Quatorzain I: Secrecy.

AI-free reading of this poem:

Solemn prayers fill the empty church;
hallow’d songs arise from pews of birch.

Midnights are when angels fill the halls—
neither flaw nor sin to weight their calls—
right where Heaven’s ardent mercy falls.
Yes, Amen, and God, they sing aloud,
earnest praises proudly thus avowed,
bless’d by secrecy’s embrace and shroud.

Only God may hear them. Only he
knows the meaning of their cry and plea.
Yet-unknown and his alone to see,
choirs outbreathe a psalm when no one’s near
as an offering at last sincere,
echoed up in majesty and fear.

Quatorzain II: In Sacred Places.

AI-free reading of this poem:

Caressing, smiling, both confiding,
enamored dreamers kiss in hiding.
In sacred places coinciding,
grotesque to Earth, they birth a treasure,
humanity devoid of measure,
melodic in its throes of pleasure.

Secure’s the love away from judges—
revealed to none who touch begrudges,
observes the bruising lips and smudges—
liturgical in eyes’ occlusion.
Neglect has borne them disillusion,
religion out of shared seclusion.

Nocturnal lovers taste affection
seduced by solitude. Perfection.

Contrapuntal: Secrecy in Sacred Places.

AI-free reading of this poem:

Solemn prayers fill the empty church;
Caressing, smiling, both confiding,
Hallow’d songs arise from pews of birch.

Enamored dreamers kiss in hiding.
Midnights are when angels fill the halls—
In sacred places coinciding,

Neither flaw nor sin to weight their calls—
Grotesque to Earth, they birth a treasure,
Right where Heaven’s ardent mercy falls.

Humanity devoid of measure,
Yes, Amen, and God, they sing aloud,
Melodic in its throes of pleasure.

Earnest praises proudly thus avowed,
Sincere’s the love away from judges—
Bless’d by secrecy’s embrace and shroud.

Revealed to none who touch begrudges,
Only God may hear them. Only he
Observes the birth of bruising smudges—

Knows the meaning of their cry and plea.
Liturgical within seclusion.
Yet-unknown and his alone to see,

Neglect has borne them disillusion—
Choirs outbreathe a psalm when no one’s near
Religion out of shared seclusion.

As an offering at last sincere,
Nocturnal lovers taste affection,
Echoed up in majesty and fear.
’
Seduced by solitude. Perfection.

This God-Forsaken Contrapuntal!

A contrapuntal text is the result of the intercalary arrangement of two separate pieces of writing which creates a hidden meaning.

When I prepared to pitch the idea of writing a complex-as-all-hell contrapuntal to my friend and fellow writer , the very first thought that came to mind was that of how most contrapuntal poetry out there simply isn’t formal at all. I mean, who has the time for that? Of course, this being my publication, the name of which is Scheming Rhymes, I naturally had to do something about that. Two questions came out of this train of thought, and these were:

1. What if it was a contrapuntal between two sonnets?

2. What if I could produce an acrostic resulting from their intercalation?

If you’ve actually read my poem, you will obviously notice that the sonnets are not sonnets at all—or at least not in the traditional sense of the word. They are indeed quatorzains, as the silly French call the 14-line arrangements that most sonnets adhere to, but the only thing these have in common with them is the couplet of the Shakespearean variant. Undeniably, I could have just written two sonnets. However, it’s never that simple on Scheming Rhymes, and you’re here for it. We’ll get there in a bit.

Regarding the acrostic, yes—there’s a reason for the purplish font at the start of every line. Why did I do this? I just wanted to leave a signature in this poem. Here it is!

Fourteen and fourteen from each poem constituting this contrapuntal add up to twenty-eight lines for me to work with. Scheming Rhymes perfectly fills half of that space while Brooklyn Crane sadly leaves me one letter short. Upon this ill-fated realization, I added the S at the end and pretended myself to be a brilliant strategist who can overcome anything with enough delusion. Surely the reader will know that an apostrophe precedes it because, you know, the poem is mine.

It is now that we can address the odd rhyme schemes of the quatorzains as, with the previous information in mind, I went ballistic.

SO! Because I had just recently posted my terza rima composition breakdown, it was freshly in my mind that a possible solution to this conundrum was such a form. I mean, think about it. Terza rima poems work on a formula of 3x + 1 (or 2), so I did 28 minus 1, divided by 3, and I landed on-- I KNOW YOU ARE NOT HERE FOR THE MATH! Anyway, I landed on 9 tercets plus 1 loose line, accounting for all twenty-eight verses.

Next was the question of what the rhyme schemes had to be in order to fulfill this crazy dream. Terza rima works on a ABA BCB CDC … YZY Z (or ZZ) scheme, so I superimposed it on the acrostic as follows.

Tercet 1: S(A)-C(B)-H(A)
Tercet 2: E(B)-M(C)-I(B)
Tercet 3: N(C)-G(D)-R(C)
Tercet 4: H(D)-Y(E)-M(D)
Tercet 5: E(E)-S(F)-B(E)
Tercet 6: R(F)-O(G)-O(F)
Tercet 7: K(G)-L(H)-Y(G)
Tercet 8: N(H)-C(I)-R(H)
Tercet 9: A(I)-N(J)-E’(I)
Loose line: S(J)

That’s all fine and dandy, but I still had to distribute these evenly between the quatorzains.

Quatorzain 1: S(A), H(A), M(C), N(C), R(C), Y(E), E(E), B(E), O(G), K(G), Y(G), C(I), A(I), E’(I)

Quatorzain 2: C(B), E(B), I(B), G(D), H(D), M(D), S(F), R(F), O(F), L(H), N(H), R(H), N(J), S(J)

I hope that you are starting to see the way these two bastards came into existence. We now have the structural guidelines for both quatorzains and the resulting terza rima. This would absolutely be enough for a sane person to go about their day. It’s a double quatorzain/terza rima/contrapuntal/acrostic after all.

It was not enough for me, but I will not bore you with the metrical choices made in this poem. It’s explained on the paid-for section of my terza rima post, though.

With all of these guardrails to work with, it was finally time to write. It was absolute hell.

But why do this?

The short answer is: because I can, lol. The actual answer, however, is that I do it because it can be done. Scheming Rhymes is all about exploring what we can do to enrich poetry, understanding both the traditions that educate our verse today and the techniques that might innovate its composition tomorrow. This work is not perfect, I’m aware, and there is sure to be someone who executes the planning behind it more expertly, but we ought to encourage writers to challenge themselves and produce beauty through effort, not through simply making poetry easier.

So there you have it. Here’s to more brutal antitheses to free verse poetic prose!

Join the madness—or don’t!

As with all previously explored forms and techniques, I am not here to police you about how you write and what decisions you make. You can make lines vary in syllable count, ditch the rhymes, change the number of lines per stanza, or anything else you want to do. All I intend on this publication is to give you a starting point from which to find your identity as a writer. Here’s the text by that inspired me to explore this technique using a completely different approach!

I hope you liked it, and I can’t wait to see what you come up with. But really—give it a try and tag me so I can read and share it!

Here’s my own voiceover for the poem—human-made, not AI-generated:

Poem text.

I. Behind the pulpit, there the pastor spoke
about the Garden—all the Lord had made.
The people listened quietly and swayed
until he raised his voice to cast a joke.
“As women always do,” he dared provoke,
“the wife of Adam did as God forbade,
and Adam, dragged to fix the mess she’d made,
was left to work for life1 while being broke!”

The men alone, as always, loudly cheered.
Beside her husband, a woman scoffed.
“I’m not okay with this,” she said below
her breath. “He does it all the time! It’s weird.”
Her husband turned and said as if he coughed,
“It’s just a joke, Amelia. Let it go.”

II. Her father, brothers, husband, and her son
arrived for dinner right on Tuesday night.
It was a multitude to feed or spite,
but serving them she was the only one.
“You’ll be a proper woman once you’ve done
the dishes,” said her brother, twice her height
and doing nothing then to be polite.
“It’s that or staying single. Wife or nun!”

Amelia, putting forks and platters down,
replied to him with wrath across her frown,
“I’m not a slave!” “The Bible says you are.
At home is where you work.2 You’re so bizarre.”
Her father spoke before his daughter’s woe,
“It’s just a joke, Amelia. Let it go.”

III. On Thursday afternoon, she thought of this
while buying groceries and birthday cake.
She wore a summer dress for comfort’s sake,
yet what she heard she couldn’t just dismiss.
“You ought to dress as God commands it, miss,”
a man suggested.3 “Some would rather take
what’s on display, however true or fake.”
She turned to see a smile become abyss.

“I’m not a toy!” She pushed him with a blow.
The man recoiled, a bruise around his eye.
“You witch,” he spat. “Your legs and shoulders show.
It’s not my fault you women all are slow.”
Until he’d left, she heard a demon sigh,
“It’s just a joke, Amelia. Let it go.”

IV. When Sunday service came, her tears were shed.
She took a notebook, put her words to pen,
returned to church, and listened once again.
“As women always do,” the pastor said,
but then Amelia rose to speak instead.
“We’re judged the most to hide the sins of men!”
She shouted forth, expecting no amen.
The congregation stared in muted dread.

“A woman ought to never speak4 or frown.
Because of you, the Bible teaches so!”
The people laughed. She let her anger grow.
Behind the pulpit, there he stood—a clown—
declaring once anew while looking down,
“It’s just a joke, Amelia. Don’t you know?”

Read any of my books.

The Petrarchan Sonnet.

Thankfully, this one isn’t French. Francesco di Petracco—quite obviously an Italian writer whose name ended up anglicized as Francis Petrarch—serves as the namesake of this form as well as its most prominent author.5 It’s older than the Shakespearean variant though still less popular. While similar, however, the Petrarchan has several attributes regarding structure and composition that vastly distinguish it from its younger brother.

Petrarchan sonnets, like Shakespeareans, consist of fourteen lines, though instead of three quatrains6 and a couplet,7 Petrarchans are composed of one octave and a sestet, of eight and six lines respectively.

Petrarchan rhyme scheme.

The octave must always have a ABBAABBA rhyme scheme, and it serves as the setup of the poem.

Behind the pulpit, there the pastor spoke (A)
about the Garden—all the Lord had made. (B)
The people listened quietly and swayed (B)
until he raised his voice to cast a joke. (A)
“As women always do,” he dared provoke, (A)
“the wife of Adam did as God forbade, (B)
and Adam, dragged to fix the mess she’d made, (B)
was left to work for life while being broke!” (A)

When it comes to the sestet, on the other hand, the scheme has many known variants that are all equally valid—in case you were wondering why my four sestets had differing schemes among them. The most common sestet rhyme scheme across Petrarch’s own work is CDECDE.

The men alone, as always, loudly cheered. (C)
Beside her husband, a woman scoffed. (D)
“I’m not okay with this,” she said below (E)
her breath. “He does it all the time! It’s weird.” (C)
Her husband turned and said as if he coughed, (D)
“It’s just a joke, Amelia. Let it go.” (E)

Petrarch also tended to use a much simpler CDCDCD rhyme scheme. Because many of his sonnets have been reimagined and rearranged to fit schemes in English translations, one may yet encounter an infinity of possible sestet patterns. I personally used CCDDEE, CDCCDC, and CDDCCD for Patriarchy.

1. CCDDEE scheme.

Amelia, putting forks and platters down, (C)
replied to him with wrath across her frown, (C)
“I’m not a slave!” “The Bible says you are. (D)
At home is where you work. You’re so bizarre.” (D)
Her father spoke before his daughter’s woe, (E)
“It’s just a joke, Amelia. Let it go.” (E)

1. CDCCDC scheme.

“I’m not a toy!” She pushed him with a blow. (C)
The man recoiled, a bruise around his eye. (D)
“You witch,” he spat. “Your legs and shoulders show. (C)
It’s not my fault you women all are slow.” (C)
Until he’d left, she heard a demon sigh, (D)
“It’s just a joke, Amelia. Let it go.” (C)

1. CDDCCD scheme.

“A woman ought to never speak or frown. (C)
Because of you, the Bible teaches so!” (D)
The people laughed. She let her anger grow. (D)
Behind the pulpit, there he stood—a clown— (C)
declaring once anew while looking down, (C)
“It’s just a joke, Amelia. Don’t you know?” (D)

There’s a world of choices to be made regarding the sestet’s rhyme scheme, so why not come up with something original for your own poem?

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Petrarchan narrative structure.

More than just a sonnet with a rather spicier rhyme scheme, the Petrarchan follows a specific narrative structure. The octave sets up a problem or situation that is meant to be resolved in the sestet portion of the poem. The octave is, in turn, divided into the setting and the conflict by its halving quatrains.

Setting.
Her father, brothers, husband, and her son
arrived for dinner right on Tuesday night.
It was a multitude to feed or spite,
but serving them she was the only one.

Conflict.
“You’ll be a proper woman once you’ve done
the dishes,” said her brother, twice her height
and doing nothing then to be polite.
“It’s that or staying single. Wife or nun!”

Resolution.
Amelia, putting forks and platters down,
replied to him with wrath across her frown,
“I’m not a slave!” “The Bible says you are.
At home is where you work. You’re so bizarre.”
Her father spoke before his daughter’s woe,
“It’s just a joke, Amelia. Let it go.”

Some scatterbrains will mention a volta or turn/twist as an integral part of the Petrarchan. However, this is simply the transition from conflict to resolution which typically happens during the first one or two lines of the sestet.

Innovate upon it!

As with all previously explored forms, I am not here to police you about how you write and what decisions you make. You can make lines vary in syllable count, ditch the rhymes, change the number of lines per stanza, or anything else you want to do. The Petrarchan is a very old form that’s been heavily modified for seven centuries by now anyway. All I intend on this publication is to give you a starting point from which to find your identity as a writer.

I hope you liked it, and I can’t wait to see what you come up with.

Poem text.

To feel your touch again is all I crave
and all I struggle to at last forgo.
The thought of it has made of me a slave.

The demons on my neck will not behave
without your hands to bind them, so I know:
to feel your touch again is all I crave.

The kiss and flame which once by night you gave
return in shades of midnight afterglow.
The thought of it has made of me a slave.

Remembering your piercing nails as they’ve
imprinted on my chest and deep below,
to feel your touch again is all I crave.

Without your claiming grasp, I cannot brave
the dark where both our passions used to flow.
The thought of it has made of me a slave.

I’ll take this loveless aching to my grave
unless you drag me back to long ago.
To feel your touch again is all I crave;
the thought of it has made of me a slave.

Read any of my books.

Villanelle composition breakdown.

It’s not a Crane post unless I point out that this form suffers from being fReNCh.

The villanelle consists strictly of five tercets (three-line stanzas) and one quatrain (a four-line stanza that is also French), and ever since the seventeenth century, when Jean Passerat wrote J’ai Perdu Ma Tourterelle—which translates to I’ve lost my turtledove—it has been known to possess a refrain or repeating throughline across its composition.

These repeating lines must be the first and third of the opening stanza, which in turn must rhyme among themselves, and poems have to alternate between them at the end of the following four tercets before they are both consecutively placed at the end of the finishing quatrain. I know it sounds very confusing when explained verbally, so let’s break it down visually.

To feel your touch again is all I crave (A1)
and all I struggle to at last forgo. (b)
The thought of it has made of me a slave. (A2)

The demons on my neck will not behave (a)
without your hands to bind them, so I know: (b)
to feel your touch again is all I crave. (A1)

The kiss and flame which once by night you gave (a)
return in shades of midnight afterglow. (b)
The thought of it has made of me a slave. (A2)

Remembering your piercing nails as they’ve (a)
imprinted on my chest and deep below, (b)
to feel your touch again is all I crave. (A1)

Without your claiming grasp, I cannot brave (a)
the dark where both our passions used to flow. (b)
The thought of it has made of me a slave. (A1)

I’ll take this loveless aching to my grave (a)
unless you drag me back to long ago. (b)
To feel your touch again is all I crave; (A1)
the thought of it has made of me a slave. (A2)

This arrangement creates a song-like trait for the piece, and it emphasizes the theme of the overall poem. However, it is not the only rule for this form. The first line of tercets two-through-four must rhyme with the refrains, and the second or middle lines of all stanzas, while different, must rhyme between them. Furthermore—because there is obviously more to this madness—it is assumed that all lines share an equal amount of syllables and at least a similar meter if not the very same. The number of syllables is not strict, though. That is:

I’ll take this loveless aching to my grave (10 | 5 stresses)
unless you drag me back to long ago. (10 | 5 stresses)
To feel your touch again is all I crave; (10 | 5 stresses)
the thought of it has made of me a slave. (10 | 5 stresses)

Composition tips and writing together!

It’s pretty straightforward, honestly. Let’s try it out together!

1. The first thing you should do is make an outline. Six stanzas—five tercets and a quatrain.

2. Then, as you’ve obviously taken out your notes app or notebook to do this with us, write two lines that rhyme!

To feel your touch again is all I crave; (A1)
the thought of it has made of me a slave. (A2)

1. These will be your refrains or throughlines. Now, set them at the start and at the end of the first stanza respectively and fill the line in between with what best suits it for you.

To feel your touch again is all I crave
and all I struggle to at last forgo.
The thought of it has made of me a slave.

1. Once you’ve done this, place each refrain on its other three positions along the poem.

To feel your touch again is all I crave (A1)
and all I struggle to at last forgo. (b)
The thought of it has made of me a slave. (A2)

------ (a)
------ (b)
to feel your touch again is all I crave. (A1)

------ (a)
------ (b)
The thought of it has made of me a slave. (A2)

------ (a)
------ (b)
to feel your touch again is all I crave. (A1)

------ (a)
------ (b)
The thought of it has made of me a slave. (A1)

------ (a)
------ (b)
To feel your touch again is all I crave; (A1)
the thought of it has made of me a slave. (A2)

1. For the remaining lines, you will fill every first space with a rhyme corresponding to your throughlines and every second with a rhyme based on what you did for that empty space in the first stanza.

To feel your touch again is all I crave (A1)
and all I struggle to at last forgo. (b)
The thought of it has made of me a slave. (A2)

The demons on my neck will not behave (a)
without your hands to bind them, so I know: (b)
to feel your touch again is all I crave. (A1)

The kiss and flame which once by night you gave (a)
return in shades of midnight afterglow. (b)
The thought of it has made of me a slave. (A2)

Remembering your piercing nails as they’ve (a)
imprinted on my chest and deep below, (b)
to feel your touch again is all I crave. (A1)

Without your claiming grasp, I cannot brave (a)
the dark where both our passions used to flow. (b)
The thought of it has made of me a slave. (A1)

I’ll take this loveless aching to my grave (a)
unless you drag me back to long ago. (b)
To feel your touch again is all I crave; (A1)
the thought of it has made of me a slave. (A2)

1. And there you have it! A freshly composed villanelle of our own!

Innovate upon it!

As with all previously explored forms, I am not here to police you about how you write and what decisions you make. You can make lines vary in syllable count, ditch the rhymes, change the number of lines per stanza, or anything else you want to do. All I intend on this publication is to give you a starting point from which to find your identity as a writer. Here’s a great example of the villanelle form by !

Turn Me Back Again

Compulsion

I tallied all I thought and did and said to find a way to make them balance out— Sometimes I miss the numbers in my head, like rosary beads, as through my hands they sped, a prayer to counter every word of doubt. I tallied all I thought and did and said: the loving acts, the saintly books I read, could then undo each unkind, angry shout. Sometimes I m…

Read more

a year ago · 20 likes · 9 comments · Kate Bluett

I hope you liked it, and I can’t wait to see what you come up with.

Poem text.

Look above; the sky’s aflame.
Observe the falling titan,
mighty Hindenburg its name.

Behold as blazes brighten
up the clouds behind its tail,
as ropes around it tighten.

For this airship bears the frail
conceit of Man that’s written
with a swastika to fail.

The torn and demon-bitten
monster, hurled in sparkling rain
of ash, by angels smitten.

Look above; a dragon’s slain.
A thunderstorm has brought it
down to end its hateful reign.

Its foolish riders thought it
wise to face the wind as well.
They stared at death and sought it,

cursed the giant as it fell
by scattering its pieces,
turning Heaven into Hell.

And so the ground has creases
full of splinters that became
a spark that never ceases.

Look above; it’s such a shame.
The Hindenburg, a titan
which delusion set aflame.

Anarcholeptic and my other books.

Available on: Kindle & Paperback, Apple Books, and Google Play Books.

Terza rima.

I know. I take eons to bring a new form/technique only for it to be a simple one.

Terza rima is a rather silly thing. What can you do with an ABAB quatrain that only has three lines? Well, Dante was presumably the first to just start a new stanza with it and keep them going1. If Mighty Hindenburg were simply written with quatrains, it would look as follows.

The torn and demon-bitten
monster, hurled in sparkling rain
of ash, by angels smitten. 
Look above; a dragon’s slain.

We will talk about the rhyme and meter of the poem in the paid section.

You sever the last line and you get:

The torn and demon-bitten
monster, hurled in sparkling rain
of ash, by angels smitten.

Look above; a dragon’s slain.

Chaining tercets is all there is to terza rima. Plain and simple. You go from ABA to BCB to CDC and so forth. The middle line of every tercet defines what the enveloping rhymes of the following stanza will be.

The torn and demon-bitten (A)
monster, hurled in sparkling rain (B)
of ash, by angels smitten. (A)

Look above; a dragon’s slain. (B)
A thunderstorm has brought it (C)
down to end its hateful reign. (B)

Its foolish riders thought it (C)
wise to face the wind as well. (D)
They stared at death and sought it, (C)

And so on…

You may be wondering what happens when you want to finish the poem. Well, traditionally, terza rima ends with a couplet, thus having no chain link left open for continuation.

But not to call me back or say good-bye; (A)
And further still at an unearthly height, (B)
One luminary clock against the sky (A)

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. (B)
I have been one acquainted with the night. (B)

A variation of this would be to only write the corresponding rhyme as a separate lone line—akin to ABA BCB CDC D.

Of course, I chose to forgo this and simply alluded to the poem’s initial rhyme scheme, which is simply a personal albeit untraditional decision I made.

Poem-specific composition details.

Use it—or don’t!

As with all previously explored forms and techniques, I am not here to police you about how you write and what decisions you make. You can make lines vary in syllable count, ditch the rhymes, change the number of lines per stanza, or anything else you want to do. All I intend on this publication is to give you a starting point from which to find your identity as a writer. Here’s a poem by showcasing this form at greater length!

Metrical Poet

Archelon

Read more

4 months ago · 14 likes · 1 comment · Metrical Poet

I hope you liked it, and I can’t wait to see what you come up with. But really—give it a try and tag me so I can read and share it!

Here’s my own voiceover for the poem—human-made, not AI-generated:

Poem text.

From God to man1, his blackened blood
fulfills a prophecy of dread2;
a hanging corpse above the mud,
the Lord and Great Destroyer3 dead,

defiled, and butchered in a snare.

The Chaos Bringer's4 entrails shed,
as once he stripped Creation's bare,
to keep his hunger for despair
and punishment5 forever fed.

The price of mercy's never fair.

They spread salvation painted red
when, from the cross, they stain the mud.
A slaughter in the slaughter's stead6—
from Man to God, from blood to blood.

¹ John 1:1, 14.

² Isaiah 53:7-12.

³ Psalm 46:8-9

⁴ Isaiah 45:7

⁵ Zephaniah 3:8-9

⁶ Isaiah 53:4-6

Read any of my works!

The Sal.

In From Blood to Blood, we see this manifest as follows.

From God to man, his blackened blood (A)
fulfills a prophecy of dread; (B)
a hanging corpse above the mud, (A)
the Lord and Great Destroyer dead, (B)

defiled, and butchered in a snare. (C)

The Chaos Bringer's entrails shed, (B)
as once he stripped Creation's bare, (C)
to keep his hunger for despair (C)
and punishment forever fed. (B)

The price of mercy's never fair. (C)

They spread salvation painted red (B)
when, from the cross, they stain the mud. (A)
A slaughter in the slaughter's stead— (B)
from Man to God, from blood to blood. (A)

It is a magnificent variation of a quatorzain. In many ways, a new kind of sonnet.

More than just a rhyme scheme and a stanza arrangement, the sal is meant to create a thematic mirror between the first and second halves, emphasizing the message laid out in the middle section of the poem.

I did this, or at least attempted to, by writing the first stanza as the prophecy, the last as the fulfillment, and the middle as the exchange. I chose my B and C rhymes with a minor degree of phonetic proximity to highlight their distinction from rhymes A, which repeat to wrap the poem entirely within the themes of filth and blood, as well as generate further cohesion and flow between sounds. While Abram insists that the thematic chiasm is not compulsory, I believe it to be a challenge worth undertaking to fully unlock the potential of his form.

Now, I don’t want to appropriate the magic and unique flavor of this poetic innovation, so I will once again redirect you to Abram’s own blog post so that you further understand its development and variations.

"Form: Sal (סל)" by Abram Newcommer

Use it—or don’t!

At the end of the day, just as Abram innovated quatorzains his way, you can innovate poetry your way, too. As with all previously explored forms and techniques, I am not here to police you about how you write and what decisions you make. You can make lines vary in syllable count, ditch the rhymes, change the number of lines per stanza, or anything else you want to do. All I intend on this publication is to give you a starting point from which to find your identity as a writer. Here’s one of his poems using this beautiful form.

Who Made The Eyes But I?

Cleave

While Adam slept, his side was cleaved for Eve, The only woman to be born from man, As sweetest honey won for his reprieve, Drawn from a royal body, torn and tan. So too was Judah’s heir with hanging frame Found, from which both blood and water ran. Yet in the trees he later called her name, Awake, as gardener and groom the same. She had seen the spear…

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4 months ago · 9 likes · 7 comments · Abram Newcomer

I hope you liked it, and I can’t wait to see what you come up with. But really—give it a try and tag me so I can read and share it!

Poem text.

Wealthy men had come before to take my land,
petty lords and richer fools without a need.
Wanting not to bother, soon I shook their hand,
left to spare myself discomfort or demand.
Easy 'twas to find another grass to feed
when I simply could ignore their endless greed.

Then, in time and having fled this worldly greed,
warring men decided still to claim my land,
saying that their armies needed fields to feed,
even as ambition feasted on my need.
Fearful that I’d face instead an armed demand,
thus, again, I walked away and shook their hand.

Over many years, my effort blessed my hand,
growing strong, away from such unending greed,
once I’d found a place to live without demand,
made a home of yet another promised land,
yet another shelter for my humble need.
Safe, or so I thought, I settled down to feed.

But the void of Man forever has to feed.
Though I was content enough to stay my hand,
others still beholden to their carnal need
roamed the highways in the mortal name of greed
till they found my plot of yet unsullied land—
ripe for taking, ripe to once again demand.

And with each avoidance, each allowed demand,
each escape I made to let the demons feed
on the carcass of my dreams and promised land,
dimmer grew my future, weaker grew my hand.
How was I to face the wicked men of greed
once I’d let them build their kingdom on my need?

So I understood at last my greatest need:
that I had to counter each unjust demand
with a heart to stand against this mortal greed.
For, unless it is myself my meadows feed,
and unless I face them with a sword in hand,
other men will surely come and take my land.

Mine’s the only need I should fulfill or feed,
mine’s the only hand to meet my own demand.
No one else’s greed shall ever take my land.

Read any of my books!

Sestinas.

Bastard of a form. At surface level, the arrangement of these seems entirely arbitrary, but let’s see if we can crack them enough to get a formula going. However, while it is one of the most oddly specific forms out there, it is not as policed as, say, sonnets or villanelles, so this breakdown will be for those whose brains afflict them as mine does to me—that is, by forcing them to rhyme everything and find meter everywhere.

The form, oversimplified.

Finally, no French. Sestinas are named after the Italian word sesto, which means sixth, or so says your translator of choice. They work in sixes. Six stanzas of six lines each—known as sestets or sixains by those lovers of French—plus a three-line turnaround.

At it’s core, what defines a sestina is that it uses a pool of six words that all lines must end with. Say, for example that your pool is: Wario, Kicked, Mario, Twice, In, and Tokyo. By selecting such a pool, you have committed to not using anything else at all to end any of your poem’s lines with, and you must use all of them once per stanza. The three-line turnaround, which is a summary of a sestina’s message, must use two of these words per line to include all six. What are Take My Land’s six words, then?

Wealthy men had come before to take my land,
petty lords and richer fools without a need.
Wanting not to bother, soon I shook their hand,
left to spare myself discomfort or demand.
Easy 'twas to find another grass to feed
when I simply could ignore their endless greed.

Simple enough? Oh yes. Too simple to be true, in fact!

The tricky part.

There is a specific pattern that line endings must follow. If you look for this form online, you will come across something like this.

Stanza one endings: 1-2-3-4-5-6
Stanza two endings: 6-1-5-2-4-3
Stanza three endings: 3-6-4-1-2-5
Stanza four endings: 5-3-2-6-1-4
Stanza five endings: 4-5-1-3-6-2
Stanza six endings: 2-4-6-5-3-1

Admittedly, it’s simply MENTAL to stick to this pattern.

Because it seems too arbitrary to follow without having a line by line guide readily at hand—or, in all honesty, having the sestina Wikipedia page open—to check what order comes next, people just tune out and write the endings in whatever order they want or abandon the form altogether. I don’t blame them. How many people do you personally know that work with sestinas not out of the obstinate stubbornness to say they have written one?

THERE IS, however, A METHOD TO THE MADNESS! Let’s go over the first stanza and move on from there.

Wealthy men had come before to take my land, (1)
petty lords and richer fools without a need. (2)
Wanting not to bother, soon I shook their hand, (3)
left to spare myself discomfort or demand. (4)
Easy 'twas to find another grass to feed (5)
when I simply could ignore their endless greed. (6)

Write your first stanza to your heart’s content. Whatever you want, just do it. Once you do, though, visualize this. Separate your endings in two halves.

(1) land, (2) need, (3) hand ← → (4) demand, (5) feed, (6) greed

In order to arrange the endings of the next stanza, start by inverting the order of the second half.

(1) land, (2) need, (3) hand ← → (6) greed, (5) feed, (4) demand

And now that you have this new order, intercalate them, starting with the latter half.

(6) greed, (1) land, (5) feed, (2) need, (4) demand, (3) hand

So you get your next stanza!

Then, in time and having fled this worldly greed, (6)
warring men decided still to claim my land, (1)
saying that their armies needed fields to feed, (5)
even as ambition feasted on my need. (2)
Fearful that I’d face instead an armed demand, (4)
thus, again, I walked away and shook their hand. (3)

For the following stanzas, this will be your new pool to repeat the process with. This is what Wikipedia means by its retrogradatio cruciata visual aid.

That is to say, relative to the previous stanza, not the overall pool, your first, second, and third endings will become your second, fourth, and sixth respectively. On the other hand, your fourth, fifth, and sixth endings will turn into your fifth, third, and first endings respectively.

First to second stanza changes are:

(1) land, (2) need, (3) hand, (4) demand, (5) feed, (6) greed
(6) greed, (1) land, (5) feed, (2) need, (4) demand, (3) hand

Second to third stanza changes are:

(1) greed, (2) land, (3) feed, (4) need, (5) demand, (6) hand
(6) hand, (1) greed, (5) demand, (2) land, (4) need, (3) feed

And you end up with stanza three from Take My Land!

Over many years, my effort blessed my hand,
growing strong, away from such unending greed,
once I’d found a place to live without demand,
made a home of yet another promised land,
yet another shelter for my humble need.
Safe, or so I thought, I settled down to feed.

This has been a very convoluted way to say that sestinas should build on the previous stanza, not the overall word choice.

The only exception to this rule is the turnaround, which does get its arrangement from the first stanza in the traditional order of 4-3, 5-2, and 6-1.

Mine’s the only need (4) I should fulfill or feed, (3)
mine’s the only hand (5) to meet my own demand. (2)
No one else’s greed (6) shall ever take my land. (1)

Yes, they are the retragradatio cruciata’s pairings but inverted.

Otherwise, you can just follow the endings scheme from the beginning and ignore my mental gymnastics to explain it to you. It’s very valid to not give a damn.

Use it—or don’t!

At the end of the day, it’s still a very silly and pretentious form. As with all previously explored forms and techniques, I am not here to police you about how you write and what decisions you make. You can make lines vary in syllable count, ditch the rhymes, change the number of lines per stanza, or anything else you want to do. All I intend on this publication is to give you a starting point from which to find your identity as a writer. Here’s an amazing sestina by , for example!

Career Girl

Interlude 4

This post is for my formal poetry-loving subscribers, and everyone who welcomes another break in my series of dramatic monologues…

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3 months ago · 26 likes · 12 comments · Margaret C Nikoleit

I hope you liked it, and I can’t wait to see what you come up with. But really—give it a try and tag me so I can read and share it!

Poem text.

They must have noticed how I stray
from time to time, the hidden weight
I carry but will not convey.
I can’t conceal it at this rate.

It’s obvious now. I often walk
toward the lake within the cold
of darkness, where I tend to talk
the night away to be consoled.

They’ve seen me stare beyond
the window, writing, thinking on.
And all while slowly growing fond
of missing you while you are gone.

It’s true. I am in love—it’s strange.
I feel like I’m about to faint
when I’m unable to exchange
my thoughts with you. It’s really quaint.

I want to scream, but I cannot.
Before I speak, I have to stop,
and so I walk away and rot
inside, my heart about to drop.

Because it’s proper for a man
to never make you understand
that truly nothing’s harder than
the absence of a lover’s hand.

Because the world can do without
the unrequited love I vow
to scarcely turn into a shout,
I hide my eyes beneath my brow.

But it’s a lie. I long for you.
I want and need and ask the moon
for you at night. I’m longing to
express my feelings now or soon.

To walk with you toward the lake,
embrace your soul in mine, escape
by twilight, meet the dawn awake.
It’s all a dream without a shape.

You’re far away. And being near
is not the same as loving me.
My life has made it clear—
it isn’t any guarantee.

I long to see you, make you mine,
to hear and touch you by my side.
But till my heart and yours align,
my endless longing must I hide.

They needn’t know and pressure you—
my destiny is yours to choose.
They needn’t even have a clue.
I’ll see how long I keep the ruse.

Read any of my books!

Quatrains.

The ever-famous quatrains are perhaps the most prevalent example of formal poetry which the world usually has at least a passing idea of. Four lines—as the name suggests in French with quatre, meaning four—typically following an iambic meter and possessing an A-B-A-B rhyme scheme or any of its variations.

Iambic meter refers to lines composed of pairs of syllables in which the first is unstressed and the second is stressed, which individually are known as iambs or iambic feet. For example:

The bird returned to York by dawn.

Reticence, for instance, follows an iambic tetrameter—four pairs of iambs—with a strict A-B-A-B rhyming scheme.

I long to see you, make you mine,
to hear and touch you by my side.
But till my heart and yours align,
my endless longing must I hide.

Variations.

By virtue of being the most common poetry form, quatrains also possess the largest number of known variations. Just write four lines and choose whatever rules you want to follow, and of course someone must have already tried it over the course of HUNDREDS of years. Let’s see some of the most common ones.

• The so-called heroic stanza, which tends to follow an iambic pentameter and a classical A-B-A-B scheme.

The roses in the garden rose by dawn,
and how they reached toward the yellow sky.
The children sadly leaped around the lawn,
so all of them would therefore come to die.

• The sensibly named enveloped stanza, which sensibly possesses the symmetrical rhyme scheme of A-B-B-A.

My lover stared, divine, benign.
I blushed and promptly shied away.
She took my hand to make me stay,
to make my heart and hers align.

• The one known as the ballad stanza, which follows a rhyme scheme of A-B-C-B; that’s to say, only the second and four lines rhyme.

For days and nights, I followed in your steps,
to chase you so and find your love for me.
I never waned and surely never will,
because I know that we are meant to be.

• One could also arrange quatrains with monorhyme, following an A-A-A-A scheme.

The shop had lost my card, again,
and so I called my Uncle Ben.
He came to us and mad by then
to shout and yell at all those men.

You get it by now. There is infinite array of endless possibilities as long as you have four lines with an iambic meter per stanza.

Try it out!

As with all previously explored forms, I am not here to police you about how you write and what decisions you make. You can make lines vary in syllable count, ditch the rhymes, change the number of lines per stanza, or anything else you want to do. All I intend on this publication is to give you a starting point from which to find your identity as a writer. Though, by following these rules, you in turn become a part of this ancient tradition of poetry composition.

I hope you liked it, and I can’t wait to see what you come up with.

Here’s my own recording of the poem—free of AI, absolutely no SUNO involved.

Poem text.

I'm not
a bot.
Their lot
has brought
a clot
of rot
we ought
to've fought.

They prop
a shop
atop
their slop!

I'm not
a blot
of thought-
less snot.
My plot-
ting got
this spot
I've bought.

Their sob-
bing mob
won't rob
my job!

I'll not
besot
my lot
with rot.
I've wrought
my thought—
I'm not
a bot.

Read any of my books!

The challenge of monometer.

As you know, I love making things more difficult when it comes to writing poetry. Monometer, as the name suggests, consists of one metrical foot per line. Of course, some lengthier units will have more than enough syllables to give the author space to maneuver and force natural speech into a pattern with greater ease. However, hard mode is what we do here. Why? Because only humans would dare to do it.

Indeed, a challenge of this nature requires a few tricks to overcome it in a still meaningful way. First of all, accept that you are doing something far too pretentious to fit other norms. Shirk preconceptions. Do away with conventions. That we have only two syllables does not mean that we have only one line to work with nor that we can’t thread a thought across several verses.

Their lot / has brought / a clot / of rot / we ought / to’ve fought.

This line, which discusses the scum dropped on this platform by AI posters, uses clear and continuous enjambment, breaking down in several lines to fit the meter while still presenting—or attempting to present—a coherent thought. However, there is still the possibility of syllabic division, which you’ve seen me use in other poems.

I’m not / a blot / of thought- / less snot. / My plot- / ting got / this spot / I’ve bought.

This other line, addressing the hard work that actual human art needs to do in order to find a place online, divides syllables in order to allow some bits of words to fit the monorhyme scheme of the octaves and quatrains which comprise the poem.

On the topic of the quatrains! These are meant to both give the poem some variety and allow the author to not entirely rely on a rhyme for the whole of the piece. As you can see, stanza 2, on the audacity these “writers” have to monetize work that isn’t theirs, changes the endings from -ot to -op, still retaining an assonance that loosely keeps continuity through the sounds of the text. Stanza 4, written to emphasize the way slop creators steal attention from real hardworking artists, similarly does this but with a different ending—or -ob instead of -ot.

Lastly, repetition can also help the writer overcome reliance on a specific rhyme while still allowing for the creation of a throughline in the text. The clause I’m not a bot begins and ends the poem altogether, with the phrase I’m not used in several occasions to highlight the rejection of these deplorable practices across the work.

All in all, overcoming a difficult meter relies entirely on ingenuity. While LLM’s are incapable of making things more challenging for themselves, humans can always think of ways to challenge themselves beyond reason. Likewise, only the human mind can think outside the box enough to overcome its own puzzles with style.

Dropping the act.

Alright, my dear Schemers—readers, writers, friends. It’s time for me to open to up to you.

Scheming Rhymes was born out of the intense desire to celebrate, as you well know, human ingenuity in poetry. While I have often exalted the masterful use of traditional forms and patterns, it is undeniable that I am much more inclined to bring the spotlight upon those people whose mastery lies in the innovation of our craft instead of its decadence. It is, however, undeniable that the Substack platform harbors an endless sea of LLM-produced content, paraded by users who sound the same and write the same, who use the same analogies and believe the same things, and who all the same contribute to the drowning out of writers whose genuine effort is overlooked in favor of AI slop. These are antithetical to my cause. These are not going to be my friends at all.

For the longest time, the Formal Poetry Directory has worked to include as many artists as possible, but as this publication grows in subscribers, so does its need to start excluding those who value this medium more as a cash and attention grab than an artform. I am deeply thankful for all of your support in my endeavors on Substack, but if I am going to go higher, which I will work myself into dust to achieve, I want to do it standing on my beliefs alone. There will be changes and transitions. There will be costs borne in losses of every kind. But rest assured: those who gather by the end of it will be the most amazing and incredible group of authors I have ever known.

The next stage begins now. Our collective takes shape in the shadows.

However, not everyone understands the many intricacies behind the trochaic octameter that guides Poe’s seminal work. This post is a tribute to the forerunner of my artistic passion and a love letter to his best known poem.

Here’s my own voiceover for the poem—human-made, not AI-generated:

Poem text.

Ev’ry night, I’m writing verses,
stanzas which my conscience nurses,
born of love or ancient curses—
pacing ‘cross my cage and home.
After countless trades and choices,
now I follow thoughts and voices
till the Hell I bear rejoices
in completion of this tome.
Till I muddle all the voices,
proud of finishing this tome,
writing poetry, I roam.

Books of careful composition,
endless as my own ambition,
duly penned in full submission,
fill my rooms, become a swarm—
self-inflicted dereliction
powered by this foul addiction
turned into a just conviction
through this night of howling storm.
They’re the proof of my addiction,
that I hold inside a storm
cast in meter, rhyme and form.

To the sound of rain and thunder,
here I spiral in my wonder
with a mind alone to sunder
as a thousand words outpour.
Through the twilight, void of slumber,
not a reason can encumber
how I see them grow in number
by composing more and more.
Even angels won’t encumber
my demand for more and more,
be my fingers dull and sore.

It is then I find the traces—
all demonic, harrowed faces—
of the hidden, hollowed places
deep within my tortured soul,
once the madness repossesses
both my passions and excesses
which the world outside suppresses
as to keep them in control.
It is then that such excesses
steer upon me their control,
forcing me to take their toll.

Often such a dark obsession,
such artistic self-aggression,
in the shadows takes possession
of the poetry I’ve borne,
when my dreading of rejection
brings a shade upon reflection
on a mirror’s sole convection,
breathing life into my scorn.
When I see this strange reflection
and the blazes of my scorn,
there is nothing left to mourn.

For I’m turned into a vessel
where my rage and ruin nestle,
thus unwilling yet to wrestle,
letting all the voices grow—
turned into a torn epistle,
broken, wicked and abyssal,
prone to falling in dismissal
of the saintly ways I know,
prone to writing in dismissal
of the sanity I know—
if it’s so the meters flow.

On the glass, I see the smiling,
one of hatred, one beguiling,
one of demons still reviling
that I’ve brought them no reward.
Yet, instead of thusly hiding,
here I bind them by deciding
that I’ll be the author guiding
ev’ry harsh and hellish horde,
for I’ve power by deciding
that I’ll lead the hellish horde
to emotions unexplored.

Ev’ry dusk, until the morrow,
this I do to flee the sorrow
and release the grief I borrow
from the shadows that I hold.
It’s a rite of art and horror
where I am the sole adorer
of my pain, my own abhorrer
growling sadness once untold.
And as such condemned adorer
of my stories still untold,
ev’ry night this must unfold.

Poems are a thing of evil,
reigning in my heart’s upheaval—
sempiternal and primeval
forces searing through my bone.
And tonight, I rhyme and revel,
like a poet, like a devil,
as my senses still dishevel
through the verse I still intone—
for I hear what says the Devil
through the wrath I still intone:
that I write them not alone.

Read any of my books!

The glaringly obvious difference.

Yes, I have eyes. This poem does not wholly use trochaic octameter—that is, eight pairs of syllables wherein the first is stressed and the second isn’t. Instead, it uses trochaic tetrameter to showcase the internal rhymes which rule The Raven. It will all make sense as you read on; however, as you read—or listen to—the poem, it sounds exactly the same when it comes to rhythm and stanza length.

For now, appreciate that they’re 9 stanzas of 11 lines each—for no reason whatsoever.

The Raven itself.

Poe’s poem is incredibly long. Across eighteen stanzas, he forces you to understand how in control of the form he is and how precise his choices are—as every stanza is structured the exact same way. For the purposes of this post, we will study only the first stanza. If you get one, you get them all anyway. However, please give the original a read in its entirety when you have the chance.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many-a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”

Through sounds alone, The Raven presents itself as a poem that heavily relies on rhythm and alliteration to make its own lines flow. There is, however, so much more to breakdown than just that. Let’s first see the structure.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, (8 stresses)
Over many-a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore— (8 stresses)
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, (8 stresses)
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. (8 stresses)
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door— (8 stresses)
Only this and nothing more.” (4 stresses)

There are six lines, five of which are made up of octameter and one is halved down to a tetrameter. It’s NOT just 5 long lines and 1 shorter one.

Poe’s sestets are not like any other. More than the structure, they’re comprised of highly frequent rhyming. Due to the very lengthy nature of an octameter, as sixteen syllables is far too much space between tail rhymes, Poe uses internal rhyming to keep assonance and alliteration fresh in the reader’s mind. These different rhymes also allow him to break free from the general scheme. Lines 1 and 3 don’t even rhyme among themselves, for example, but they do rhyme with themselves internally.

Once upon a midnight dreary, (A) while I pondered, weak and weary, (A)
Over many-a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore— (B)
While I nodded, nearly napping, (C) suddenly there came a tapping, (C)
As of some one gently rapping,  (C) rapping at my chamber door. (B)
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door— (B)
Only this and nothing more.” (B)

This is where the halving of the octameter in my poem starts to make sense as, in reality, Poe’s lines are, for the most part, divided in sections of four trochees each. Only lines 1 and 5 usually present no internal rhyming and define the overall line length. They’re NOT slant rhymes or only sound-adjacent. They all follow this pattern, minus a notable exception with “devil” and “evil.”

Moreover, there are the characteristic catalectic lines that give the poem it’s gravitas—those that end in the -ore syllable sound. They are called catalectic because their last metrical foot is reduced by one syllable, so, instead of 8 full trochees or pairs of syllables, there are 7 pairs and 1 half. Read more on catalexis here!

(While I) (nodded), (nearly) (napping,) (sudden-) (-ly there) (came a) (tapping,) 
16 syllables, 8 feet.
(As of) (some one) (gently) (rapping,)  (rapping) (at my) (chamber) (door.) 
15 syllables, still 8 feet.

Notice how the feet division of the lines allows for every trochaic stress to be properly pronounced as such. There are NO substitutions or feet alterations in the entirety of the poem.

Lastly, line 5 tends to be a rephrasing of line 4, keeping the exact same rhyming word at the end.

As of some one gently rapping,  rapping at my chamber door. (B)
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door— (B)

Overall, Poe, by doing this over and over across eighteen whole stanzas, demonstrates that there is a clearly unchangeable pattern to follow in order to understand the composition of his poem. It is rigid and consistent while still allowing him to create something unique and diverse with the sound.

My personal changes to Poe’s form.

As stated at the beginning, my poem does a few things differently to highlight the aforementioned key features of Poe’s poem. The most obvious one is the stanza arrangement, switching five octameters and a half for eleven tetrameters.

Ev’ry night, I’m writing verses,
stanzas which my conscience nurses,
born of love or ancient curses—
pacing ‘cross my cage and home.
After countless trades and choices,
now I follow thoughts and voices
till the Hell I bear rejoices
in completion of this tome.
Till I muddle all the voices,
proud of finishing this tome,
writing poetry, I roam.

Ev’ry night, I’m writing verses, (A) stanzas which my conscience nurses, (A)
born of love or ancient curses— (A) pacing ‘cross my cage and home. (B)
After countless trades and choices, (C) now I follow thoughts and voices (C)
till the Hell I bear rejoices (C) in completion of this tome. (B)
Till I muddle all the voices, (C) proud of finishing this tome, (B)
writing poetry, I roam. (B)

Notably, because all internal rhymes were turned into tail rhymes by halving the line length, lines 2 and 5 do have an internal rhyme corresponding to the lines which precede them respectively.

To add further variety, not all B rhymes in the schemes are the same; that is, unlike in The Raven, not all stanzas end in -ore. However, everything else is there, from the meter to the scheme, to the repetition and the rhythm.

I am a religious fan of Poe’s work, so my way of honoring his magnum opus is to mildly innovate upon his form, not try and fail at copying it in its entirety.

Use it—or don’t!

As with all previously explored forms and techniques, I am not here to police you about how you write and what decisions you make. You can make lines vary in syllable count, ditch the rhymes, change the number of lines per stanza, or anything else you want to do. All I intend on this publication is to give you a starting point from which to find your identity as a writer. However, if you are planning on modifying and breaking with Poe’s legendary form, at least know what you’re doing.

I hope you liked it, and I can’t wait to see what you come up with. But really—give it a try and tag me so I can read and share it!

All characters are fictional. Sorry for writing someone else’s name, my love, even if she’s not real.

Here’s my own voiceover for the poem—human-made, not AI-generated:

Poem text.

Ana, my dear and my heavenly fear,

Brazen was leaving the bliss at your side.
Counterproductive. A blunder of mine,
doubtless forgetting we're meant to collide,
ever embracing as lovers divine.

Frankly, I lost my composure. I did!
Going at all to Her Majesty's Ball
horribly shamed me when, dancing, I slid,
instants of worry preceding the fall.

Jumping to rush and abandon the scene—
Katya has told me—I left you in tears,
left you to chatter alone with the Queen,
much to my scandal and that of my peers.

Now I may foolishly dare—or attempt—
only to ask for a chance to restore
promises made to appease your contempt,
questioning whether I'm worthy of more.

Reasons to need you I've many, my Sun,
sure that the greatest of these is my love.
Trust that I'm learning, or so I've begun,
urging myself for improvement thereof.

Vlad and Vasily express their concern,
wishing me ill or forgiveness from you.
Xerxes has barked to demand your return,
yearning as hopelessly still as I do.

Zachary—always your own to recall.

Read any of my books!

The Abecedarian.

Yes, it’s the alphabet. That’s it. That’s as much as you get.

At least according to The Poetry Foundation, abecedarians are, quite simply, acrostics that are not ashamed of themselves. A line—or sometimes a whole stanza—for each letter of the alphabet is all you need to write one. No requirements about the meter, the length or the rhyme. None at all.

The Letter Abecedarian.

Of course, I couldn’t keep my thoughts to myself. For my own abecedarian, I decided to go for six quatrains—or 4-line stanzas—amounting to 24 lines in total. The astute among you will remember that the alphabet has twenty-SIX letters (at least in English) and so will understand that two lines would have to be left out.

Now, the initial option was to leave those two lines as a couplet at the end, but that’s when it hit me! I could write a letter and use those two as the salutation and signature lines, AND SO I DID!

Meter and form.

Well, you already know how I roll. I couldn’t just leave it at that. This is Scheming Rhymes after all! There had to be a rhyme scheme, and because I can’t help myself, there had to be a meter, too!

I have my reasons, but suffice it to say, it’s brachycatalectic dactylic tetrameter.

Brazen was leaving the bliss at your side.
Counterproductive. A blunder of mine,
doubtless forgetting we're meant to collide,
ever embracing as lovers divine.

Use it—or don’t!

As with all previously explored forms and techniques, I am not here to police you about how you write and what decisions you make. You can make lines vary in syllable count, ditch the rhymes, change the number of lines per stanza, or anything else you want to do. All I intend on this publication is to give you a starting point from which to find your identity as a writer.

Writing With My Eyes Closed

Approaching the Zenith

Approaching the zenith…

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3 months ago · 4 likes · 2 comments · Rue Kream

I hope you liked it, and I can’t wait to see what you come up with. But really—give it a try and tag me so I can read and share it!

Here’s my own voiceover for the poem—human-made, not AI-generated:

Poem text.

His holy sins are plain as day,
the sermons sung to hide decay.
A lord of men by God's command—
or so he claims, or so he planned—
he bears the Name to have his way.

He stands before the men who pray.
whose bowing heads will not betray
the rule of greed, ambition and
his holy sins.

But in the Wrath of Judgment Day,
the broken souls he led astray
return to take him from the stand,
with needles piercing through his hand,
and, from the cross, they will display
his holy sins.

Read any of my books!

Rondeau composition breakdown.

This is a really short one, so I hope you have fun giving it a shot!

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Rondeaux—yes, they are yet another French form—have a predetermined set of rules that define most if not all of the poems which claim adherence to them. There are different kinds varying mostly in length, and they conform to a language’s prosody and conventions. What sets it apart is its return to a short refrain, a coming-around which, if you know any French, is the reason why it’s called as it is. So let’s start with the establishment of the refrain as per His Holy Sins.

His holy sins are plain as day…

First and foremost, English rondeaux—a great example of which is In Flanders Fields by John McCrae—are written with iambic tetrameter. That is to say, each full verse must have four pairs of syllables wherein every second is stressed or tonic.

His holy sins are plain as day…

The reason why iambic tetrameter is conventionally adopted as the rule for rondeaux is that it’s the easiest to break in two halves, the first of which, specifically in the very first line, will be the refrain across the poem.

His holy sins are plain as day…

Now that we have the refrain, what’s necessary in a rondeau is that it follows a certain rhyme scheme of two sounds (A and B) and the refrain itself (R for now), in a strictly predetermined pattern of AABBA-AABR-AABBAR. In His Holy Sins, this is put to practice thus:

His holy sins (R) are plain as day, (A)
the sermons sung to hide decay. (A)
A lord of men by God's command— (B)
or so he claims, or so he planned— (B)
he bears the Name to have his way. (A)

He stands before the men who pray. (A)
whose bowing heads will not betray (A)
the rule of greed, ambition and (B)
his holy sins. (R)

But in the Wrath of Judgment Day, (A)
the broken souls he led astray (A)
return to take him from the stand, (B)
with needles piercing through his hand, (B)
and, from the cross, they will display (A)
his holy sins. (R)

Use it—or don’t!

As with all previously explored forms and techniques, I am not here to police you about how you write and what decisions you make. You can make lines vary in syllable count, ditch the rhymes, change the number of lines per stanza, or anything else you want to do. All I intend on this publication is to give you a starting point from which to find your identity as a writer.

The Poetic Pause 🌄

The Time is Now

The time is now to take a stand…

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5 months ago · 105 likes · 49 comments · Andrea (Andy) Curran 🌄

I hope you liked it, and I can’t wait to see what you come up with. But really—give it a try and tag me so I can read and share it!

Poem text.

Chronolith of Crepuscule,
at the edge of Endless Time.
The place I rule
as king and fool,
making solitude my crime.

In the halls of blackened stone,
watching nebulae that fall,
upon my throne
and all alone,
there I sit in my recall.

Now a ruin on the streams
set on sunlight seldom seen—
it barely gleams
amid the dreams
once belonging to its queen.

To the love who once was mine
in the gardens now decayed,
whose soul divine
could stars align
on the still resplendent glade.

Chronolith was where the dawn
brought her with a bridge of mist.
Angelic spawn
from Avalon
made me kneel before we kissed.

And it turned into a home
from the day she first arrived.
A catacomb
of ashen chrome
where a forest grew and thrived.

When the castle bathed in light
that she summoned from the dark,
the gate of night
was painted white
with the blazes of her spark.

Here we sang along the shore
till a thousand years had passed.
I readied for
a million more,
but the thousandth was the last.

Chronolith was not the place
meant for her to dwell within.
In my embrace,
she hid her face,
torn as she had never been.

Then we shed the tears contained.
She was Nature, I was Time;
and though it pained
her, she explained—
choosing me had been her crime.

With regret and out of fear
for the world she left to burn,
she bound me here
devoid of cheer
with a promise to return.

And I waited by the gate
with her name across my lips,
without a date
to end the wait,
even through apocalypse.

Chronolith returned to myth
in the sorrow that I bore.
And Chronolith
was riddled with
all the shades of long before.

What is left behind to rot
in the isle of Crepuscule
is always caught
within the thought
of its ruler, of its fool.

Now the castle is a tomb
with a hopeless king inside.
And in its room,
I must presume
that I’m yet to see my bride.

As my whispers petrify
calling softly to the black,
my pleas defy
the shadow sky—
Chronolith will have her back.

Hers and my other books.

Available on: Kindle & Paperback, Apple Books, and Google Play Books.

Limericks!

I know, I know. I chose such a traditionally vulgar form for such a solemn poem. Limericks have been making the rounds in the literary world for hundreds of years, and nobody knows exactly where they came from—though there is a county in Ireland called Limerick. However their structure is more than self-evident, consisting of a lone five-line stanza—known as either a quintet in sensible English or a cinquain in silly French circles. And while that’s very much it when it comes to its length, there is a certain feature that makes limericks as fun as they sound: exactly that—rhyme and rhythm!

Limerick composition breakdown.

At first glance, the two first lines are long and rhyme at once, the third and fourth lines are shorter while rhyming separately on their own, and the last line is as long as the first and second while also rhyming with them. That is, an AABBA scheme—or AAbbA to account for the length variation. HOWEVER! The most traditional of limericks have a specific meter on them: anapestic.

Anapestic meter consists of two unstressed syllables followed by a stress to form a metrical foot, with examples such as in-tro-DUCE, a de-LIGHT, in your A--. You get the idea.

In limericks, lines 1, 2, and 5 consist of three anapests, while lines 3 and 4 only contain two anapests; while followed the aforementioned AABBA scheme. For example:

There's a man with your Mom by his hand
in the city by night on a stand.
And it isn't your Dad—
'cause he's dead, and it's sad—
but your uncle who killed him as planned.

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Oh, yeah. As I alluded to a bit ago, limericks are nowadays meant to be rude and disrespectful—if not at least littered with dark or obscene humor. Edward Lear, the limerick’s topmost proponent, didn’t generally rely on this, but he certainly cared little for using poetry as a means of romanticizing life or elevating the world around him. The man’s book is titled The Book of Nonsense after all. HoWeVEr, you don’t have to hold yourself to that standard. In fact, even when it comes to composition, you can make as many variations as you want. Lear often did so by switching the first anapest of some lines for an iamb—by shortening the first metrical foot through something called acephaly or headlessness.

Yes, this is the part where I refer you to my post on catalexis and acephaly. You know the drill: read Of Rage & Ruin for an in-depth explanation of what that is.

In his poem A Moppsikon Floppsikkon Bear, Lear did so as follows.

iamb (There was) (an Old Per-) (-son of Ware,) anapests
iamb (Who rode) (on the back) (of a Bear;) anapests
(When they ask'ed,) ("Does it trot?"--) anapests
(He said, "Cer-) (-tainly not!) anapests
(He's a Mopp-) (-sikon Flopp-) (-sikon Bear!") anapests

On the original post on limericks, which I shared on the White Rabbit Poetry Society’s blog, I added a section of composition tips and an exercise to write together. Check it out here!

Use it—or don’t!

As with all previously explored forms and techniques, I am not here to police you about how you write and what decisions you make. You can make lines vary in syllable count, ditch the rhymes, change the number of lines per stanza, or anything else you want to do. All I intend on this publication is to give you a starting point from which to find your identity as a writer.

is an avid user of the limerick form. You may catch him writing limericks for subscribers or for fun from time to time on his Substack notes, and if you are nice enough, he may yet write one for you!

I hope you liked it, and I can’t wait to see what you come up with.

White Rabbit Poetry Society

A Moppsikon Floppsikon Bear!

Subscribe to White Rabbit Poetry Society! Experience the process of your peers, explore what poetry means for all of us…

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6 months ago · 23 likes · 15 comments · Brooklyn Crane

Scheming Rhymes

Catalexis: Of Rage & Ruin.

This poem was inspired by a prompt by Nicole for No Kings, and a rondeau written and posted by Andrea 🌄. Due to the recent barrage of increasingly terrible news that still saturate the air, I have decided to dedicate this week’s poetry breakdown to…

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4 months ago · 40 likes · 23 comments · Brooklyn Crane

Here is my own voiceover for the piece, if you’d like to listen:

Poem text.

There’s a song
we’d kiss along,
in tender
touching you
condemned me to
remember.
With your skin
on mine within
the splendor
of the sun
upon a gone
September.

It’s a sound
we heard and found
together
in a trance
of love, to dance
forever,
holding tight
through any light
or weather
like a knot
it hurt a lot
to sever.

When you left
my soul bereft
of meaning
as you went
away and spent
my dreaming.
And I wept
because I kept
to leaning
on the song
to still prolong
my screaming.

On a tune
by night and noon,
repeating
in my brain
until insane
and seething.
On a hope
I use to cope
with fleeting
grief I feel
but cannot heal
by breathing.

There’s a trace
of better days,
a lasting
ghost of you
I listen to
in sorrow.
It’s a song
we smiled along
contrasting
with the fears
tonight in tears
I borrow.

While I float
through any note
that’s playing
in a room
become my tomb,
ascending
in a cry,
a sob, a sigh;
and laying
on the streams
of rhyming schemes
unending.

In the black
of night and back
to feeling
what it was
to love because
I’m yearning
for a blur
of what we were;
concealing
that I’ve died
to song inside
me burning.

Traumatophobic and my other books.

Available on: Kindle & Paperback, Apple Books, and Google Play Books.

Enjambment and punctuation.

First of all, what a hilarious word. It’s French, obviously—enjamber, which means something akin to stepping over. Some may say it means straddle, however; whatever that means. It doesn’t get any more literal than that, in fact. As a poetic tool or device, it means that we start a sentence in one line to finish it in the next or keep it going until satisfied. Now, of course, this is nothing new for us poets, and it has been done for centuries upon centuries, if not far longer than that.

It might surprise you, nonetheless, how out of use this has fallen in recent years. With the rise of unpunctuated verses, sentences and phrases are forced to end, redundantly enough, at the end of a line. That is to say, these use only end-stopped clauses and tend to evolve into having an entire stanza, while short, used for a single statement—if they insist on not punctuating at all.

The worst offenders—in my very biased opinion—are those who do use enjambment yet group different clauses in a stanza until you have no idea when one idea ends and the next begins.

Needless to say, this is, all things considered, a valid and dignified stylistic preference. Everybody does what everybody does. But where does that leave us regarding formal poetry?

Punctuation helps precisely because it allows stricter forms to use more than one line for its sentences without rendering the verse they borrow syllables from useless. Take the second stanza of Burning, for example, where, unpunctuated, it would sound as follows:

It’s a sound
we heard and found
together
in a trance 
of love to dance
forever
holding tight
through any light
or weather
like a knot
it hurt a lot
to sever

“In a trance / of love to dance / forever” is the problem here—as the run-on not only changes the meaning but also makes the continuous reading unbearable in a single breath.

Plausible reasons to use enjambment.

Now, why would you want to borrow syllables from the next verse if you could so easily just write longer lines in which to fit a full idea? Well, that’s the thing. You aren’t always able to. And if you are like me, you will walk into situations where you can’t do so willingly.

Enjambment allows you to play by the rules without being chained by them. If you pay attention to the constitution of every stanza in Burning, there is an established syllable count per line that does not vary across the entirety of the poem.

There’s a trace (3 syllables)
of better days, (4 syllables)
a lasting (3 syllables)
ghost of you (3 syllables)
I listen to (4 syllables)
in sorrow. (3 syllables)
It’s a song (3 syllables)
we smiled along (4 syllables)
contrasting (3 syllables)
with the fears (3 syllables)
tonight in tears (4 syllables)
I borrow. (3 syllables)

Four cycles of 3-4-3, if you haven’t noticed. We will come back to why in a bit.

By means of applying enjambment to this form, I give myself the chance to capture broader ideas when the syllables per line are very few. If instead I’d given only one line to each clause, it would look like this:

There’s a trace of better days,
a lasting ghost of you I listen to in sorrow.
It’s a song we smiled along contrasting with the fears tonight in tears I borrow.

Which is, to say the least, quite preposterous for a formal poem.

Furthermore, one may do the opposite as well when wanting to make a statement with fewer syllables than what the full length of a line is—through something called caesura, or the insertion of pauses at any point across a single line. Take this excerpt from my poem titled The Ribbon as an example.

“You’re just a kid,” she rolled
her eyes, “in junior high.
At least, you aren’t old
enough to ‘fight’ and die.”

In lines that correspond to iambic trimeter, I’m able to only use four out of six syllables allocated to the verse to make a clear statement while enjambment allows me to link the remaining syllables to the following line. Read The Ribbon for that poem’s own breakdown on enjambment and caesura.

Again, enjambment and punctuation allow you to give yourself room for maneuvering through rigid syllable counts and meters.

This concludes the intro to enjambment. The rest of the post is about the poem’s specific form.

The curiously specific case of Burning.

As I mentioned a short bit ago, Burning displays a cycle of 3, 4, and 3 syllables per each of every three lines in a stanza. There are two ways of breaking down how this works.

1. Iambic dimeter with variations of acephaly and catalexis.

Yes, we are back with catalexis. I’m not sorry—as you will have noticed that it defines my style as a whole if you’ve followed me for a while. Go read Of Rage & Ruin for an explanation of what that is.

Starting by the longest syllable count per line, which is 4, you get the presumed basis for the poem.

When you left
my soul bereft
of meaning.

The lines flanking this middle one are simply losing a syllable at each extreme of the verse respectively.

When (^) you (-) left. (^)
Acephalous: without the first syllable of the meter.

My (-) soul (^) be- (-) -reft (^)
Full iambic dimeter.

of (-) mean- (^) -ing. (-)
Catalectic: without the last syllable of the meter.

You will notice that this arrangement allows lines to flow from one to the next effortlessly as the stressed-unstressed syllable cycle remains uninterrupted.

And this is how I originally conceived this poem—very short lines varying in length and rhythmic composition that sound well next to each other—back in 2023, when I wrote it originally. HOWEVER, there is also…

2. Fragmented trochaic pentameter.

This one was fascinating as I only realized it was taking place two full years after I wrote the poem at first. Hell, I had already self-published the book, and I hadn’t noticed this development until I was writing another piece with a similar structure.

If you separate the four cycles of 3-4-3 syllables that make up a stanza…

When you left
my soul bereft
of meaning

as you went
away and spent
my dreaming.

And I wept
because I kept
to leaning

on the song
to still prolong
my screaming.

And if you arrange every cycle in a single line…

When you left my soul bereft of meaning
as you went away and spent my dreaming.
And I wept because I kept to leaning
on the song to still prolong my screaming.

You get a QUATRAIN with trochaic pentameter and an ABAB rhyme scheme! Plus internal rhymes.

When you left (1) my soul bereft (1) of meaning (A)
as you went (2) away and spent (2) my dreaming. (B)
And I wept (3) because I kept (3) to leaning (A)
on the song (4) to still prolong (4) my screaming. (B)

This created a very dynamic arrangement of rhyme and rhythm, in my opinion, which fit the theme of music well. This continuity, moreover, only further proves the versatility that enjambment provides to fit lengthier sentences into tighter structures.

Two drawbacks.

Admittedly, it requires more foresight and consideration while working with the stanza’s remaining syllables, through the use of enjambment, for a writer of formal poetry to keep both the meter and the rhyme scheme intact. It took me three weeks to finish this poem, and its spiritual successor—a yet unpublished piece from an upcoming book—took me TWO MONTHS to finish.

Another likely disadvantage of using enjambment might be that stanzas end up sounding less orderly, coupled with the fact that readers might be already conditioned to expect all sentences to be end-stopped. However, this characteristic becomes a virtue if, for instance, what the author intends to do is to create a sense of disarray and disorder in the poem speaker’s stream of consciousness.

Use it—or don’t!

As with all previously explored forms and techniques, I am not here to police you about how you write and what decisions you make. You can allow lines to vary in syllable count, ditch the rhymes, change the number of lines per stanza, or anything else you want to do. All I intend on this publication is to give you a starting point from which to find your identity as a writer.

I hope you liked it, and I can’t wait to see what you come up with.

This poem was inspired by a prompt by for No Kings, and a rondeau written and posted by . Due to the recent barrage of increasingly terrible news that still saturate the air, I have decided to dedicate this week’s poetry breakdown to change and revolution. Here is my own voiceover for the piece, if you’d like to listen:

Poem text.

You’ve built the world upon a cage
abandoned pleas accrue in,
to keep us helpless for an age,
ashamed to know it’s true.
Tonight, it turns into a stage
to give you this to rue:
the helpless often break the cage
if full of rage and ruin.

Those you hollowed, those you broke,
the children grown for selling;
those you burned before they spoke
are rising now from Hell.
Mangled boys who dared invoke
the name of God to yell—
leave the grave and bear the smoke;
tonight, they’re all rebelling.

The motherless, the fatherless,
you raised to rage and ruin—
now are those you can’t oppress
if full of rage and ruin.

Orphans soiled in wars you wage,
to build a false regime on,
soon your armies will engage
when old enough to scream.
Those you forced into a cage
shall let their sorrows stream
once they rise upon the rage
you’ve turned into a demon.

Golden cities won’t protect
your flags of filth and dollar,
not the presidents-elect
behind a fake morale.
Golden statues won’t object
if you are turned to Baal,
held as payment for neglect
we suffered in the squalor.

The penniless, the powerless,
will reek of rage and ruin—
until the world we dispossess
if full of rage and ruin.

Nothing ends in made amends
for rapists, sinners, liars;
not if justice here depends
on those who’d rather die.
All you know and have descends
before my people’s eye,
where the torture only ends
in death upon the briars.

The world you’ve built upon a cage
abandoned pleas accrue in
will not survive the coming age
or still belong to you.
Tonight, it falls upon the stage
to give you this to rue:
the helpless always break the cage
if full of rage and ruin.

Anarcholeptic and other books.

A short addendum.

I tend to stay away from directly referencing politics or other incidents in the world, focusing mostly on poetry composition as a tool for anyone from any background to use. However, after 3,000,000 released files, a war, and what seems to be a coming ground invasion, I can’t simply turn a blind eye anymore. I’m full of rage and ruin.

Catalexis.

“What do you call an iambic verse when it loses a syllable in either end?”

Ah, I’m glad you asked. It is very common to see line length variation in poetry, especially when the rhythmic dynamic of a poem’s composition depends on it. There are two obvious kinds of a variation: syllable addition and syllable subtraction. You know, when a line is a syllable longer or shorter than the dominant meter. Today we will focus on subtraction due to its wider use.

Catalexis is the subtraction or the removal of the final syllable of a line or, in other words, when the final metrical foot of a line is incomplete. The titular poem of this post—Of Rage & Ruin—is dominated by tetrameter, or lines of four feet. Because my very first line is an iambic tetrameter, I’ve decided to use that as my baseline, though others may have differing opinions.

Iambic tetrameter is the arrangement of four iambs—or pairings of syllables wherein the second is stressed and the first isn’t—in succession.

For example, (the LAMB) (be-CAME) (a MON-) (-ster THUS.)

In the poem, this manifests right from the start:

(You’ve built) (the world) (upon) (a cage)
        Full or acatalectic iambic tetrameter.
(aban-) (-doned pleas) (accrue) (in,)
        Catalectic iambic tetrameter.
(to keep) (us help-) (-less for) (an age,)
        Full or acatalectic iambic tetrameter,
(ashamed) (to know) (it’s true.)
        Iambic trimeter.

Regular lines are called acatalectic when a distinction needs to be made.

In this case, catalexis creates a progressive decrease and increase of syllables across a stanza, so that every other line goes from 8 syllables (iambic tetrameter) to 6 (iambic trimeter). It takes a catalectic line to bridge the gap and have that 7-syllable verse in-between. The increase happens on the second half of the octave—or eight-line stanza.

You’ve built the world upon a cage
(8 syllables | 4 stresses)
abandoned pleas accrue in,
(7 syllables | 3 stresses)
to keep us helpless for an age, 
(8 syllables | 4 stresses)
ashamed to know it’s true.
(6 syllables | 3 stresses)

Tonight, it turns into a stage
(8 syllables | 4 stresses)
to give you this to rue:
(6 syllables | 3 stresses)
the helpless often break the cage
(8 syllables | 4 stresses)
if full of rage and ruin.
(7 syllables | 3 stresses)

I used the eight-syllable lines as a constant to keep the rhythm and baseline anchored in the reading experience.

The effect of using catalexis is that syllables with the same stress value create a necessary pause at the end a verse, as opposed as using the blunt ending of an iamb for the next line to spring from—as the great would call it.

Another example of this forced pause is that which Edgar Allan Poe embedded all throughout The Raven, which works with trochees instead of iambs.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
    While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

Trochees are disyllabic metrical feet wherein the first syllable is stressed and the second is not. They are the direct opposite to iambs.

As you can see, the pendant ending from weary allows for the blunt start of over to flow much more easily upon reading, whereas the dual stress between lore and while makes the pause much more pronounced. In Of Rage & Ruin, this happens with the unstressed syllables of accrue in and to keep.

When catalexis results on the omission of an unstressed syllable, this is called a blunt catalexis, as opposed to the previously alluded to pendant catalexis.

When you take two syllables from the end of a meter, it’s called brachycatalexis, but since iambs and trochees are disyllabic, just say it’s one metrical foot short instead. Leave this for trisyllabic feet like anapests or dactyls.

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Acephaly or headlessness.

Acephaly is the name of the same phenomenon when it happens at the start of a line instead of at the end. That is, an acephalous or headless line has an incomplete first metrical foot. I wrote stanzas 2, 3, 4, and 5 as examples of this technique.

(Those) (you hol-) (-lowed, those) (you broke,)
        Acephalous iambic tetrameter.
(the child-) (-ren grown) (for sell-) (-ing;)
        Catalectic iambic tetrameter.
(those) (you burned) (before) (they spoke)
        Acephalous iambic tetrameter.
(are ris-) (-ing now) (from Hell.)
        Iambic trimeter.

(Man-) (-gled boys) (who dared) (invoke)
        Acephalous iambic tetrameter.
(the name) (of God) (to yell—)
        Iambic trimeter.
(leave) (the grave) (and bear) (the smoke;)
        Acephalous iambic tetrameter.
(tonight,) (they’re all) (rebel-) (-ling.)
        Catalectic iambic tetrameter.

Notice how in this stanza and those like it, the resulting 7-syllable headless line became the stanza’s rhythmic anchor.

This headlessness generates the same stopping effect as catalexis does between syllables of the same stress value, as is the case between hell and mangled in lines 4 and 5 of the octave respectively. However, this also allows the first blunt syllable of an acephalous line to spring from the unstressed tail created by the catalectic verse that precedes it, enabling the flow where there previously was a pause.

Acephalous and catalectic lines have the same syllable count but not the same rhythmic dynamic or number of stresses.

The overlap between iambs and trochees.

The thing about disyllabic metrical feet is that meters comprised of them intrinsically end up possessing an even number of syllables. As soon as you take a syllable from the start of an iamb, it looks like catalectic trochaic line; and as soon as you take a syllable from the start of a trochee, it looks like catalectic iambic line.

A. Headless trochaic.

Thus they lie upon the mountain.
They lie upon the mountain.

B. Headless iambic.

The night will blend with day.
Night will blend with day.

Bonkers, I know. It gets worse when you also take the last syllable.

Which is it, then? How will we know what kind of meter it is when you first encounter it without context? Honestly, you won’t. An author could play mind games on you and say it’s a headless catalectic iambic tetrameter when it must obviously be a catalectic trochaic trimeter.

My advice? Use the poem’s first line as your basis for the meter of the poem, or whatever shows up the most, and call it a trochee is there are more stresses in the line or an iamb if there are more unstressed syllables instead.

There’s more?

Of course there is. There are many applications of these two variations, not to mention the addition of syllables and its own chicanery.

But those are for another time.

Use it—or don’t!

As with all previously explored forms and techniques, I am not here to police you about how you write and what decisions you make. You can make lines vary in syllable count, ditch the rhymes, change the number of lines per stanza, or anything else you want to do. All I intend on this publication is to give you a starting point from which to find your identity as a writer.

posted a wonderful example using catalexis, acephaly and other metric alterations. Check it out!

The Reciprocity Well

Bereft

— On the precipice of longing…

Read more

5 months ago · 97 likes · 51 comments · Rafa Joseph

I hope you liked it, and I can’t wait to see what you come up with.

Poem text.

Only children now remain,
barely learning if at all.
To enlighten, entertain.

As we bastardize the brain,
its attention span a spall,
only children now remain.

Since adults cannot retain
if it isn’t short and small,
to enlighten, entertain.

In the purposeless domain
of forgotten wherewithal,
only children now remain.

And the ancient wisdoms wane,
so they must adapt and brawl
to enlighten, entertain.

Lest they dwindle short of gain,
art and knowledge must enthrall.
Only children now remain;
to enlighten, entertain.

Anarcholeptic and my other books.

Available on: Kindle & Paperback, Apple Books, and Google Play Books.

Villanelle composition breakdown.

The contents of this breakdown where first posted on a White Rabbit Poetry Society’s post which includes tips and writing together section! This post focuses on the breakdown of the form in this specific poem of mine.

White Rabbit Poetry Society

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

Thanks for reading White Rabbit Poetry Society! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work…

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6 months ago · 23 likes · 12 comments · Brooklyn Crane

Ah, yes. French. This form consists strictly of five tercets (three-line stanzas) and one quartet (a four-line stanza which some people also call quatrain for sophistication, apparently), and ever since the seventeenth century, when Jean Passerat wrote J’ai Perdu Ma Tourterelle—which translates to I’ve lost my turtledove—it has been known to possess a refrain or repeating throughline across its composition.

These repeating lines must be the first and third of the opening stanza, which in turn must rhyme among themselves, and poems have to alternate between them at the end of the following four tercets before they are both consecutively placed at the end of the finishing quartet. I know it sounds very confusing when explained verbally, so let’s break it down visually.

Only children now remain, (A1)
barely learning if at all. (b)
To enlighten, entertain. (A2)

As we bastardize the brain, (a)
its attention span a spall, (b)
only children now remain. (A1)

Since adults cannot retain (a)
if it isn’t short and small, (b)
to enlighten, entertain. (A2)

In the purposeless domain (a)
of forgotten wherewithal, (b)
only children now remain. (A1)

And the ancient wisdoms wane, (a)
so they must adapt and brawl (b)
to enlighten, entertain. (A2)

Lest they dwindle short of gain, (a)
art and knowledge must enthrall. (b)
Only children now remain; (A1)
to enlighten, entertain. (A2)

This arrangement creates a song-like trait for the piece, and it emphasizes the theme of the overall poem. However, it is not the only rule for this form. The first line of tercets two-through-four must rhyme with the refrains, and the second or middle lines of all stanzas, while different, must rhyme between them. Furthermore—because there is obviously more to this madness—it is assumed that all lines share an equal amount of syllables and at least a similar meter if not the very same. The number of syllables is not strict, though, is not fixed as long as they are the same across each particular text. That is:

Lest they dwindle short of gain, (7 | 4 stresses)
art and knowledge must enthrall. (7 | 4 stresses)
Only children now remain; (7 | 4 stresses)
to enlighten, entertain. (7 | 4 stresses)

Innovate upon it!

As with all previously explored forms, I am not here to police you about how you write and what decisions you make. You can make lines vary in syllable count, ditch the rhymes, change the number of lines per stanza, or anything else you want to do. All I intend on this publication is to give you a starting point from which to find your identity as a writer.

I hope you liked it, and I can’t wait to see what you come up with.

Get any of my books!

Poem text.

My swollen knees declare for you—
that, through disease, I’m there for you.

I’d rather let you take my bed
than get instead a spare for you.

So that your eyes may rest consoled,
I’ll watch and hold my stare for you.

My meals are yours if so you need.
I’ll gladly cede my share for you.

But if it’s warmth for which you groan,
my very own I’ll tear for you.

I’ll bleed and pour it from my lips
so that it drips in pray’r for you.

Until my last, until my death,
I blow my breath to dare for you.

I choose to let my weakness show
because I know it’s rare for you.

My strength and pride, my soul departs—
to prove my heart’s despair for you.

It’s all I do for you to rest
and all the best I bear for you.

It’s thus that I, as for a wife,
surrender life to care for you.

Read any of my poetry books!

The Ghazal.

This form is an interesting one. According to the Poetry Foundation, the ghazal form is not French but, in fact, originally Arabic. It’s an old form that is usually linked to romance and loss, and it is defined by several rules that must shape its composition. First of all, it must be between five and fifteen stanzas long—no more, no less, lest it becomes a different kind of poem; all of which must be couplets or two-line stanzas.

My meals are yours if so you need. (1)
I’ll gladly cede my share for you. (2)

It is obviously more complicated than just that. All stanzas and lines must share a uniform meter and syllable count. In the case of this post’s poem, it is an iambic tetrameter (or four pairs of syllables wherein the second is stressed) that works as follows.

But if it’s warmth for which you groan, (8 syllables | 4 stresses)
my very own I’ll tear for you. (8 syllables | 4 stresses)

The most important two characteristics of the ghazal are, however, the radif (rah-DEEF) and the qafia (ka-FEE-ya). The former (or radif) is what we would commonly refer to as a refrain, repetition or throughline of a text, and when it comes to the ghazal form, this must be present at the very end of every single couplet except for the first, which must have it in both lines that form it. The latter (the qafia) is the poem’s rhyming word, which must directly precede the radif in each of its appearances but never be repeated. Care for You, this post’s titular work, has the phrase for you as radif and the word ending -are as qafia, illustrated in bold and italics respectively thus.

My swollen knees declare for you—
that, through disease, I’m there for you.

I’d rather let you take my bed
than get instead a spare for you.

So that your eyes may rest consoled,
I’ll watch and hold my stare for you.

The last couplet of the ghazal often expresses the author’s identity, traditionally with their name or pseudonym but not necessarily. This particular poem only declares the narrator’s intention and devotion to their beloved as their defining feature. I personally chose not to include my name because ‘Brooklyn’ sounds a bit silly, and the poem feels more universal this way.

It’s thus that I, as for a wife,
surrender life to care for you.

These are all the actual rules of the ghazal form, though you may have noticed that I have concocted a way to rhyme it further by adding an internal rhyme in the second line of the couplet that matches the ending of the first. This, nevertheless, is simply my own creative decision and not something all ghazal writers have to do. And so, the features of a ghazal are:

1. Couplet stanzas with consistent meter, between 5 and 15 total.

2. A radif or refrain repeated at the end of every couplet and twice in the beginning stanza.

3. A qafia or rhyming word or phrase that must directly precede each radif and never be repeated.

4. The last stanza often expresses the author’s identity.

5. Ghazals are mostly about love or loss.

Innovate upon it!

As with all previously explored forms, I am not here to police you about how you write and what decisions you make. You can make lines vary in syllable count, ditch the rhymes, change the number of lines per stanza, or anything else you want to do. All I intend on this publication is to give you a starting point from which to find your identity as a writer. Though, by following these rules, you in turn become a part of this ancient tradition of poetry composition.

I hope you liked it, and I can’t wait to see what you come up with.

Make sure to check out their original post! The collection is truly worth the read, and all the authors involved did an astounding job.

Poem text.

The Thunder knows. It’s heard the sound—
the striking fury and the wrath—
that in my chest I’ve made profound.
The Tempest hears it in my breath.
Despair and maladies I drown,
the rage I often hide and clothe;
become as lightning, crashing down.
The Storm will hear the aftermath
of holding in what should be loud
before I mute myself to death.
Because it’s nowhere else allowed
to say it is myself I loathe,
I’ll pour myself into the Rain,
the only witness to my pain.

As only Nature has intoned
a surge of chaos such as mine,
it is to Nature that I’ve groaned
to shirk my coyness thus defied.
It is to hurricanes alone
that I unravel with a cry,
the only goddesses I’ve known
to welcome me into their shrine.
Until my broken bones erode
within the comfort they provide,
I’ll turn my grief into an ode,
embraced and taken by the sky—
I’ll give the clouds my spirit’s flame,
the only witness to my shame.

The Rain’s aware. It sees, beyond
the mask I’ve worn to hide the ache,
that in my soul it’s never dawned
or shone a light toward my fate.
The water roars and rages on.
It clamors as I break the chain
of modesty until it’s gone.
For only Thunder won’t forsake—
it won’t deny but will applaud
the vile unleashing of my hate
before the hallow eyes of God,
so that it finally may wane.
It’s to the Tempest that I’ve prayed,
the only witness as I fade.

Read my books!

Sonnet introduction.

It’s been ten years since I last posted one of these.

The sonnet—one of the cornerstones of English literature, Shakespeare’s favorite form, and very common here on Substack as such. Yadda-yadda. It’s fairly straightforward when it comes to the specific form he used, so it won’t take long to go over. However, there is more than one kind of sonnet, and we will see some variants today, as well as what I did with mine—posted above.

Shakespeare’s thing.

It’s worth mentioning that the man did not invent this form. Shockingly. What he did do was formalize its meter and rhyming scheme. Let’s break his Sonnet 18 to see them come to life.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
   So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Like most sonnets, the Shakespearean measure consists of 14 lines and is thus also named quatorzain—because the French are everywhere when it comes to poetry. In his case, sonnets are divided in 3 sections of 4 lines—or quatrains—and 1 section of 2 lines—or couplet. Most of his sonnets are not separated into different stanzas but rather remain glued together in one. Moreover, the quatrains follow a strict ABAB-CDCD-EFEF rhyme scheme while the couplet adheres to a simple rhyme between both of its lines.

(Quatrain 1)
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? (A)
Thou art more lovely and more temperate: (B)
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, (A)
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date; (B)
(Quatrain 2)
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, (C)
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; (D)
And every fair from fair sometime declines, (C)
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd; (D)
(Quatrain 3)
But thy eternal summer shall not fade, (E)
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st; (F)
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade, (E)
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st: (F)
(Couplet)
   So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, (G)
   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. (G)

Now, that has been fairly simple and quite easy to follow, yet there still is a specific structure to each and every line in Shakespeare’s sonnets. These follow an iambic pentameter, and as such, they must contain 10 syllables per line, in pairings wherein every second syllable is stressed either naturally or intentionally. I posted about it some time ago, if you remember. The first section of Sonnet 18 is written thus.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? (10 syllables | 5 stresses)
Thou art more lovely and more temperate: (10 syllables | 5 stresses)
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, (10 syllables | 5 stresses)
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date; (10 syllables | 5 stresses)

This is all there is to Shakespeare’s sonnets, actually. Once you master iambic meter, writing them is as easy as (insert whatever seems easiest for you to do). It’s simple, it’s elegant. Have fun!

Other kinds of sonnets.

Again, most sonnets adhere to the previously mentioned 14-line length. However, earlier traditions from Sicily and Italy vary in the way the rhymes and sections are arranged. The also popular Petrarchan form, coined after Francesco di Petracco, is divided in 1 stanza of 8 lines—or octave—and 1 stanza of 6 lines—or sestet—also amounting to fourteen lines in its basic presentation. These follow ABBAABBA and CDCDCD schemes respectively. Emma Lazarus demonstrates as such in her poem The New Colossus.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, (A)
With conquering limbs astride from land to land; (B)
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand (B)
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame (A)
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name (A)
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand (B)
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command (B)
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. (A)

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she (C)
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, (D)
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, (C)
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. (D)
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, (C)
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"(D)

A different variant of the Petrarchan sonnet adds another octave and a second sestet.

Once it crossed to the Americas via the Spanish, the form began to be widely separated into two quatrains and two tercets—or stanzas of three lines each. The syllable count turned into eleven or fourteen per line, and the scheme became ABAB-CDCD-EFE-EFE.

Of course, there are still so many more.

What I did.

Instead of treating the sonnet as a full poem, I used it as a stanza—three times. That is, three stanzas of fourteen lines each. The Tempest, however, changes the rhyming scheme to weave the lines further together and keep a semblance of continuity across each stanza. This became an ABAC-DEDB-FCFE-GG scheme.

The Thunder knows. It’s heard the sound— (A)
the striking fury and the wrath— (b)
that in my chest I’ve made profound. (A)
The Tempest hears it in my breath. (c)
Despair and maladies I drown, (D)
the rage I often hide and clothe; (e)
become as lightning, crashing down. (D)
The Storm will hear the aftermath (b)
of holding in what should be loud (F)
before I mute myself to death. (c)
Because it’s nowhere else allowed (F)
to say it is myself I loathe, (e)
I’ll pour myself into the Rain, (G)
the only witness to my pain. (G)

Moreover, I decided to make use of alliteration so that the rhymes, though different, retained a semblance of phonetic harmony. For example: wrath, breathe, and clothe. Or, at least, that was the intent. Also, instead of iambic pentameter, I went for tetrameter, reducing the syllable count per line from ten to eight.

Try it out!

As with all previously explored forms, I am not here to police you about how you write and what decisions you make. You can make lines vary in syllable count, ditch the rhymes, change the number of lines per stanza, or anything else you want to do. All I intend on this publication is to give you a starting point from which to find your identity as a writer. Though, by following these rules, you in turn become a part of this ancient tradition of poetry composition.

I hope you liked it, and I can’t wait to see what you come up with.

Read my books!

Poem text.

Sweet things that I won’t hear, though I knew how,
grow bitter unsaid here, and they won’t hold.
Warm meals that we won’t share at your house now
make life in your wake suddenly too cold.

From laughter to loss, less than a week passed
since last we had met, there in a long night;
much less than a week since we embraced last.
One mother—my own grandma—without light.

Those eyes, in a day burnt into gray sands,
soon dimmed as my sky darkened and turned pale.
Those hands that I once held in my own hands
felt lighter in death, suddenly too frail.

Once youthful, your arms carried my small weight;
now, mine are the ones holding to still mourn.
Mine, nourished by yours, holding, until late,
both bonds by demise parted and hopes torn.

These hospital rooms are where you last stayed.
Hence, leaving them tears open my wounds scarred.
These hospital beds are where you last prayed.
Hence, washing them grows suddenly too hard.

Sons, daughters, and friends, trying to still save
one soul from the cruel fate of a sure doom,
here gather by night, cast to a deep grave.
One family’s love turned into such gloom.

What once you had breathed gladly in full glee
soon died in the forced air of a steel lung.
What once we had all thought you would still see
made sixty and three suddenly too young.

An introduction to ionic meter, pyrrhics and spondees.

The history buffs, architecture nerds, and my fellow obsessive kids will already know that this kind of meter is obviously Greek. It’s common to find it as such in ancient Greek poetry, as words and phrases are more likely to contain its syllabic stress count than those in the English language. While iambic and trochaic meters rely on pairs of stressed and unstressed syllables, what happens if you want to write two stresses followed by two softer sounds? It may sound complicated at first, so let’s go step by step.

Difference from trochaic and iambic meters.

Trochaic is when you have a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one, within one word or multiple—such as WA-ter, or GONE to. Iambic is the opposite—as in de-LIGHT or the LEAST. What if, however, you had two syllables of the same kind grouped together?

Two unstressed syllables compose what is known as a pyrrhic—another reference to Greek history. Two stressed syllables, on the other hand, make up a spondee. These are catalogued as kinds of metric feet.

Because of the intrinsic phonetic nature of words in the English language, it’s quasi-impossible—and I say quasi because I know some of us mad people will manage anyway—to have lines composed entirely of lacks of stresses or tonality. Forcing lines to have only stresses snuffs out any lyricism or rhythmic flow in a poem, which I’m sure has its uses and purposes. Joining these pairings, however, opens up an entirely different possibility.

Enter IONIC meter!

Ionic meter is exactly that—a series of alternating pyrrhics and spondees that create a verse; and there are two kinds within its composition. A major ionic foot or double trochee is made up of a pair of stresses followed by a pair of lacks thereof—as in ONE WISH for the. A minor ionic foot or double iamb is, naturally, the reverse instance—as in into FIVE HELLS. In practice, ionic meter works as follows:

1. Major ionic or double trochee.

Tom lies in his cruel vanity;
Trish cries for her lost sanity.

2. Minor ionic or double iamb.

With a cold needle to Ron's blood,
his demise came in a drug's flood.

As with trochaic and iambic meters, the number of metrical foot per line determines the nomenclature of the poem’s overall meter. Because both of the previous examples contain a total of two ionic metrical feet per line, these would normally be called ionic dimeters, major and minor respectively.

Don’t limit yourself to this.

You will notice that I added an additional spondee at the beginning of each line throughout the entirety of the poem. This was done simply out of a personal touch—or perhaps a little artistic masochism; but now you now all the inner workings of what makes this poem even more special for me.

What once you had breathed gladly in full glee
soon died in the forced air of a steel lung.
What once we had all thought you would still see
made sixty and three suddenly too young.

As with all previously explored forms, I am not here to police you about how you write and what decisions you make. You can make lines vary in syllable count, ditch the rhymes, change the number of lines per stanza, or anything else you want to do. All I intend on this publication is to give you a starting point from which to find your identity as a writer. Though, by following these rules, you in turn become a part of this ancient tradition of poetry composition.

I hope you liked it, and I can’t wait to see what you come up with.

Read any of my books!

Poem text.

I burst.
When time apart and circumstance
destroyed the only chance
we had, I cursed
romance.

I tore
my heart, became
a slave to hatred for
whatever bore the reason or
the blame.

My mind
descended into blinding craze,
a rage I fed for days
until inclined
to daze.

And in
my crude despair,
I let myself begin
to curse you though it all had been
unfair.

But you
returned. And I had been unjust.
I’d taken both your trust
and love into
the dust.

That’s why
you left, of course.
And I deserved to cry
and hang myself for my
remorse.

Read Hers, my love poetry book!

Dear Schemers. Many forms are too precious to be explored once, and as more subscribers and readers join this learning experience, it would be unfair to leave these in the past. To that end, I will be cycling through previously explored techniques—with fresh poems, naturally—in order to keep spreading this beautiful art we should all be able to become a part of. Thank you for joining.

-B

Cinquains (again).

French, obviously. These stanzas are named as such because cinq in French means five—and now you can bother someone about it. They could generally refer to any and all stanzas consisting of five lines, but if that were the case, we could simply refer to them as quintets—if you don’t like French. However! The term, more than a number of lines in a stanza, refers to the various rules it involves across different iterations. It’s about the technique.'

The American cinquain, or its first popular form, was—as far we know—coined by Adelaide Crapsey in her posthumous collection titled Verse and published in 1915. This form consists of five lines with a syllable count of 2, 4, 6, 8, and 2 respectively, amounting to twenty-two syllables in total. A stanza faithful to Crapsey’s method would, moreover, also contain a strict stress count (or number of tonic syllables per line) of 1, 2, 3, 4, and 1 respectively, or half the total of syllables. This form, because of its shortage of writing space, does not require itself to rhyme. In a cinquain titled Anguish, Crapsey wrote:

Keep thou (2 | 1 stress)
Thy tearless watch (4 | 2 stresses)
All night but when blue-dawn (6 | 3 stresses)
Breathes on the silver moon, then weep! (8 | stresses)
Then weep! (2 | stress)

Cinquain variations.

The opening poem of this post, as you may have noticed, does rhyme and does so to show you that it can be done. And the purpose of going back to the main work explored today is that it includes a variation developed after Crapsey’s passing—the reverse cinquain—which consists of five lines of 2, 8, 6, 4, and 2 syllables each. For instance:

I burst. (2 | 1 stress)
When time apart and circumstance (8 | 4 stresses)
destroyed the only chance (6 | 3 stresses)
we had, I cursed (4 | 2 stresses)
romance. (2 | 1 stress)

Other variations of the cinquain poem, which you may find online and seem to be contemporary innovations, stray from the syllable limit both in number of syllables per line and number of lines in general—which, yeah, is silly considering the form’s name is supposed to literally mean FIVE, but I digress. One of these is the butterfly cinquain, which consists of nine lines of 2, 8, 6, 4, 2, 4, 6, 8, and 2 syllables each. Alice Jane-Marie Massa provides an example of this variation on her website, which reads:

Willow, (2)
age eleven, (4)
still guides me happily (6)
with ease, grace, devotion, wisdom, (8)
care, love. (2)
Together—wherever we go, (8)
my sweet, grand Leader Dog (6)
prompts me to count (4)
blessings. (2)

Finally, there is always the possibility of employing individual cinquains as stanzas for a broader poem. The writing we originally explored today, Remorse from Hers, provides three pairings of what are known as mirrored cinquains, which consist of a traditional cinquain followed by the reversed variation, but the other way around here. For example:

My mind (2)
descended into blinding craze, (8)
a rage I fed for days (6)
until inclined (4)
to daze. (2)

And in (2)
my crude despair, (4)
I let myself begin (6)
to curse you though it all had been (8)
unfair. (2)

Innovate upon it!

As you saw me do, I added a rhyme scheme to my use of the mirrored cinquain variation (ABBAB - BAABA), but, honestly, you can ditch it, change it, ignore the iambic meter, use trochaic, get rid of meter altogether, or simply use the staircase-like form as an idea for your own separate style. They don’t have to be five lines. It doesn’t have to be French. All I intend to do on this publication is give you a starting point from which to find your identity as a writer.

I hope you liked it, and I can’t wait to see what you come up with.

Read any of my poetry books!

Poem text.

He spoke of his maladies, sorrows, and woes,
and made me regret where I sat on the bus.
He told me the stories of God-only-knows,
the private annoyance I’d never discuss.

His endless collection of trifles and flair
he seemingly had in his conscience interred.
The places he hated, the smell in the air,
the frivolous fashion he thought was absurd.

I tried to amuse him to little avail,
instead interrupted and duly repelled.
And setting my clamor for silence to fail,
I muted the torture I wish I had yelled.

He rambled and chattered and managed to talk
my brain into almost beginning to pop,
until I had finally chosen to walk
and signaled the driver to brake at the stop.

The moment he begged me to stay and be nice,
to hear the complaints which he had of his wife,
I rose as I gave him the timeless advice
of stopping to listen and fixing his life.

Read any of my poetry books!

Anapestic meter.

Yes, there are more than two kinds of meter. The anapest is, as opposed to the iamb and the trochee, a metrical foot composed of three syllables instead of only two, and it’s another of the few commonly known meters that can be arranged uniformly across a poem without much mental gymnastics or a lengthy explanation. There are many more that we will explore later on.

Its composition is easy to follow—two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable; and there are many ways to achieve it.

1. Trisyllabic words strictly stressed at the end. Words such as redeFINE, introDUCE, interWEAVE. While rather an obvious answer, relying on these alone can be rather constricting—but not impossible, so have fun if you try it! Furthermore, many of these are derivatives or words simply possessing a prefix that lengthens a disyllabic word by one syllable at the start or a monosyllabic word by two syllables.

2. Naturally unstressed atonic words placed in the blanks around a word with a clearly stressed syllable. These are mostly parts of speech that tend to be spoken without emphasis, such as pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, articles and adverbs of place and time—by his GRACE, we arRIVED, to her HOUSE, during LUNCH.

3. Multisyllabic words that extend from one anapest to another. That is, words which posses one or more syllables before its stress and after. For example: interWOVen, comPLEXions, deFYing, SAvages

When all of these are used together, they make the writing of anapestic lines much easier to undertake. Depending on the number of anapests in one specific verse, an anapestic meter acquires its name just like iambic and trochaic ones do. An anapestic trimeter, for instance, would be written as follows.

In the shadowy realm of his dreams, (9 syllables | 3 stresses)
the duplicitous nature of Death (9 syllables | 3 stresses)
introduced him to billowing streams (9 syllables | 3 stresses)
of the doubts which he held in his breath. (9 syllables | 3 stresses)

Compound meters.

While we will expand on these kinds of meter at a later time, it is important to address the fact that the lines of the titular poem of this post start not with anapests but with iambs. This allows the writer to add flavor to the melodic identity of a poem, and, of course, this is not the only way to bind different meters together. You can innovate the form however you like, too!

iamb (He spoke) (of his maladies, sorrows, and woes,) anapests
iamb (and made) (me regret where I sat on the bus.) anapests
iamb (He told) (me the stories of God-only-knows,) anapests
iamb (the pri-) (-vate annoyance I’d never discuss.) anapests

Have fun!

As with all previously explored forms, I am not here to police you about how you write and what decisions you make. You can make lines vary in syllable count, ditch the rhymes, change the number of lines per stanza, or anything else you want to do. All I intend on this publication is to give you a starting point from which to find your identity as a writer. Though, by following these rules, you in turn become a part of this ancient tradition of poetry composition.

I hope you liked it, and I can’t wait to see what you come up with.

Read any of my poetry books!