The site's best form poetry

[Leanne]

There's a lot of free verse around these days, and while we love it, it's always nice to read a well-controlled form.  What are your nominations?

For contrast in tone, I'd go with Mercedes' fun sonnet After Shakespeare's sonnet #15 versus her gorgeous sestina Love is an Eternal Beacon.

Also, billy's conachlonn Honour is a beauty.  And I dearly love Keith's triolet Why doesn't he move?, especially given current Champions League events.

Not to mention all the glorious work in the Spotlight forum.

[billy]

now you're asking something of us. so much to choose from. i'll not mention a leanne sonnet or i'll fill the thread.

mercedes' sestina; a ghost story one.

an amusing sonnet from milo

two for now, the pedicurist just turned up

[Leanne]

What I like most about all of those mentioned is that they're in our Practice forum. In other words, they're just stuff people are capable of composing off the top of their heads, in a pretty short time frame, and the comments are (largely) supportive of the spirit of community. Which means, we may disagree about stylistic things, and whether or not we like a particular technique, but conversation does not degenerate to nasty name calling tit-for-tattedness or trying to prove one's Poetic Mastery (oh, except that one guy a while back, he was fun. Glad we'll never have another one like that, right?)

Because poetry is a very deep well, filled with many different flavours, and nobody must settle on just one. And none of us need claim to be The Most Amazing Ever, because the poetry will speak for itself. Or not.

[billy]

there's a few i liked in there by novice poets who no longer grace the place. i'll put a few of those up tomorrow maybe.

[tectak]

there's a few i liked in there by novice poets who no longer grace the place. i'll put a few of those up tomorrow maybe.

....and I have not given up The Poems. Any suggestions for inclusion are welcome. It may all come to nought but I flick through the pages regularly...I tend to hover over my own but that's the least of my secrets whilst solitary....ahem...

[CRNDLSM]

I hope to one day be on this list cause I think I have a knack for word placement, but my meter is terrible and work is far from beautiful, and those are important aspects of poetry. I vote for mercedes

[Leanne]

One day, crundle

For me, now and always, the pleasure I take in poetry is not derived from how "modern" it is, but how well I connect with it. How it sounds. The way it makes me look at the world in a different way. The condensed essence of humanity.

(Besides, we're well past the "modern" now. Even past the post-modern. And the post-post-modern. We've run out of posts. Modern is pretty damned old these days.)

[Leanne]

Just reading more of the poetry practice threads (I haven't been in a while -- in fact, haven't been reading much of anything) and found CRNDLSM writing aes freislighes about mutants and acid rain... now if that's not pure poetry, I don't know what is.

[Leanne]

This is not intended as an exhaustive list of "these are the only poems that are worth reading on the site". They're ones I've found over the past couple of days, some I remembered, some I hadn't even noticed before, but pretty much exclusively from the practice threads and definitely exclusively form. Not because form's better but because it came up in conversation and I enjoy celebrating the work of the writers we have here -- especially in practice mode, where you're forced to discipline yourself into a particular kind of poem. There is no writer of free verse who does not benefit from learning the disciplines of form, and I will stand by that.

[Lizzie]

What's Good I've Had, by Keith

Paperwhite, by artjewl

[Todd]

I'd forgotten about "Paperwhite". That was a haunting piece.

[Leanne]

Oh yes, both awesome choices, thanks Lizzie

Julie (artjewl) and Mercedes are the only two writers whose pantoums make me want to write a pantoum... otherwise I get annoyed with the form for some irrational reason.

[milo]

Oh yes, both awesome choices, thanks Lizzie

Julie (artjewl) and Mercedes are the only two writers whose pantoums make me want to write a pantoum... otherwise I get annoyed with the form for some irrational reason.

Nothing irrational about that at all.

[Keith]

This is not intended as an exhaustive list of "these are the only poems that are worth reading on the site".  They're ones I've found over the past couple of days, some I remembered, some I hadn't even noticed before, but pretty much exclusively from the practice threads and definitely exclusively form.  Not because form's better but because it came up in conversation and I enjoy celebrating the work of the writers we have here -- especially in practice mode, where you're forced to discipline yourself into a particular kind of poem.  There is no writer of free verse who does not benefit from learning the disciplines of form, and I will stand by that.

This doesn't fit what has been requested of this thread but I do believe it supports the comment above, I mean free verse is just prose without internal rhyme and this poem is one of my favourites and demonstrates the poets ability to take what she has honed in a formal setting to deliver a poem of the highest quality. She the night by Leanne. Sorry I can't do the link but it's on page two of the spotlights. The poem simply gives me something to aspire to. I think sometimes Leanne doesn't understand how much she brings to this site and just how much her comments and poetry are appreciated. I for one have been both inspired and influenced by her poetry. I don't want anyone to jump on this, Leanne wouldn't want the accolade. No, all you would be free verse guru's just take a look at the structure of this poem, it truly is a work born out of hard study of form.

She The Night by Leanne
/mod

[Todd]

She The Night is probably my favorite poem by Leanne (though there is competition).

[Leanne]

I had no idea that little poem was going to make such an impact.

[rowens]

I write in form all the time. Though I think it's a disability in my head. And me thinking. My sense in form.
I'm no good at judging form, technically. But I don't think I write quite in free verse. I feel Leanne's poetry better when it's not in a structured, traditional verse form. But then again, they may have been but I might not have noticed it.
My own belief, is that Leanne writes better out of form, I meaning a strict rhyme and meter. And I don't call it free verse.
Leanne, for all your study and practice of verse, I think you write, and think, better out of verse. And I don't call it free verse. I just think you have a mind for working better that way. I think you have a little too much comedy, not a bad thing, immanent in your versifying. And your other stuff is more poignant and better, to me.

---

I think, and feel, it's easier for me to write in a strange verse form than to write in, what many people call, prose. I find that I have a handicap in prosaics. I find verse-like things more natural and in my kin. And prose, well-written, to be prose poetry.
And sometimes I worry that what I write isn't poetry at all. And that I should just write in prose and call it.

But, Leanne, I think you could make a name for yourself with your nontraditional forms. But that might just be my natural tendencies to relate and feel those more.

---

I like how Robert Frost skews his syntax to make it fit without making it sound jovial and funny (it does when he wants and don't when he don't). I almost am finding, not cleverly, but almost I'd say desperately skewed syntax and vicious, harsh diction to be as poetical as metaphor and allusion and verse. I like how James Dickey does it too.

This might not be the point of this thread. But I don't know how to judge technical things, and just thought of these things to say.

---

she wears the holes of crucifixion
from the years spent standing in place of a cock
at the mercy of the winds that swirled across the steeple
 
now fallen, her wings are torn from her back
and her breast is exposed from behind
so her traitor heart can pump its last
into the filth upon which this church perches
like an aged buzzard
too blind to do more than peck feebly for bile
 
beneath her hand, the shards of a once-sealed jar
stab at her skin, and within its shattered curve
is a single white feather



But then again,


We are the genetic dispossessed,
born not of man and woman, but of graft
and gutter; we are blown upon your draft
and rooted in the mud. We manifest
in khaki dreams of dark, forbidden breast
and echo on your screens. You used to craft
a turban from a towel – oh, how you laughed
and called us names. Would you have ever guessed
that when you’d grown, the names would be the same?
But not in jest -- in ridicule and shame.
Did you imagine children in the sand
with castles made of bone, a rousing game 
of Blind Man’s Buff, or Little Lucy’s Lame?
It’s your turn at the dice: hold out your hand.



I just like you better when you're being dead serious. I think you can afford to.