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Some Thinking on Form in Poetry

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Some Thinking on Form in Poetry Judyth Hill… poet & provocateur...? Put a Spin on the Planet: Write!! t [email protected] www.judythhill.com t www.eat-write-travel.com Some Thinking on Form in Poetry Recently, I read a fascinating essay by Robert Bly, in Talking Until Morning, where he quotes the poet Donald Hall. Hall contributes a wild thought on form, that I adore: when a poem is written in “form” whether a formally acknowledged, traditional form: sestina, villanelle, pantoum, sonnet, or is somehow formalized on the page: quatrains, tercets, concrete or shaped poems, we are subtly experiencing the presence of 1 of 3 kinds of infantile fun, which he calls “Sensualities”: 1. Mouth fun: the great delight of sound play, i.e., Shakespeare’s sonnets 2. Leg fun: like a baby’s glad kicking: meter, strong dancing beats, i.e., Yeats 3. Appearance/disappearance: Peek a Boo, hiding/finding, rhyme/internal rhyme, sound in rhymed poems disappear, then reappear… William Blake says every artist needs the strength to endure the tension of fierce opposites in a poem, so, we might say that if form gives us a pleasurable experience that is inherently in someway childlike, and yet the content of the poem is adult, we can create and sustain huge tension in the poem. This is a forcefield I have often experimented with in my poems, using the bouncy, playful lines from nursery rhymes, or the Pantoum form, as a container for powerful content. And it works! I have a practice I call the solace of form. Open Ron Padgett’s Handbook of Poetic Forms and use it like the I Ching: learn and write what you are given by chance, follow form instead of content, and watch the unknown unfold into knowing. A Pantoum is the Western version of a 15th century Malayan form, the Pantun, a poem of undetermined lines, where the 2nd and 4th line of every stanza repeat as the 1st and 3rd lines, called in French, repetons, in the next stanza. The pattern repeats, as the poem requires, in the poet’s, we hope, capable hands , until the final stanza, where we have a neat twist: the only un- recycled lines in the poems, the 3rd and 1st line from the first stanza, become the 2nd and 4th line of the last stanza, respectively. A poem that ends as it begins, with all its startle made from the expectation of repeat. In Samurai Angel, I put a bit of torque on each line, a tweak ‘til the whole poem pulled. Here’s an example of the Pantoum used to hold material that is tender, and…. well…. watch the tiny altering in each repeton, as it builds the tension towards the final line. Samurai Angels I heard your name in my dream last night. It was your childhood name and I was calling you. There was an angel on every stair. There was light from four directions. It was your childhood name and I was calling you. Tell me eleven names for wind, I said. There was light from four directions. Tell me how you followed the scent of daffodils through the streets of London. Tell me eleven names for wind, I said. I'm one thought away. Tell me how you found a square filled with flowers in a dark city. The angels are calling our names out loud. I'm one landscape away. Any moment could be Japan. The angels are calling our names out loud. Their wings are light and cherry blossom, we could hear temple bells ringing on any street. Any landscape could be Japan. You were born there. There will always be plum blossoms, can't you hear the silence in the temples around us? I can write you three lines and there will be cranes in all of them. You were born there. After love we breathe in Japanese, our sleeping bodies form the character for light. I can write you three lines and there will be the way you loved your father in all of them. There's a secret in Haiku: I'll tell you. After love we breathe in Japanese, our sleeping bodies form the character for angel. After love the taste of Saki is silky and fierce. There's a secret, I'll tell you: Haiku is really four lines, but the last line is silent. After love the taste of Saki is silky and fierce. See how gently I write us into your past. The fourth line in Haiku is a temple. I call your secret name for the last time. See how delicately I write us into your past. Under Fujiyama, I know you are weeping. I call your childhood name for the last time. I hold you. Your tears rhyme with the grain of light woods, The sound of taps for your father. I read a warp and weft of color. Pantoum Rose vines grow round wells of dark water, Whose eyes sparkle, quiet, in that mirror? This is a 13th century poetry form brought Then go on - at least 5 stanzas – or as long to Malaya by the French Troubadours, as the poem wants to be! (from the French, Trobar, to find), an A pantoum does not have a specific length. ancient order of bards: the mystical poet- When you are ready to write the closing musicians of the Love Courts in Provence, stanza, re-copy the 2nd and 4th line of the Catalonia and Italy. And back to modern previous stanza as the 1st and 3rd line of this poetry by the surrealists, esp. Charles final stanza, and leave the 2nd and 4th line Baudelaire. John Ashbery introduced it to blank. the New York School of poets, in the 1950’s. Go up to your very first, beginning stanza of The circling, repetitive form of a pantoum, the pantoum. by its very nature, makes for lyrical, The 3rd line of the very first stanza becomes evocative poetry, and it is FABULOUS for the 2nd line of the last stanza, and the very dealing with Obsession: something all poets first line, the opening line, of this poem, know a bit about! now becomes the 4th, and final line of the Making a pantoum is also a marvelous way poem… to work with, and develop, a finished poem Thus, every line is used twice, and the first from lines within your WildWriting line and last line are the same – hopefully exercises. with an exciting AHA! moment at the end Read through a piece of your writing and for the writer! highlight the lines and images that attract you. I gaze into an emptiness, sweet as late Calmly, gently, write a 4 line stanza roses, (quatrain) that will begin the pantoum. Looking, I am suddenly seen, Make sure you have 4 distinct, separate Something knocks, quickly on my open heart lines. - Number each line: 1, 2,3, 4. Who is in the garden, who shall come to Next, write a second quatrain, (4 line) tea? stanza, using this pattern: Lines 2 and 4 of the preceding stanza are repeated as lines 1 and 3 of the next stanza. For example: Sestina Curiouser Pantoum Who is in the garden, who shall come to This intricate poetic form is a wonderful, playful tea? exercise to stretch skills, work with dominant images Textiles spin, weave silk into text. in a given subject, or watch fascinating connections Looking, I am suddenly seen, form, as totally disparate images cycle and re-cycle through the poem. Rose vines grow round wells of dark water. Writing a sestina is a fabulous way to surprise ourselves with random wild things we say because Textiles spin, weave silk into text. the words are pulling us across the page! Select 6 words and number them 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. “Unless there is a new mind, there cannot A sestina is a seven stanza poem in which the first six be a new line,” William Carlos Williams stanzas has six lines, and ends with a final, seventh stanza of 3 lines (a tercet). wrote, and poet Jane Hirshfield added, The selected six words are the end words of each line, “And the converse is true as well”. and they permutate in each stanza, in the following pattern: And what I hear in this conversation, is that 1 then: 6 then: 3 then: 5 then: 4 then: 2 taking forms from other cultures, other 2 1 6 3 5 4 times, refreshes both our minds and our 3 5 4 2 1 6 poetry. 4 2 1 6 3 5 5 4 2 1 6 3 A great example of that is our adoption of 6 3 5 4 2 1 the Persian, and later, Urdu poetry form, In the final tercet, one of the words appears in the the Ghazal (pronounced ghuzzle) a word, center of the line, that in Arabic means, “to woo, flirt, or and the other at the end, in this order: engage in amorous conversation with 1 2 3 4 women, paying tribute to their grace and 5 6 beauty.” The ghazal gained prominence in the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century So, this is how we work with the words: Number thanks to Hafiz and Rumi. In the eighteenth- them: century, the ghazal was used by poets kimono (word 1) shadow (word 2) writing in Urdu; among these poets, Ghalib teapot (word 3) is the recognized master. cinnamon (word 4) doorway ( word 5) Historically, the ghazal has been written to fish (word 6) Then use them at the end of the line in the word explore metaphysical questions, or express order pattern shown above: for example: love and devotion between a speaker and the Beloved, either a person, or usually, the A painter dances in skywhite kimono Divine, and at a distance, lending the poem Her wintery sleeves cast lunar shadow a quality of intense longing.
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