Poetic Forms used in Read the Birds project for FunADay Pittsburgh 2016

Poetic Forms used in “Read the Birds”

I culled most of these poetic forms from Robert Lee Brewer’s Poetic Asides blog on the Writer’s Digest website here: http://www.writersdigest.com/whats-new/list-of-50-poetic-forms-for-poets.

Aside from the villanelle I wrote for Day 2, I mostly wrote free verse until Day 13, when I decided to write a goofy poem for a dead cardinal that my friend Carol and I cavorted about with in college for a few days. I thought it would be fun to juxtapose the silliness with a strict form and decided on the ode, which traditionally uses elevated language. I had so much fun playing with that idea that I then decided to try a different form every day. So most of the poems before Day 13 are free verse; most afterward (except Day 28, what was I thinking? Nothing much) experiment with various forms as explicated upon here:

Villanelle, Day 2: The French villanelle consists of five tercets (a stanza of three lines, I thought they were called triplets!) and a quatrain (four lines). The first and third lines of the first stanza alternate as the third line of each succeeding tercet, and then form a couplet to end the poem. All first and third lines rhyme; all second lines rhyme. Here is the rhyme scheme: A(1)/ b/ A(2); a/ b/ A(1) ; a/b/A(2); a/ b/ A(1); a/b/A(2); a/ b/ A(1)/A(2). Famous examples: Theodore Roethke “The Waking”; Dylan Thomas “Do Not Go Gentle into the Good Night”

Ode, Day 13: Uses elevated language, often in praise of a person not present (here: dead). I used a rhyme scheme for each stanza that goes, roughly: ababcdecde; fgfghijhij; klklmnomno. I thought I got that from somewhere but, looking back, I can’t figure out where. Keats? Wordsworth? They liked odes.

Interlocking Rubaiyat, Day 14: The poem is comprised of quatrains following an aaba rhyme pattern. Each successive quatrain picks up the unrhymed line as the rhyme for that stanza. So a three-stanza rubaiyat might rhyme: aaba/bbcb/ccdc. Sometimes the final stanza rhymes all four lines as did Robert Frost in “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” For fun, I echoed a famous line from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

Cinquain, Day 15: A five-line poetic form from Adelaide Crapsey, comprised of 2 syllables in the first line, 4 in the second line, 6 in the third, 8 in the fourth, and 2 in the fifth.

Gwawdodyn, Day 16: A Welsh form comprised of quatrains (4-line stanzas) that have a 9/9/10/9 syllable pattern and matching end rhymes on lines 1, 2, and 4. The variations are made in that third line. The one I used has an internal rhyme with the end rhyme on the third line.

Blitz, Day 17: A 50-line form by Robert Keim. Line 1 is a phrase or image. Line 2 starts with the first word in 1. Lines 3 and 4 start with the last word of 2; lines 5 and 6 start with the last word of 4, and so on through 48 lines. Line 49 is the last word of 48; Line 50 is the last word of 47. The title is three words: (first word of 3) (conjunction) (first word of 47); no punctuation.

Sestina, Day 18: Undoubtedly the hardest form I tried. The six words that end each of the lines in the first stanza rotate in a specific pattern throughout the six-stanza main body of the poem; then form a tercet using all six words in the seventh and final stanza. If each end word is assigned a letter (a/b/c/d/e/f), then the repetition goes thus: abcdef; faebdc; cfdabe; ecbfad; deacfb; bdfeca

Pantoum, Day 19: A form from Malay consisting of quatrains with an abab rhyme scheme, repeating lines 2 and 4 from the previous stanza as lines 1 and 3 in the next stanza.

Quatern, Day 20: A French form of 16 8-syllable lines over 4 quatrains. The first line is the refrain. In the second stanza, the refrain is the second line; in the third stanza, the third line; in the fourth stanza, the fourth (and final) line. There are no rules for rhyming or iambics.

Roundabout, Day 21: Form created by poet Sara Diane Doyle and a teen poet she worked with, David Edwards. It’s a four-stanza poem, each stanza consisting of 5 lines. The poem is written in iambic (pairs of unstressed/stressed beats, or feet, per line) and the lines have 4 feet, 3 feet, 2 feet, 2 feet and 3 feet respectively. The rhyme scheme is abccb/bcddc/cdaad/dabba. The second line of each stanza repeats as the final line.

Shadorma, Day 22: A Spanish 6-line syllabic poem of 3/5/3/3/7/5 syllable lines. There you go.

Rhyming couplets, Day 23: Couplets that rhyme. Easy peasy for our guest poet.

Rondeau, Day 24: French form of 15 lines across 3 stanzas with the first word or phrase from the first line represented as a refrain (R) and a rhyme scheme of 2 rhymes throughout (A and B): A(R)/A/B/B/A; A/A/B/R; A/A/B/B/A/R. The A and B lines are usually 8 or 10 syllables in length; I went much shorter. The refrain is usually 1 to 3 words (or so).

List poem, Day 25: The list poem was used by the Greeks and in many books of the Bible. Two popular American poems, Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” and Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” are list poems. Basically, a list poem (or catalog poem) lists things: names, places, actions, thoughts, images, etc.

Chant poem, Day 26: In this form, repetitive lines form a sort of chant. Each line can repeat, or every other line. My Day 7 poem unwittingly was a variation on this open and very flexible form.

Luc bat, Day 27: A Vietnamese form with alternating lines of 6 and 8 syllables. The sixth syllables of each couplet rhyme (my version uses approximate rhymes) with the eighth syllable of the preceding line: xxxxxA; xxxxxAxB; xxxxxB; xxxxxBxC; xxxxxC; xxxxxCxD etc.

Rondel, Day 29: A French form of 13 lines over 3 stanzas. Rhyme scheme: ABba/abAB/abbaA (uppercase letters are refrains); typically 8 syllables a line.

Rispetto, Day 30: Italian form that pays respect, often to a woman. Usually one stanza consisting of eight lines, each of 11 syllables, with a rhyme scheme of ababccdd or abababcc.

Sonnet, Day 31: 14-line sonnet in the Petrarchan form, with the rhyme scheme abba/abba/cdecde. I echoed Milton. Who wouldn’t?