Form Poem Contest

[Pendragon]

I kinda fiqured you'd take this round, Petra! Love the way people keep coming up with these new forms! When I started this thread I was afraid it would fizzle quickly into free verse, you have amazed me! I look forward to trying this new form!

[Petrarch's Love]

Congrats, Petrach's Love!

I am thankful to you that it is not a full 2/3 sestina, or it would probably have to end with a couplet containing all 4 words as well... *grin* and in iambic tetrameter or some such.

Thanks, Auto, and yes, I think it's very good that I didn't go for a 2/3 sestina. I tried to figure out something that might work as the equivilent of the final stanza in the sestina, but I figured this way was much easier.

I kinda fiqured you'd take this round, Petra! Love the way people keep coming up with these new forms! When I started this thread I was afraid it would fizzle quickly into free verse, you have amazed me! I look forward to trying this new form!

Thanks, Pen. As for things fizzling into free verse, I very nearly assigned a villanelle for this round, but took pity on everyone after all. This form isn't nearly as creative as your backwards-forwards one, but I do very much look forward to seeing what you and all the other talented poets come up with.

[Lily Adams]

Wow! Congrats to Petrarch's Love! Great job!

I can see why you had trouble choosing the winner.

Thanks for the compliment, Miss Niamh. 'Twas not much of a poem...

[UltimaHybrid]

can i post my poem??or is it too late??

[UltimaHybrid]

oops nevermind.. uh congratz

[NickAdams]

The Field

Away from the field
into the forest;
Surrounded by trees
under the moon.

Surrounded by trees
under the moon;
Away from the field,
in the forest.

In the forest,
away from the field;
Under the moon
surrounded by trees.

The sun replaces the moon-
away from trees,
away from the forest,
and onto the field.

[Pendragon]

You get inspiration at the oddest hours...

Permanent Solutions Unnecessary

All you can hear is pitter-patter of falling tears,
All you can feel is a heart so filled with the pain;
Deeper and deeper you descend into loneliness—
Thinking of jumping off the cliff of your despair…

You never knew there was so much pain,
Or how awfully cruel could be that loneliness;
On the very edge of your leap of despair,
You raise to the heavens eyes filled with tears…

But you see only the moment in your terrible loneliness,
What good is life if you must always live in despair?
Straining for words of a prayer, through salty tears:
“Oh, dear God! I just cannot take any more of this pain…”

Can there be a light that shines even in darkest despair,
A beckoning beacon one only sees through one's tears?
Can there be a place where there is comfort from pain,
And someone to hold your hand—bring an end—to loneliness…?

© 6/2/07
Pendragon

[Bii]

Well, never tried this before but this is my effort - hope you like it!

Chemical Dreams

I fall awake from chemical dreams
absorbing the sleepy light of day.
Knowing that all is not as it seems;
wondering whether I’m here to stay.

I have a feeling about this day
the light is heavier than it seems.
The gathering clouds are here to stay;
billowing darkly around my dreams

Time passes slowly, or so it seems;
a wandering moment is here to stay.
Settling softly within my dreams
breathing the warmth of a summer’s day.

So here in this moment I will stay
cushioned within my chemical dreams.
No more to feel the cold light of day;
knowing that all is not as it seems.

[SteveH]

I'll have a go soon.

I invented a sestina variant once - three-line stanzas and a one-and-a-half line envoi. I called it a triolina. I only wrote one, though, and it was crap.

[Petrarch's Love]

Just had a chance to take a closer look at our entries so far, which are all great poems. Keep 'em coming folks.

Just one problem, however. Nick Adams, you've submitted a nice poem, and I like your guts in not just repeating the whole line rather than just the end word, but it doesn't quite follow the form. The end words should be rotated in a specific pattern (see the numbers in my initial post) so that, if your first stanza is "field, forest, trees moon," then your second stanza should be "forest, trees, moon, field" etc. Let me know if you're confused about this and would like me to explain more.

[NickAdams]

Just had a chance to take a closer look at our entries so far, which are all great poems. Keep 'em coming folks.

Just one problem, however. Nick Adams, you've submitted a nice poem, and I like your guts in not just repeating the whole line rather than just the end word, but it doesn't quite follow the form. The end words should be rotated in a specific pattern (see the numbers in my initial post) so that, if your first stanza is "field, forest, trees moon," then your second stanza should be "forest, trees, moon, field" etc. Let me know if you're confused about this and would like me to explain more.

Oh, I didn't think the the order in the rearrangement mattered. I will submit something new, for the past it history.

[UltimaHybrid]

I take my Fear and my Humilation
I crush it into my Fist
I open up my hand i have Diamonds
My Diamonds are my Rage
I have Diamonds in my eyes



i made some arrangements.and corrections to this poem...

[SteveH]

If this is a variant of the sestina, shouldn't it have a two-line envoy at the end, to correspond to the sestina's three-line envoy, in which half the repeating words appear at the end of the lines and the other half somewhere within them?

Be that as it may, here's my effort, with envoy. The title, which supplies the four repeating words, is the slogan from a late-19th or early-20th century advertisment for the Hook Norton Brewery Co. Ltd., a reproduction of which I've got on a poster on my living-room wall. Click here.

Celebrated Ales and Stout

Let malt and hops in verse be celebrated!
Sing we the praises of all types of ales -
Of India Pale, of Bitter, Pilsner, Mild, and
Of Porter, famous ancestor of Stout.

Belgium has Trappist, Lambic, Kriek: dry Stout,
As made in Ireland,'s justly celebrated.
Britain invented India Pale Ales
And Bitter and Old Ale and Porter and

Lots more besides. Pilsner's from Germany and
The Czech Republic. Oddly, Russian Stout
Has British origins - it's celebrated
As star and Tsar among the strongest ales:

So raise your tankards to the drink that stout
Yeomen have always drunk and celebrated:
Harriestoun's, Theakston's, Fuller's, Jenning's ales,
And Chimay, Aass, Leffe, Hoegaarden, and

Hook Norton Brewery's celebrated Ales,
Robinson's 'Old Tom'*, and Titanic stout.

*King of beers! (imo.)

[autolycus]

or, pharmaceuticals and elder gods

In the great house He lies dreaming
The sleep is deep, not permanent;
In some far future chemical
Cold equations find solution.

What the cold has made permanent
Is the house of things chemical;
Man searches deep for solution
To the far hope which lies dreaming.

The cold makes it smell chemical;
These machines house a solution.
What in vasty deep lies dreaming
Has life not far from permanent.

Far submerged and in solution,
The cold subject still lies, dreaming
His house forever permanent;
In the deep stir things chemical.

Can lies dreaming find solution?
Truth, permanent or chemical?

=====
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

[Shurtugal]

hello creatures of the world. i'm new here, so i am inquiring are these poems one you have created. or have they come from books that you have read? i am inquiring because i am a young ( very, very young) writer. truthfully, i haven't even published anything. i just consider my self one because i love to write. i have severl poems i have written and would like to post them. thanks for the help.

P.S. Mor'ranr lifa unin hjatta onr- you'd have to read "Eldest to find out what i just said.