what is the shortest poem you have written?

[Lokasenna]

My poetry tends to go on and on... but I must admit I like short poems. I think it is often more effective to say something pertinent and meaningful in 4 lines than in 40.

This is my shortest poem, at two stanzas in length. I'm reasonably happy with it:

this is the way

The world corrupts, the world corrupts and falls,
and bright hoar ice inscribes the standing stones
about this place of death, this place of loss,
with veins of crackling cold, the script of time
writ large upon the silent graves around.

For we, the unfulfilled, that linger long,
too long, upon this whittling witless world,
yet know the truth that lies beneath our own
low pulse, that day by day counts out our lives.
It is the secret silence and the maw,
the fateful tick, the tock, and nothing more.

[MorpheusSandman]

I occasionally write an epigram in the tradition of Donne and the Renaissance poets. It's a challenge putting a thought into a catchy line or two. Here's one:

Accord
A CHORD’s a group of notes being played
On diverse instruments,
A CORD’s to strangle those that don’t
Discern the difference.

Shortest time it took me to write one? Hard to say... maybe a few hours?

[cacian]

My poetry tends to go on and on... but I must admit I like short poems. I think it is often more effective to say something pertinent and meaningful in 4 lines than in 40.

This is my shortest poem, at two stanzas in length. I'm reasonably happy with it:

this is the way

The world corrupts, the world corrupts and falls,
and bright hoar ice inscribes the standing stones
about this place of death, this place of loss,
with veins of crackling cold, the script of time
writ large upon the silent graves around.

For we, the unfulfilled, that linger long,
too long, upon this whittling witless world,
yet know the truth that lies beneath our own
low pulse, that day by day counts out our lives.
It is the secret silence and the maw,
the fateful tick, the tock, and nothing more.

very nice piece although I would not call it short. Is this piece an adaption to a studied form?

[cacian]

I occasionally write an epigram in the tradition of Donne and the Renaissance poets. It's a challenge putting a thought into a catchy line or two. Here's one:

Accord
A CHORD’s a group of notes being played
On diverse instruments,
A CORD’s to strangle those that don’t
Discern the difference.

Shortest time it took me to write one? Hard to say... maybe a few hours?

Few hours really?
I am not familiar with epigrams. I do like the poem ''Accord'' it is different.

[MorpheusSandman]

Few hours really?

Like I said, it's hard to say. The shortest poems I typically write are cinquains, and while I'm often able to write one quite quickly, I often spend at least an hour or two tweaking it.

I am not familiar with epigrams. I do like the poem ''Accord'' it is different.

Thanks. Epigrams are just short, memorable sayings in verse. Coleridge probably wrote the definitive epigram about epigrams:


What is an Epigram? A dwarfish whole;
Its body brevity, and wit its soul.
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

[Melanie]

boo hoo
doggie poo

[papillondemai]

My shortest is a haiku. But since I am an iconoclast I bastardized the form to make it 7/5/5 instead of 5/7/5. I took the title from the title of a poem by Arthur Rimbaud that was lost. Rimbaud's biographers say that Verlaine considered it to be Rimbaud's finest poem. But Verlaine was drinking a lot of absinthe at the time.

[Calidore]

boo hoo
doggie poo

Great emotional distress distilled to four words. Nicely done.

How about two words on the pain of rejection?

No?
Woe!

[cacian]

No?
Woe!

Haha nice one


ah!
well.
short is to tale
long is to mail