Form Poem Contest

[alakungfu]

Congratulations, firefangled. Your poem, for one thing, spelled out the value of being alone, as we are alone with our thoughts sometimes. I look forward to the form you choose;

[TheFifthElement]

Congratulations firefangled, it is a fine poem.

Thanks for your comments qimi, gracious as always

[firefangled]

I would ordinarily not have waited so long to respond, but my beloved stepfather passed away on Monday of this week. He was 89 and had been suffering for a year, so it was merciful for him to go.

Thank you Qimissung for selecting my poem. I truly did not expect to be selected. Though I am glad you said by a thread, because all the poems were excellent.

The triolet is a French form from around the late 14th century. It turns on two rhymes and there lies some of its difficulty. The first line appears three times, thus its name. The trick is to make sense with all the repetition.

Here is the rhyme:

A
B
a
A
a
b
A
B


There are older examples, but the language is antiquated. These are two of my favorites:

O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,

To a Fat Lady Seen from the Train

O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?
O fat white woman whom nobody loves,
Why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
When the grass is soft as the breast of doves
And shivering sweet to the touch?
O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?

By Frances Corford

****
We Poets

We poets are so very strange!
We write and write and lose our minds!
Emotions flow in quite a range;
We poets are so very strange!
We’re happy. Then, we quickly change;
To make a world it takes all kinds.
We poets are so very strange!
We write and write and lose our minds!

Luann Kennedy

[Pendragon]

Soliloquy

The rain is a comfort to those in distress,
So gentle her touch on my face and my skin
When the power of despondency is so strong in this world
The rain is a comfort to those in distress,
With sorrow for breakfast, and supper depression
Never knowing when trouble comes or from which direction
The rain is a comfort to those in distress,
So gentle her touch on my face and my skin

Pendragon

[firefangled]

Thanks for getting things off to an excellent start, Pen.

[firefangled]

Let's make the deadline May 1.

Sound OK?

There are fine poets on Lit-Net. I am excited to see all the triolets.

[PrinceMyshkin]

I wandered along a path unmarked
Where once my love and I had been,
On a life-long journey fresh embarked.
I wandered along a path unmarked,
Where once with the birds we larked.
As in a solitary sleeper’s dream,
I wandered along a path unmarked
Where once my love and I had been.

[AuntShecky]

Gosh, how I love these two lines:

Soliloquy

With sorrow for breakfast, and supper depression
Never knowing when trouble comes or from which direction

[alakungfu]

Child of the past, spurned and outcast,
Where does your reticence lead?
Your wish is your bond, your memories fast.
Child of the past, spurned and outcast,
Your promise is scattered, your playground is vast;
But never a star in transit you'll heed.
Child of the past, spurned and outcast,
Where does your reticence lead?

[firefangled]

Thanks, Alakungfu.

What amazing poems so far!

[autolycus]

Curiouser and Curiouser

Two ravens sang in the darkening day
A curious tune with a warning refrain
That said one more time what they had to say
Two ravens sang in the darkening day
That one has a duty to look for a way
That does not end in a multitude slain
Two ravens sang in the darkening day
A curious tune with a warning refrain

[AuntShecky]

Please Remit

Among everything I still miss
I want to get my garden back
right now, with spring’s prime past due kiss.
Among everything I still miss:
birds who fled from a landlord’s hiss,
amid my overgrowing lack.
Among everything I still miss
I want to get my garden back.

[firefangled]

This Form Poetry contest is over. I will have the results in a few days. Congratulations to all the fine entries and thanks for participating.

[firefangled]

All of these triolets were true to the form, which is not always as easy a task as it might seem. Congratulations to all those who submitted triolets. Now for the hard part.

Pen, what I liked first about this was the use of rain in this repetitive form. As with so many of your poems you bring us face to face with the common struggle to live with faith and hope in a world that is unpredictably wonderful and cruel. My favorite lines also are “With sorrow for breakfast, and supper depression/Never knowing when trouble comes or from which direction.”

Prince, for me the best lines were “Where once with the birds we larked./As in a solitary sleeper’s dream…” This indirect association between the cherished then and lonely now was done very well by putting these lines one following the other even though they are parts of separate thoughts. Well done!

Alakungfu, the poignancy of this simple question coupled with its persistent echo whipsawed me! My favorite line, “Your promise is scattered, your playground is vast;” I think it is difficult to write about the solitude of shyness without getting mired in pathos. This did not at all.

Autolycus, I liked the description “curious tune.” Employing ravens to sing it was brilliant. There seemed a sad sarcasm or maybe despondency to this in the line “That said one more time what they had to say…” This short triolet said so much to me that it seemed longer than it is. I got to this point and again was floored by what was being said between these powerful lines, coupled with the one above. “That one has a duty to look for a way/That does not end in a multitude slain…”

AuntShecky, this struck to my core because I have been without my garden for nearly 10 years. Your triolet dug up all those key reasons for missing a garden. I know you say that the speaker is just the speaker in a poem, but I couldn’t help thinking this was personal. I liked the length and urgency of this perfect line, “right now, with spring’s prime past due kiss.” I also felt the remorse in “birds who fled from a landlord’s hiss,/amid my overgrowing lack.”

***
I hope it is obvious that I truly loved and appreciated every one of these. I feel so lucky many times to have found the poets and writers of Literature Network.

Being a child of the ‘60’s I often remark as to why there are not in this decade more poems and particularly popular songs admonishing war. To me it is so important that we speak well, speak often, and speak relentlessly to the point that peace seldom if ever comes from war. Autolycus expressed this concisely, artistically and very true to the form imposed. Autolycus, congratulations on winning the form poetry contest.

[autolycus]

firefangled, thank you very much for the honour! As another child of the 60s, now teaching children of the 90s(!), I've realised that sometimes it's difficult for them to see how we used to live and may yet descend towards.

Note: The ravens come from my completed experiment at http://tworavens.blogspot.com, where they say more things, and some most peculiar.

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The next form is something that I think I've seen before somewhere around here... it's the terza rima haiku, that odd blend of Renaissance Italian and Japanese traditions.

Here are the rules:

1. Terza rima is a form which Dante Alighieri used in his Divine Comedy. It consists of lines whose rhyme-endings follow the scheme a-b-a, b-c-b, c-d-c, d-e-d and so on. Conventionally it either terminates with a single line (so the ending here would be d-e-d e) or a couplet (so the ending here would be d-e-d e-e).

2. A haiku (well, the modern type) is a form which has more or less three phrases with a syllable count of 5-7-5 and does not have a particular rhyme scheme. In some traditions, the haiku has a seasonal theme (or a theme from nature), with two contrasting images.

3. The terza rima haiku is a hybrid. Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to compose a poem of fourteen lines with the following structure:

3a. The rhyme scheme is aba, bcb, cdc, ded, ee.
3b. The syllable count is 5-7-5, 5-7-5, 5-7-5, 5-7-5, 7-7 (note this last detail).
3c. The theme must be taken from the natural environment (although 'winter in a city' would just about qualify, for 'winter' and not for the 'city').

4. While terza rima is conventionally written in iambic pentameter (if in English) and haiku are generally without such constraints, you are free to follow the latter tradition or invent other constraints of form.

5. Deadline is Saturday 6 Jun 2009, 8 pm EST (GMT -4).

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Enjoy yourselves! Thank you so much for being a great community!