If people want to participate, that would be awesome. My special subject for this semester of my University course is "Forms of Modern Poetry". We aim to discuss, dissect and understand poetic form, how it can be used to effect, and what constraints and benefits each form might give. Each week, we write in a given form to display our understanding of it, and, hopefully, our ability to bend it to our own poetic will. Previously: Accentual Verse Couplets Sonnets Villanelles, Sestinas and Pantoums This week! Quatrains and Blank Verse. Greetings all, it's me again. Delayed again, no less. But I am determined to keep this going until all installments are posted. This week was, for me, just Quatrains and longer stanzas. But because they're so incredibly simple to explain, I've decided to roll it up with the following week, Blank Verse, as well. Blank Verse is similarly uncomplicated. For Quatrains, the simple rule is four. Four lines. There is no set rhyme scheme, rhythmic meter, or requirements of any sort save that your work is transcribed in lines of four. The strength and subtlety to this form, therefore, is how you use that limitation. There are many ways to maneuver within those four lines - many options you can take. How will you exploit that? For Blank Verse, you need to write in iambic pentameter, but with no rhyme scheme. Blank verse is famously used in Paradise Lost, but otherwise is not a particularly widespread form. Really this is more a measure of your mastery of blank verse, as, due to a lack of rhyme committment, you are given otherwise free rein of your vocabulaic ingenuity. Give it a shot. I'll just repost my definitions of iambic here: Spoiler: show spoiler hide spoiler Iambic verse is a verse where in the stresses are alternate. So, for example: The sky increased to paler hues, forgetting notes of darker blues It is useful to remember that words are not uniformly stressed. Instead, the stress with which you read them is often modified by the surrounding rhymic context. This is particularly applicable to single-syllable words, and within that, especially conjunctives. More information on the iambic meter can be found here. All you really need to remember, though, is that the pattern must be unstressed-stressed, unstressed-stressed, etc. I-amb. Iambic Pentameter, therefore, is where there are five of these alternating stresses per ten-syllable line. Please do post your poems! 16-30 lines long, please My poems for these weeks. Moonlighting. Tonight I'll walk out on to my veranda, In memories more lovely to destroy, My skin to light up like a salamander, I used to hang around the older boys. I, multiform, explicit, devil-dare; Some wanted me so much, I had no choice - Am now, I think, quite soluble in air, Locked within a room without a voice. For fronding patterns print across my arms, They told me that I couldn't love myself I throw them, mirror fronds of freckled palms. My health, sweet spell, the pills upon my shelf. The whisper-kin of wind-song, wind-sock strained, I thought I would evaporate that day. My night-world, airy, secret and contained. I bought a dozen kettles on the way. It made sense – water constitutes us most; I filled the cistern with my singing host, And naked in that holy water's thrall, I let my sloughing skin begin to fall. They tell me that I am a 'lunatic' - What lunatic has worlds at her behest? They try to 'fix' me with their silly tricks... I'm told to step inside now, to get dressed. The men are very nice, most of the time, And when they want me, leave me shiny dimes. But soon I'll shed this skin, embrace my strand, And leave my torn-off footprints where I stand. ------ Affirmation And now I have completed all my thought. A rocky journey, true enough to tell Of all the sorrow heads can hold inside; Bespoken peaks and gullies trussed withal, The dappled scree, a hundred thousand stars Of memory lain strewed across the floor. The quartz and orange chintz of one-night stands, And constellations forming hands inside; To grip and to congratulate, or vow - The arbor over, clover underfoot, Sidereal voices stamped onto a wall Below the starlight covering my mind. The vertebrae of individual forms And faces, faces, many many faces... The knuckles and noises now are near enough To call my own – and in some ways, they are. The continental streets. The arching iron. The outline of a muslin sheet. The grave. The pathways and the canyons of the mind, The crevices within the deepest thoughts - To wander sometime in the veldt or dale, Appreciate the landscape, carved of age. To navigate and not to find, to search, To be at peace with knowing nothing sure, To stumble here upon some long forgotten Experience. To find yourself in you.

Quatrains often seem to come most naturally to me, which is why I generally try to push against them, in hopes of broadening my horizons. I do, however, have a poem using quatrains that I've been slowly working on, over the past few months, which I wouldn't mind sharing the few stanzas of here. This is far from being final, and there is at least one stanza I don't even rememebr writing (I've been simultaniously doing this one both on PC and on paper) but it IS 16 lines worth. Code: untitled driving poem Suburban night-driving         down parking-lot back-roads Not a thing left to do         once the shops are all closed Disenfranchised youth from         upper middle class homes look for something to do         until the morning comes. Double the speed limit         equals double the rush Then pop in to neutral         and let up off the clutch Just coast for a while         see how long it will last ‘til you’re creeping along         letting other cars pass.

I actually can't find any complete blank verse poems at the moment, so here are some quatrains. Aveilut "Aveilut begins at the conclusion of the funeral and continues through the seven days of shiva." Bread goes in the breadbox, shoes go in the shoebox, and you go in the you-box, underground to mellow like some fine wine. On the first night, the elephant slumps in the corner, stares, sometimes waving his broad, shroud-like ears. He brought his own bitter grapes to crush, spraying the sour juice on your sister, my best friend, even your mother, her blond hair and black veil. It becomes impossible for me to tie my shoelaces, to keep my teeth away from my fingernails, to eat without immediately vomiting. Wine cannot be poured back in the bottle once it has mixed with water. The elephant will not go away unless I ask it politely. Which I won’t-- it is easier to leave and lock the door. God Will Provide He picked up his daughters for the weekend. He said he was taking them to the lake. “To fish?” asked his ex-wife. “Sure,” he replied. When Abraham took Isaac to the forest, what did he tell Sarah? The knife descended and was stopped before Isaac could scream. Two girls tore the skin from their fingertips trying to claw through glass while the sun shrank and darkened. Their father watched from the shore until the crane reeled his truck from the water like a huge rod drawing out a flounder. Police fluttered around him, slow angels unable to find a substitute sacrifice.

Bread goes in the breadbox, shoes go in the shoebox, and you go in the you-box, underground to mellow like some fine wine. I think I'm in love with this stanza. The first three lines are a delicious cake, and the fourth is icing.

That is a poem that I wrote for my senior thesis and it was very weird because I was working with a language poet and she made me do things that were definitely outside my comfort zone. Also I will check out your six poems when I get a minute. Also, flippy, I like Moonlighting much better than Affirmation and I am not sure why but I will give it some thought.

Gaaah. I have heard this. Moonlighting and Lament of Tsar Kolokol have been by far my most successful and well-received poems. But fuck knows if I can put my finger on why they work.

Here's my translation of a poem by the eccentric 15th century Japanese zen monk Ikkyu. The original is in Classical/Literary Chinese, and I've preserved the original aaba rhyme scheme (which is almost always left out of translations from Chinese). To: Master Yoso, Concerning my Sudden Departure from Nyoian Temple I’ve been at the monastery for ten days and my mind’s in a whirl. Under foot, the long red thread of passion twirls. If some day you come looking for me, Check the fish shack, the sake shop, or underneath a girl.