Snowmelt, part two
Jan. 18th, 2011 11:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mariness(partly in case you missed yesterday's posting thanks to the holiday)
Snowmelt is a chain poem, consisting of fourteen different poems that continue to get more and more complex, culminating in a sonnet. This is the fourth chain poem I've completed. Each time, I find myself wanting to free up the form just a little bit more.
For the curious, poem one is a compliment, or introduction to the poem; poem two is a couplet; poem three a triad; poem four a quatrain; poem five a mirror poem; poem six a triat, or sextet; poem seven a variation on a septet; poem eight a triolet (maddeningly fun poems to write); poem nine a novet; poem ten a rondeau; poem eleven an eleven line poem; poem twelve a pantoum (another maddening mirror poem type); poem thirteen a variation on the rondel; and poem fourteen a sonnet.
Chain poems start off easily enough. It's generally around poem seven and eight that things get...more tricky, especially if you are trying to tell a tale. From poem eight on, things get tricky enough that the sonnet actually comes as a relief, although I am not, as a rule, overly fond of sonnets, or of writing them.
Until this poem, I had generally written chain poems in response to writing challenges, or as a writing exercise, filling in the lines the way I might fill out a crossword puzzle. This was a bit different: the first line sprang to mind, along with an image of flying crows, and suddenly it occurred to me to weave those images into a structured form of this type. To my astonishment, this poem flowed, right from the beginning (with the slight exception of poem 6, which needed some rewriting).
It's a lesson, I guess, in poetic structure: the stronger the image or the meaning, the easier the structure, no matter how confining it might seem at first.
Snowmelt is a chain poem, consisting of fourteen different poems that continue to get more and more complex, culminating in a sonnet. This is the fourth chain poem I've completed. Each time, I find myself wanting to free up the form just a little bit more.
For the curious, poem one is a compliment, or introduction to the poem; poem two is a couplet; poem three a triad; poem four a quatrain; poem five a mirror poem; poem six a triat, or sextet; poem seven a variation on a septet; poem eight a triolet (maddeningly fun poems to write); poem nine a novet; poem ten a rondeau; poem eleven an eleven line poem; poem twelve a pantoum (another maddening mirror poem type); poem thirteen a variation on the rondel; and poem fourteen a sonnet.
Chain poems start off easily enough. It's generally around poem seven and eight that things get...more tricky, especially if you are trying to tell a tale. From poem eight on, things get tricky enough that the sonnet actually comes as a relief, although I am not, as a rule, overly fond of sonnets, or of writing them.
Until this poem, I had generally written chain poems in response to writing challenges, or as a writing exercise, filling in the lines the way I might fill out a crossword puzzle. This was a bit different: the first line sprang to mind, along with an image of flying crows, and suddenly it occurred to me to weave those images into a structured form of this type. To my astonishment, this poem flowed, right from the beginning (with the slight exception of poem 6, which needed some rewriting).
It's a lesson, I guess, in poetic structure: the stronger the image or the meaning, the easier the structure, no matter how confining it might seem at first.