I think the title says it all - with today being the final day of National Poetry Month as well as World Tai Chi and Qigong Day (an important day for Morris, my sweetheart, who teaches a myriad of tai chi and qigong classes, and who is therefore running not just one, but TWO World Tai Chi & Qigong Day events which will take most of our day), I am ( Read more... )

Just like the cinquain, the limerick is a poem consisting of five lines. That's . . . pretty much all they have in common, really, though I suppose one can pull back far enough to say they have a certain number of stressed syllables required per line. Whereas the cinquain can cover any sort of subject matter, the limerick is nearly always used for ( Read more... )

Following up on yesterday's post about how to write a cinquain, here are several variations. Actually, only the first is a true variation - the rest are combinations.

The reverse cinquainStill five lines, only the syllable/stress counts are reversed. So instead of 2-4-6-8-2, you'd have 2-8-6-4-2 (with stressed syllable counts of 1-4-3-2-1). For ( Read more... )

For history on the creation of this American form by poet Adelaide Crapsey, I hope you will read yesterday's post, if you haven't already done so. The word cinquain is pronounced "SIN-kane", by the by.

The requirements for writing a cinquainAnd please note, this may differ from what your kid learned at school, where some teachers say that a ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

Today marks the final post in my discussion of sprung rhythm, and there are a few tidbits that remain.

Sprung rhythm makes use of kenningsIn addition to borrowing Anglo-Saxon ideas such as four stressed syllables per line, a caesura in the middle forming hemistichs, and the use of alliteration, Gerard Manley Hopkins also opted to use kennings in ( Read more... )

Here are links to the previous posts on sprung rhythm:
  An intro to sprung rhythm
  Yesterday's post about poetic feet in sprung rhythm

In addition to his requirement of four stressed syllables per line (using poetic feet varying from 1 to 4 syllables in length) plus a caesura mid-line, Hopkins used a lot of alliteration, as was discussed in the ( Read more... )

A couple times upon a time, I spent the month of June doing Shakespeare-related posts. And also posted Shakespeare-related posts on Wednesdays. That was back when I blogged all the time, a thing I stopped doing, but I am working on repairing that ( Read more... )

I am continuing on with yesterday's discussion of sprung rhythm today. And tomorrow, too, though I'm getting ahead of myself.

Today it's about poetic feet, and the "rules" of sprung rhythm.

First and foremost, there are four feet per line, according to Gerard Manley Hopkins, the founder of the sprung rhythm. (See, however, yesterday's example ( Read more... )

What I got up to earlier this week:
Anglo-Saxon or Old English verse - an intro
Anglo-Saxon or Old English verse and stress
Anglo-Saxon alliteration
More on Anglo-Saxon verse
Kennings

For me, discussion of Anglo-Saxon verse and kenning leads logically to a discussion of sprung rhythm, the invention of Gerard Manley Hopkins, noted poet and Jesuit ( Read more... )