Li Dai Kun As Xie Wang. WORD OF HONOR (2021) - Episode 32.