Form

[impressive]

Sestina Examples.

Passion?

That's for you to judge....

You're an aberration. (Admit it!)

If I tried that, it'd be about as sexy as a Jell-O mold.

 

[Liar]

Anapestic?

My favourite poetic rhythm device, lines that flow like a horse running. da-da-BAM, da-da-BAM, da-da-BAM...

as I lean to the breeze killing time with a gist,
just a shadow of song, just a sonnet unkissed
by the shyte wielder storm chasing melodies sore
I will dream of your echo from three days before

I will close tired lids rendered useless by tears
spread my wings to the wind, lay the pantheon years
to a well deserved rest, raise a cross, sing a prayer
by the sea where I found you, a voice in the air

you were there for a summer, a heartbeat, a hand
reaching out from a vortex that currents command
but as chaos may give, you were claimed once again
and the breeze where I lean is my one true domain



See...when I start I can't quite stop it. It just rolls so nicely, I have to follow it wherever it leads.

 

[impressive]

My favourite poetic rhythm device, lines that flow like a horse running. da-da-BAM, da-da-BAM, da-da-BAM...

as I lean to the breeze killing time with a gist,
just a shadow of song, just a sonnet unkissed
by the shyte wielder storm chasing melodies sore
I will dream of your echo from three days before

I will close tired lids rendered useless by tears
spread my wings to the wind, lay the pantheon years
to a well deserved rest, raise a cross, sing a prayer
by the sea where I found you, a voice in the air

you were there for a summer, a heartbeat, a hand
reaching out from a vortex that currents command
but as chaos may give, you were claimed once again
and the breeze where I lean is my one true domain



See...when I start I can't quite stop it. It just rolls so nicely, I have to follow it wherever it leads.

Hey! I actually heard that rhythm. Thanks, #L

 

[Angeline]

I love sestinas, but boy are they a lot of work to write. For me the trick is to come up with end words that are easy to rhyme and work in a variety of contexts. Then I try to flow sentences across lines, rather than make each line a complete sentence. I think that makes it sound more natural, not forced.

I think one can get pretty creative with them. Here is one example of mine.

Seeker's Sesto

One window yields hard frost to spring in time,
like wells ring water in mirrors of hope
and warming rain breaks through a wintry clime,
passing remorse over a sunny slope.
The open glass bids peace to drift from skies,
settling dawn to melt my frozen sighs.

My years have passed in a melange of sighs.
I do not count the days nor keep the time,
but dream instead against the changing skies,
and set the world into a frame of hope,
not mindful of the way events can slope,
casting dreamers into a colder clime.

When heedless thoughts conjure a sun swept clime,
measuring faith against fractions of sighs,
my dreams of spring carpet a rocky slope,
ascending unaware of passing time,
focusing only on the future’s hope,
as if petals portended brighter skies.

Dreamers forgo the world for signs in skies,
challenging stars to yield a different clime
in constellations that bridge wish to hope,
as if the night might blanket all one’s sighs
like mother rocks her child through dark time
to quell the darkest soul from travail’s slope.

Like Yeats on seeing swans wing past Coole’s slope,
I know years arcing in avian skies,
and measure wing beats to the press of time,
advancing unperturbed by age’s clime,
whooshing the wind away in careworn sighs,
turning my face upward in faceless hope.

I counter pain thus through prisms of hope,
sliding past age on my life’s slipping slope
to recall trials with the barest sighs,
and pull my dreams down from the darkling skies,
searching the stars for comfort’s warmer clime,
passing in years of optimistic time.

Dreams sleep safely under hopeful skies,
petals open dispelling changing clime
in starry nights alighting paths of time.

 

[sandspike]

Hot stuff by an unknown name....

Here's a pantoum that I am more proud of, then. Especially the title

Möbius Strip
by Lauren Hynde ©

This is one hot piece of pretty good literature. I'm thinking
the title is cool too..... once you look it up. Are we expected
to understand the title? Are we expected to look it up?
Lauren, you know I had to look it up. Just me way of saying
dumb it down dammit!

 

[impressive]

I think one can get pretty creative with them. Here is one example of mine.

Thank you!

Is it correct, then, that the cadence (meter?) is not fixed in this form?

 

[Angeline]

Thank you!

Is it correct, then, that the cadence (meter?) is not fixed in this form?

Well thank you for the thread.

I didn't try to make this one iambic pentameter, no. I have another (somewhere, lol) where I did do that. It was really difficult to stay with it for 39 lines, but I thought it came out rather well. I believe the first sestinas were done in iambic pentameter; I seem to recall that it's an Italian lyrical form that was adapted from French court poets. But like most forms it has evolved in a number of ways--many sestinas are not iambic.

Anyway, I think it's fine to break with the strict guidelines if you think it improves the poem. Some of the best form poems are, imo, variations on the rules.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

This is one hot piece of pretty good literature. I'm thinking
the title is cool too..... once you look it up. Are we expected
to understand the title? Are we expected to look it up?
Lauren, you know I had to look it up. Just me way of saying
dumb it down dammit!

Really? I'm sorry, but I didn't think that would be necessary - at least no one else mentioned it before. Möbius strip are fairly common knowledge, I always thought. They're even on any regular dictionary.

 

[impressive]

If you want to try one I think a Sonnet might be the easiest. You can go here to learn the basics.

It just seems so ... dry. (I'm really trying to get past this aversion, but in the meantime I'll settle for simply getting acquainted. To know it is to love it, perhaps?)

The Sonnet

A lyric poem of fourteen lines, following one or another of several set rhyme-schemes. Critics of the sonnet have recognized varying classifications, but to all essential purposes two types only need be discussed ff the student will understand that each of these two, in turn, has undergone various modifications by experimenters. The two characteristic sonnet types are the Italian (Petrarchan) and the English (Shakespearean). The first, the Italian form, is distinguished by its bipartite division into the octave and the sestet: the octave consisting of a first division of eight lines rhyming

abbaabba​

and the sestet, or second division, consisting of six lines rhyming

cdecde, cdccdc, or cdedce.​

On this twofold division of the Italian sonnet Charles Gayley notes: "The octave bears the burden; a doubt, a problem, a reflection, a query, an historical statement, a cry of indignation or desire, a Vision of the ideaL The sestet eases the load, resolves the problem or doubt, answers the query, solaces the yearning, realizes the vision." Again it might be said that the octave presents the narrative, states the proposition or raises a question; the sestet drives home the narrative by making an abstract comment, applies the proposition, or solves the problem. So much for the strict interpretation of the Italian form; as a matter of fact English poets have varied these items greatly. The octave and sestet division is not always kept; the rhyme-scheme is often varied, but within limits--no Italian sonnet properly allowing more than five rhymes. Iambic pentameter is essentially the meter, but here again certain poets have experimented with hexameter and other meters.

The English (Shakespearean) sonnet, on the other hand, is so different from the Italian (though it grew from that form) as to permit of a separate classification. Instead of the octave and sestet divisions, this sonnet characteristically embodies four divisions: three quatrains (each with a rhyme-scheme of its own) and a rhymed couplet. Thus the typical rhyme-scheme for the English sonnet is

abab cdcd efef gg.​

The couplet at the end is usually a commentary on the foregoing, an epigrammatic close. The Spenserian sonnet combines the Italian and the Shakespearean forms, using three quatrains and a couplet but employing linking rhymes between the quatrains, thus

abab bcbc cdcd ee.​

Certain qualities common to the sonnet as a form should be noted. Its definite restrictions make it a challenge to the artistry of the poet and call for all the technical skill at the poet's command. The more or less set rhyme patterns occurring regularly within the short space of fourteen lines afford a pleasant effect on the ear of the reader, and can Create truly musical effects. The rigidity of the form precludes a too great economy or too great prodigality of words. Emphasis is placed on exactness and perfection of expression.

The sonnet as a form developed in Italy probably in the thirteenth century. Petrarch, in the fourteenth century, raised the sonnet to its greatest Italian perfection and so gave it, for English readers, his own name.

The form was introduced into England by Thomas Wyatt, who translated Petrarchan sonnets and left over thirty examples of his own in English. Surrey, an associate, shares with Wyatt the credit for introducing the form to England and is important as an early modifier of the Italian form. Gradually the Italian sonnet pattern was changed and since Shakespeare attained fame for the greatest poems of this modified type his name has often been given to the English form.

 

[impressive]

More, please. (Lauren, you mentioned ghazals on another thread. )

Tell me why folks WANT to write formed verse. Is it a Mount Everest kinda thing?

 

[bogusbrig]

More, please. (Lauren, you mentioned ghazals on another thread. )

Tell me why folks WANT to write formed verse. Is it a Mount Everest kinda thing?

If it really isn't you I wouldn't even try to write it.

Some people like the rhythms and the discipline of writing to pre-ordained strictures. It seems to me its a form of creative self flagellation but then I've always recoiled from it, even at school. Maybe it was school that instilled in me an abhorence of it.

If I was you I would just write and invent your own rhythms and form. There is no right or wrong, it's just about being creative.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

More, please. (Lauren, you mentioned ghazals on another thread. )

Here's something that Cordelia posted a long time ago:

The Ghazal

The ghazal is a form of Persian poetry originating in Iran in the 10th century A.D. It is originally written in Persian or Urdu.

To summarize, I will draw from the book I learned this form from, and condensed from a lesson by Agha Shahid Ali.

***************
Here are the basic points for writing a ghazal in English:

· A poem of five to fifteen couplets. The name rhymes with "guzzle."

· No enjambment between couplets. Think of each couplet as a separate poem, thematically and emotionally complete in itself.

· Once again, ABSOLUTELY no enjambment between couplets—each couplet must be like a precious stone that can shine even when plucked from the necklace though it certainly has greater luster in its setting. (note from Cordelia: this guy really has a way with words!)

· What links these couplets is a strict formal scheme. This is how it works: The entire ghazal employs the same rhyme and refrain. The rhyme must always immediately precede the refrain. If the rhyme is merely buried somewhere in the line, that will have its charm, of course, but it would not lead to the wonderful pleasure of IMMEDIATE recognition which is central to the ghazal. The refrain may be a word or phrase.

· Each line must be of the same length (inclusive of the rhyme and refrain). In Urdu and Persian, all the lines are usually in the same meter and have the same metrical length. So establish some system—metrical or syllabic—for maintaining consistency in line lengths. (another note from Cordelia: I found that syllable count worked best and gave it a good flow)

· The last couplet may be (and usually is) a signature couplet in which the poet may invoke his/her name in the first, second, or third person.

· The scheme of rhyme and refrain occurs in BOTH lines of the first couplet (that is how one learns what the scheme is), and then in only the second line of every succeeding couplet (that is, the first line of every succeeding couplet has no restrictions other than to maintain the syllabic or metrical length.

· There is an epigrammatic terseness in the ghazal, but with immense lyricism, evocation, sorrow, heartbreak, wit. What defines the ghazal is a constant longing.

· This is what a ghazal looks like:

Couplet one:
---------------------------------------------rhyme A + refrain
---------------------------------------------rhyme A + refrain
Couplet Two, Three, & so on:
---------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------rhyme A + refrain

· Here are some opening and concluding couplets of Shahid’s:

Example A:
I say That, after all, is the trick of it all
When suddenly you say "Arabic of it all."
...............
For Shahid too the night went quickly as it came.
After that, O Friend, came the music of it all.

Example B:
What will suffice for a true love knot? Even the rain?
But he has bought grief’s lottery, bought even the rain.
...............
They’ve found the knife that killed you, but whose prints are these?
No one has such small hands, Shahid, not even the rain.

Example C:
Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell tonight
Before you agonize him in farewell tonight?
...............
And I, Shahid, only am escaped to tell thee—
God sobs in my arms. Call me Ishmael tonight.

***************
Do you get the gist of it? I have also written one that I will include here just to show that anyone can do it.


Ghazal in ¾ Time

Rendering my words into songs may, from the dance
Kiss damp orange music pulled away from the dance.

We touch as though we knew the absence of roses.
Touching again, we move in disarray from the dance.

I wipe a tear from the page where you are drawing,
Stringing lines to remove the bouquet from the dance.

Though you spoke to me of afters, not of nevers,
We move through green laughter as if we’d pray from the dance.

Overwhelmed by the frost on your kiln-fired brow,
I discern the porcelain sobriquet from the dance.

Reaching into the marigolds between us, think:
How the weather takes a holiday from the dance.

Loosen your frown, unbutton your anxieties;
Let this lover remove all dismay from the dance.

***************
There are some excellent examples of this form on this site as well:

The Ghazal Page​

Tell me why folks WANT to write formed verse. Is it a Mount Everest kinda thing?

I think some of the appeal is indeed the challenge, but there's more than that. Some people will tell you that poetry should be written to be read aloud, and in terms of musicality and rhythm, most classic forms can't be topped - unless you're into jazz, which is all free-verse.

There are some themes that beg for a determined form, as I mentioned above. Others have a lot to gain from sticking to the formula. I think that sonnets, for example, are more important for their pre-determined narrative structure than for their rhyme scheme or anything like that.

 

[impressive]

If it really isn't you I wouldn't even try to write it.

I have no plans to do so -- I just wanna learn about it. I'm curious.

 

[impressive]

I think some of the appeal is indeed the challenge, but there's more than that. Some people will tell you that poetry should be written to be read aloud, and in terms of musicality and rhythm, most classic forms can't be topped - unless you're into jazz, which is all free-verse.

There are some themes that beg for a determined form, as I mentioned above. Others have a lot to gain from sticking to the formula. I think that sonnets, for example, are more important for their pre-determined narrative structure than for their rhyme scheme or anything like that.

Thanks!