Thursday Poetry Forms (Poetry for Dummies) Week 17

Ah... How does one follow up something as wonderful as Kay's Poetry Picnic Week 16: My Life in Free Verse post? *sigh* But it's a new week in The Gooseberry Garden, and though nowhere near as creatively inspirational, it is my job to start the week off with some musings on poetry form. I am CC Champagne, and I bid you welcome among the gooseberry bushes, where the berries are ripe for picking and the sun always shines, even in mid-winter.

Some poetry forms are built by re-curring end-rhymes and some poetry forms don't bother with rhymes much at all. As I have travelled the blogosphere I have come across quite a few forms that only focus on syllables, and I thought (in keeping with the repetition post last week) that we might look a bit more at some of those.

A Nonnet is a nine line poem, whose first line has nine syllables, the second line eight syllables, the third seven and so on in descending order down to the last line, which has only one single syllable. This creates an aesthetically pleasing poem, as well as a challenge for those of us who love playing around with words. The only thing you will need to remember (apart from how to count nine syllables), is to keep the poem in iambic meter.

An example of this form that I found via Google (though I'm sure there are many other examples out there, quite probably even among our creative contributors) is a poem called Sensual Touch, by Doolie:

Heart races from your sensual touch

Your smile sweet, your caress gentle

Loving kiss that melts my heart

Soothing lips like velvet

Body on fire

Desire building

United

Two as

One

See what I mean about aesthetically pleasing?

If you get into this whole counting syllables thing, there are plenty of forms out there for you to try - all you have to do is go looking! I'm especially looking forward to sharing the information about the Pi, but you'll have to wait until March for that one! *smile*

Short and sweet this week, and I hope you don't mind if I leave you to rush out into the pre-Christmas stress of the real world already? If you feel like sharing a nonnet or any other of your poetry with us, please feel free to join the Poetry Picnic Week 16: My Life in Free Verse. Don't stress too much about Christmas now, and I hope to see you again next week.

*cheers*