Final Poetic Forms
The following presentation will provide format navigation for your writing. After reviewing this document, do to your shared Google Docs folder to find examples and further information about each form. Reading the shared document is imperative for each format.
Sestina
Pantoum or Villanelle
Lune or Monotetra
Cento
Anagrammatic
The Sestina
A complex French verse form, usually unrhymed, consisting of six stanzas of six lines each and a three-line stanza concluding the poem. The end words of the first stanza are repeated in a different order as end words in each of the subsequent five stanzas; the closing envoy contains all six words, two per line, placed in the middle and at the end of the three lines. The patterns of word repetition are as follows, with each number representing the final word of a line, and each row of numbers representing a stanza:
1 2 3 4 5 6
6 1 5 2 4 3
3 6 4 1 2 5
5 3 2 6 1 4
4 5 1 3 6 2
2 4 6 5 3 1
(6 2) (1 4) (5 3)
Source: Poetry Foundation
The Pantoum
This poem has an intricate pattern of line repetition. Each line of a pantoum is used twice—lines 2 and 4 of the first stanza become lines 1 and 3 of the second, and so on until the last stanza. The final quatrain consists entirely of repeated lines: the first and third are the preceding stanza’s lines 2 and 4; the second and fourth are the opening stanza’s lines 3 and 1 in that order. So the poem circles back to its beginning, but with a deepened understanding.
It can be hypnotic or obsessive. One optional feature is to develop different themes in the first and second halves of each quatrain. Another option is to end with a couplet rather than the final quatrain as described above. Poets sometimes downplay the rhyme and meter requirements to focus on repetition. Another popular version is to make changes in the repeated lines to move the story forward.
A pantoum is a type of poem with a verse form consisting of three stanzas. It has a set pattern within the poem of repetitive lines. The pattern in each stanza is where the second and fourth line of each verse is repeated as the first and third of the next. The pattern changes though for the last stanza to the first and third line are the second and fourth of the stanza above . The last line is a repeat of the first starting line of the poem and the third line of the first is the second of the last.
Riverside
|1| |As I walk by the riverside|
|2| |Ripples disturb the water|
|3| |Fish dart upstream|
|4| |Fighting against the flow|
| | | |
|2| |Ripples disturb the water|
|5| |Struggling to their destination|
|4| |Fighting against the flow|
|6| |In their underwater world|
| | | |
|5| |Struggling to their destination|
|3| |Fish dart upstream|
|6| |In their underwater world|
|1| |As I walk by the riverside|
Here is an example by Lorna Crozier.
The Dirty Thirties
Grandmother hoed her garden black and blue,
the sun shone without giving any light.
Fennel, basil, heartsease and rue,
she deeded snow to heal a season’s blight.
The sun shone without giving any light
and cows pulled their calves back to the womb.
No snow could heal the years’ sad blight.
A boy played the bones in the upstairs room.
The cow pulled the calf inside her womb.
No milk from a stone, the old woman said.
My dad played the bones in his attic room
where mice ran on wires above his head.
No blood from a stone, the old woman said.
Or snow from snow, or sorrow from a pin.
Mice chewed the wires above their heads
and all things seemed grey and poorer then.
No snow from snow or sorrow from a pin.
Fennel from basil, heartsease from common rue.
All things seemed older and harder then
when Grandma beat her garden black and blue.
Calendar
Essence of spring drifts from the sticky buds,
Robin's lively lilt now wakes me early.
Under the clouds, crocuses clutch a tight bouquet.
Humming lawnmowers are summer's elevator music.
Robin's lively lilt now wakes me early,
The smell of sunscreen seeps through all my clothes.
Humming lawnmowers are summer's elevator music.
Fruit stand has berries and apples by the box!
The smell of sunscreen seeps through all my clothes;
Your fun is over, mocks the drenching rain.
Fruit stand has pears and apples by the box:
Houses don sequins and tuxedos.
Your fun is over, mocks the drenching rain.
We laugh and push each other's cars through mounds of snow.
Houses doff sequins and tuxedos:
Naked trees stand pensive in the cold.
We laugh and push each other's cars through mounds of snow
Under the clouds, crocuses clutch a tight bouquet.
Naked trees stand pensive in the cold;
Essence of spring drifts from the sticky buds.
~Violet Nesdoly
It All Started With A Packet of Seeds
It all started with a packet of seeds,
To be planted with tenderness and care,
At the base of an Oak, free from all weeds.
They will produce such beauty and flare.
To be planted with tenderness and care,
A cacophony of colorful flowers,
They will produce such beauty and flare.
With an aroma that can continue for hours.
A cacophony of colorful flowers,
Bright oranges with yellows and reds,
With an aroma that can continue for hours,
Delivered from their fresh flower beds.
Bright oranges with yellows and reds,
At the base of an oak, free from all weeds,
Delivered from their fresh flower beds,
At all started with a packet of seeds.
Copyright © 2001 Sally Ann Roberts
Lune
A Lune is an American modified Haiku. The format is simple it is a three line stanza where simplicity in ideas creates a concrete idea. The syllable count is 5-3-5.
examples:
Lune #1
wings beating, whirring
you float there
sipping sweet nectar
Lune #2
watermelon days
rush headlong
toward pencils, books, desks
Monotetra
The monotetra is a new poetic form developed by Michael Walker. Each stanza contains four lines in monorhyme. Each line is in tetrameter for a total of eight syllables. What makes the monotetra so powerful as a poetic form, is that the last line contains two metrical feet, repeated. It can have as few as one or two stanzas, or as many as desired. You need 2-3 stanzas.
Stanza Structure:
Line 1: 8 syllables
Line 2: 8 syllables
Line 3: 8 syllables;
Line 4: 4 syllables, repeated
The rhyme scheme is AAAA, BBBB, CCCC, DDDD
http://popularpoetryforms.blogspot.com/2013/02/monotetra.html
Raking Leaves
another leaf has come to rest
and though I try to do my best
I fear I’m failing in my quest
I do not jest, I do not jest!
the leaves fall faster than my rake
while my muscles begin to ache
a rest is what I’d like to take
I need a break, I need a break!
Villanelle
A Villanelle is a nineteen-line poem consisting of a very specific rhyming scheme:
aba aba aba aba aba abaa. The first and the third lines in the first stanza are repeated in alternating order throughout the poem, and appear together in the last couplet (last two lines).
Collaboration
My gramp brought me a valentine.
To give to mommy and it's just fine.
I'm four years old and it's all mine.
A valentine. A valentine.
It's got a heart and teddy bear
To show my mom how much I care.
A tiny voice came from nowhere,
"I've got no flair." "I've got no flair."
Somehow that card said words to me.
"I'm not as fine as I can be.
I need more personality"
that she can see, that she can see."
"With your help lad, I'll be much more.
I'll be a card that she'll adore."
I'll not be common anymore!
Accept this chore. Accept this chore."
With a crayon I wrote just "my"
after "Mom". She is my own, that's why.
I signed Tommy then heard card sigh.
I don't know why, I don't know why.
The card she's kept for all this time.
A priceless card that cost a dime.
Mom says I made the value climb
with my first rhyme, with my first rhyme.
© Lawrencealot - February 9, 2013
Cento
“From the Latin word for "patchwork," the cento (or collage poem) is a poetic form made up of lines from poems by other poets. Though poets often borrow lines from other writers and mix them in with their own, a true cento is composed entirely of lines from other sources.” (from www.poets.org)
Be sure to cite the lines from the original author/poem from which you created your patchwork poem. It is polite to cite....also any work created without appropriate citations will not be graded.
Wolf Cento
by Simone Muench
Very quick. Very intense, like a wolf
at a live heart, the sun breaks down.
What is important is to avoid
the time allotted for disavowels
as the livid wound
leaves a trace leaves an abscess
takes its contraction for those clouds
that dip thunder & vanish
like rose leaves in closed jars.
Age approaches, slowly. But it cannot
crystal bone into thin air.
The small hours open their wounds for me.
This is a woman's confession:
I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me.
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/22115
"Dust" Fragments from Gibbon's Fall*
Announced by a cloud of dust,
Buried in the Dust,
The works of ages into dust.
Dust from their ancient libraries.
Cities were crumbled into dust,
Baghdad mourned into dust,
Royalty was humbled in the dust.
Dust excited by the troops of cavalry.
Strewed with gold dust,
Genius was humbled into dust,
Writings now overspread with dust.
Dust was artfully contrived.
Idols were crumbled into dust,
Religion was trampled into dust,
Deities crumbled into dust.
Dust and darkness.
- copyright © 2001, William T. Delamar
* All "dust" lines patchworked from
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Edward Gibbon)
http://www.nhvweb.net/vhs/English/tleyland/cento%20examples.htm
Anagrammatic Poem
Here’s how you do it:
Toilets
by T.S. Eliot
Let us go then, to the john,
Where the toilet seat waits to be sat upon
Like a lover's lap perched upon ceramic;
Let us go, through doors that do not always lock,
Which means you ought to knock
Lest opening one reveal a soul within
Who'll shout, "Stay out! Did you not see my shin,
Framed within the gap twixt floor and stall?"
No, I did not see that at all.
That is not what I saw, at all.
To the stall the people come to go,
Reading an obscene graffito.
We have lingered in the chamber labeled "Men"
Till attendants proffer aftershave and mints
As we lather up our hands with soap, and rinse.