Spring – New Form poetry for dVerse

Slowly it melts.  I wait for the snow
to go completely. I want growing
to start! Mowing the lawn…hoeing…aren’t
much fun, but knowing produce will be
ripe before long…OH…I can almost
taste a ripe tomato bursting with
flavour! Though I must wait, owing to
the frozen soil, I will keep coping,
hoping…soon I can plant the first row

~~

earlier this month at dVerse, Gay Reiser Cannon asked us to come up with our own form poetry. I had posted a poem at the time, but then, I came up with another idea, but didn’t have time to write a poem in time to post it for the link, so I have saved this poem for open link night.

Notes on the form:

Name: I haven’t quite decided between “X-Factor” or “Cross-Purpose”
Structure:

• pick any odd number of 5 or greater (I recommend between 5 and 11). That number is the total number of syllables in each line AND the total number of lines in the poem
• the poem should be non-metrical in feel
• 1st and last syllables of 1st and last line rhyme
• 2nd and 2nd last syllable of  2nd line and 2nd last line rhyme with the rhyming syllables of 1st and last line
• as the poem progresses towards the middle, the rhymed syllable moves progressively inward until the middle line.  The middle line has only one of the rhyming syllable, directly in the middle of the line.
• In other words, the rhyming syllables form an “X” in the structure.
• NOTE: the rhyming syllable does NOT have to be the last syllable of any given word.  For example, one of my words in the above poem is “tomato” where I’ve used the first and last syllable of the word as the rhyming syllables (so yes, you CAN use the same syllable more than once if necessary)
• The poem doesn’t necessarily have to be true (for example, I hate gardening)  🙂

 

New Form (or new twist on an old form)

At dVerse we’ve been asked to make new forms
of poems for poets to express their words
and this one can be writ in towns or farms
but don’t expect great praises or rewards

I’ve written this in sonnet style you’ll note
but if you look at last words of each line
true rhymes I think you won’t see here tonight
but yet those words are linked and not alone

I hope you take the time to look it through
and don’t just throw your hands up in disgust
after the poem the mystery I’ll throw
to you because you are my honoured guest

I hope that once the form’s descrip is heard
you’ll find this style not too very hard

~~

Today at dVerse, Gay is asking us to make up new poetical forms.  I decided to take an old form and give it a unique twist.  If you look at the sonnet above, you’ll notice a definite abab/cdcd/efef/gg form, but instead of the last syllable of each line rhyming with their counterpart, they start and end with the same consonant sounds, but have different vowel sounds in the middle.  Therefore, “forms” from line one is changed to “farms” in line 3, and “note” in line 5 is changed to “(to)night” in line 7, etc.

This style could be used in any existing form poetry where rhymes are replaced with vowel substitutions instead.  Hope you enjoyed…and I hope, even more, that you understood my explanation  🙂

Oh…and because I’m supposed to have a name for the form, I’ll simply call it “Vowel Substitution”

I’ll link this up to dVerse later today when the bar opens (at 3pm EST).