September 2024 Poetry Challenge B: Your least favorite form

[29wordsforsnow]

Welcome to the other September challenge. Here's your chance to take vengeance on those poetic forms that annoyed you for days and nights, that filled your wastepaper bin, and sucked your fountain pens dry.

Never liked the odd syllable count of haikus? Get even with it!​

The Sestina drove you mad in repeating circles? Make it a Sextina, with every line ending with 'sex'.​

Are Shakespeare's dusty sonnets way too strict for your liking? Shake 'em well, unless you're James Bondage, then stir.​

The Villanelle not too villain enough? Get on its bad side.​

You're invited to break and spoil them to your liking.

There's only one catch. Tell us why you don't like that specific form in the first place, what makes your brain convolutions curl up their figurative toes? Was it a high school teacher

 

[Angeline]

I don't like haiku
All that nature oh boo hoo
Count syllables? Ew.

********************

Ok I don't really dislike it as much as I dislike that it's misunderstood by English speakers. It doesn't really translate well to English imho The line breaks, in English, feel limiting to me which is why I prefer the American Sentence.

 

[Shady_nz]

I dislike this form
Oh haiku,die won't you
Your difficulty kills

I dislike haiku as it feels too restrictive ( don't even know if I've actually written one just now.)
I prefer free writing as I can express myself better
Edit: I do enjoy the Acrostic form though

 

[Tzara]

How to Write a Sonnet​

​

Write about anything. Chickens​

crossing the road, quantum theory,​

bats, balls, papier-mâché.​

It doesn't matter. You're a poet,​

so just write with feeling​

(emotional or physical, like,​

you know, touch) and think​

about standing at a microphone​

in front of a room full of coffee​

drinking word addicts savoring​

an over-roasted Arabica along​

with your personal agony.​

Just keep it to fourteen lines—​

that's a sonnet, mate.​

The sonnet (from the Italian sonetto, or little song) is probably the most common and best-known of poetic forms, with the possible exception of the limerick. There are all kinds of variations of the form: Italian (or Petrachan) sonnets, Shakespearean (or English) sonnets, Spenserian sonnets, terza rima sonnets, as well as cut-down versions (Hopkins' curtal sonnet) and lengthened versions (the caudate, or tailed, sonnet). Generally, though, sonnets in English are fourteen lines in length, written in iambic pentameter, state some kind of theme or problem in the early lines and make a "turn" (volta) to a resolution of some kind in the latter part of the poem.

All well and good. But some modern poets seem to think that any poem of fourteen lines in whatever meter or no meter, rhymed or not, without any volta is a sonnet, as if it's simply the total number of lines that matter. Although it shouldn't, this always irks me. I have no problem with such a poem as a poem, but why claim that one has written a sonnet? It always strikes me a bit as being like writing a limerick and calling it a villanelle—sure, you can do that, but what does it accomplish?

So my poem. Fourteen lines, non-metrical (unless I miscounted, none of the lines even have ten syllables, though one has eleven), unrhymed, no particular problem or volta. Just to get it out of my system.

Sorry. That's all.</rant>

 

[Angeline]

Those of you who know me know there is one poetry form I truly despise: the sestina. I have written a half dozen or so and have hated it every time. But why Angeline? Why so bitter? You don't even have to rhyme anything.

Welp I'll tell ya. First off it's 39 lines, so it's longish. In free verse that's not so bad at all right? But a sestina has diabolical repetitions. Look at this~

First stanza, ..1 ..2 ..3 ..4 ..5 ..6
Second stanza, ..6 ..1 ..5 .. 2 ..4 ..3
Third stanza, ..3 ..6 ..4 ..1 ..2 ..5
Fourth stanza, ..5 ..3 ..2 ..6 ..1 ..4
Fifth stanza, ..4 ..5 ..1 ..3 ..6 ..2
Sixth stanza, ..2 ..4 ..6 ..5 ..3 ..1

Concluding tercet:
middle of first line ..2, end of first line ..5
middle of second line ..4, end of second line..3
middle if third line ..6, end of third line ..1

So you have to choose six end words, one per line, right off the bat that you then have to rework in various permutations of those end words through the next five stanzas. And then when your head is spinning and you are beyond sick of those effing six words you do a lil magic trick in the concluding three lines where you repeat two of the six words, one in the middle and one at the end, in each of those lines. And don't forget, you don't want gobbledegook; it should flow and make sense as a poem. So you try for all that. Then, if you're me, you have a nice vomit and a long nap.

So thank you Snowy for this exciting opportunity for me to slap, bite and throttle this form...um metaphorically. Consider my rant a placeholder. You have the why. I'll be back with the poem once I figure out how best to abuse it.

ETA: You can actually write sestinas that rhyme and follow a specific meter. I did once write a sestina that rhymed and was in iambic pentameter. I screwed up the stress pattern in a bunch of places but I did complete it. I wasn't hospitalized afterword but it was a close call.

Hmmm maybe this should be my sestina: just me bitching about the form. No I'll write a damn poem. I have all month to procrastinate er I mean compose.

 

[Tzara]

This Is Not a Triolet​

​

A triolet is just eight lines.​

The first line is repeated thrice,​

so poets are thus quite confined​

in triolets of just eight lines.​

And, as some poets fuss and whine,​

Another line's repeated twice.​

God! Triolets, in just eight lines,​

thus force line's repeats in a trice.​

I don't really have anything against the triolet per se. In some ways, they are pretty easy to write—eight lines long, two rhymes, and five of the eight lines are duplicates (lines 1, 4, and 7 and lines 2 and 8), so besides the first two lines, you only have to come up with three others.

The problem is that makes it very hard to write a good one—the repetition gets in the way. In that, the form is kind of like Angie's bane, the sestina; how do you keep the repetition from becoming boring? Some alter the syntax slightly or punctuate the repetons slightly (just as sestina writers will use things like homonyms of the six end words to vary the line endings). I sort of tried to do that here, though the last line is kind of an egregious mangle of the second line. A much better example of how it might be done is this poem, by Thomas Hardy:

Birds At Winter​

​

Around the house the flakes fly faster,​

And all the berries now are gone​

From holly and cotoneaster​

Around the house. The flakes fly! – faster​

Shutting indoors the crumb-outcaster​

We used to see upon the lawn​

Around the house. The Flakes fly faster​

And all the berries now are gone!​

All in all, not exactly my least favorite form, but one I find difficult to complete in a satisfactory manner. So I fall back on my usual trick of being somewhat silly. Better, probably, than my trying to write a sonnet redoublé.

 

[dennis88]

Finally, a chance to unleash my grudge against haikus! The 5-7-5 always felt too restrictive—like trying to tell a whole story in three puzzle pieces that don’t quite fit. As for the Villanelle, the endless repetition makes me feel like I'm trapped in a loop. Ready to break these forms apart and make them my own!

 

[haventgotaclue]

What a delightful challenge! It will be rather interesting to observe how the frustrated imagination can bend and fold all those tired poetic forms to get even with those that drove one out of one’s mind.

On a not so serious note I am going to attempt to write a poem of every line containing ‘Sex’, in fact I plan on making it a Sextina. It is a very effective way of under cutting the sestina form, which often can be rather rigid due to the repetition of the end words. And who knows, maybe the result will be a poem that is considered not only as a provocative work but also as a work that provokes the reader’s thought.

 

[29wordsforsnow]

Sooooo sorry to have missed all the end-of-summer fun - the job got massively in the way - I hope to catch up with all that has happened in PFD soon.

So, where were we...? Of course, the blame game first

I wholeheartedly blame you, @Angeline , for bringing that dreaded form up in the first place. Years ago, joining this forum with little to none knowledge of poetry - not that much has changed in that department - I now and then stumbled over the association of the Sestina and your name in several threads, and finally had a look at it, that black hole that looks back at you with that demonic smile on its lip, "Dare you," it says.

I think I've written two so far, one for last year's write-a-poem-each-week challenge about sensual colors and one, I think it went back to the drawer, about Shakespeare & his sonnets.

But then one fatal day Angie linked that really interesting article about the sestina 'Hygrometer' that plays with the element of repetition using synonyms...which also is one of the take-away lessons of my early days joining another Forum, the red-inked hell of the Editors, "Try to avoid using the same word again and again in close repetition."

And finally thanks to another fellow writer on Lit who suggested playing even more with that synonym idea.

So here - since the Illustrated Poetry category seems to have turned into the pending graveyard of submissions - my third, and maybe final attempt on that spiraling form

~~~~~~~~

Sestina Sunrise



Another morning blossoms
in the dormant yards of a distant soil
before rubies, amber, and gold set light
to all the blues that darkened teenage dreams,
eyes open to sea and hills still at rest,
find the silver lining barely awake

In the roaring river's wake,
onyx waters unfold skyscrapers' bloom.
Far from it, zillions asking for a break,
insurmountable cracks in the realms
of yesterday's golden utopia,
misty illusions between dark and light.

Fog or Night, she enlightens
the new arrivals looking for a rise,
a lighthouse in the sea of will-o'-wisps
where, centuries ago, wanderlust bloomed
and hope went into expanding the land.
Eyes, straight ahead, lost sight of things broken.

Darkness and stars arrested
pale beside the new day's tourmaline light.
Sapphire magic sweeps across the nation
tickles the unpolished sleepers awake.
Like April flowers we rise, bud and bloom,
sway in the wind and fear life's illusions.

Mid-life hallucinations
of eternity grind to a halt.
Doubt, as we pursue happiness, blossoms.
We, blind and deaf from thunder and lightning,
lost hearts and minds to the night that aroused
theft of the most precious from our soft spots.

In this mix-it-all-up place,
the torch of liberty fusing ideas
burnt out from blazing passion, now, let's wake
what's been laid, in its early grave, to rest.
Just a spark is all it takes to lighten
The Lady's heavy bosom. Let them bloom!

Far-away-land where the liberties rest
loathe the delusions, choose enlightenment.
Folks, let's get her up to thrive and prosper.

 

[Ambient4190]

without spectacles
blur yellow brown orange tree
clarity belauded


ooops! #@&% Haiku..

 

[goldytheGoldfish]

This Is Not a Triolet​

​

A triolet is just​

We're All Still On the Clock

And how do you suppose you will?
I don't believe you either.
It's not my job to pay your bill
and how do you suppose you will?
A trait your facile compliments reveal
with victory no sweeter
And how do you suppose you will?
I don't believe you either.

 

[Angeline]

Fuckingtina

Don't get the idea this is an erotic poem.
There's nothing sexy about a sestina
You want sex go somewhere else,
though this may be the poetic equivalent
of a revenge fuck, not that the poem cares.
Anthropomorphism aside, it's just words.

Poet's tools? Forget it! it's all just words.
Sure images etc., can make a poem
that somebody reads, maybe cares
if I broke my brain on a sestina
though I can't write the equivalent
of something by Frost, Yeats, anyone else.

In fact I already wish I were anyone else
but the idiot dancing with these same six words.
Hell I don't even like the word equivalent,
not anymore, especially not in this poem,
this misbegotten mess of a sestina--
hey look I alliterated but who cares?

Someone in this pantheon of poetry cares,
just not me. I'd rather be anywhere else
but laboring away on this fuckingtina,
this ridiculous amalgamation of words
to convince you, gentle reader, it's a poem
and not some Frankenstein-like equivalent

written by this disinterested equivalent
of a poet, but I doubt any of you cares
and perhaps no one is reading this poem
because really you could do anything else:
write your own damn poem and use words
that don't repeat like a broken record, er sestina.

It's almost over now, this ersatz sestina
and I do hope you've found it an equivalent
that provides some amusement as my words
tumble stupidly toward the tercet and my cares
begin to drift like breaking clouds going else
where, viz., as far as possible from this "poem."

In summary, I wrote a sestina, no one cares
if this is its rough equivalent or something else,
a raw stew of words, pretending to be a poem.