Category Archives: using form

Using form: Amphibrachic tetrameter: John Beaton, ‘Regeneration’

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Hay ripens. I sharpen my tapering scythe blade
and chamfer its wafer of paper-thin steel
with stone swoops; it’s hooked like a peregrine’s talon.
The snaking shaft sweeps and the first swathe is side-laid
beside me, clean slain. As I swing I can feel
the gravid field yielding. Sheaves kneel and then fall in
the breeze in formation. Their early seeds dance there
like next April’s rain-showers shining in air.
The cocksfoot and rye-grass and fescue are falling,
the rogue oats, the sedges—I harvest the field where
they shaded the clover; and none do I spare.
The sun sets on stubble where hay-stalks lie sprawling;
my father stood here in the old days like one
of the stalks that made hay as they fell in the sun.

*****

John Beaton writes: “My father grew up in a croft on Skye and he’d scythe hay crops. As a boy, I saw him do it and, as a young man, I did it myself. I never forgot the rhythmic ease of his cutting. He’d been born to it. Anyone can scythe but there’s a skill in being able to do it effortlessly for whole days. It’s all in the rhythm and the precision of the swing.
One day, when I was scything dry hay and watching seeds scatter then fall, reseeding the ground, I thought of how I was succeeding my father. And I wrote this poem.
To capture the rhythm of the scythe, I used amphibrachic tetrameter lines with a mixture of masculine and feminine endings. For instance, the first two lines go:
da DA da da DA da da DA da da DA da
da DA da da DA da da DA da da DA
The other lines follow these patterns in varying order. The rhymes are abcabcdd effegg and the overall pattern is a modified sonnet. Strong internal rhyme and alliteration keep the lines swinging. I hope the reader sweeps and sways through it.”

John Beaton’s metrical poetry has been widely published and has won numerous awards. He recites from memory as a spoken word performer and is author of Leaving Camustianavaig published by Word Galaxy Press. Raised in the Scottish Highlands, John lives in Qualicum Beach on Vancouver Island.
https://www.john-beaton.com/

“Scything” by London Permaculture is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Using form: Quatrains: Stephen Gold, ‘So Pseud Me’

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My verse is of the humorous variety,
And does its best to brighten up society.
To spread a little joy’s a noble calling,
A life without a laugh would be appalling.

Yet still, of late, I’ve had a thought that niggles;
What worth is work that just produces giggles?
Should it be judged as slight and ineffectual,
Compared to art we label intellectual?

And so I did what “proper” poets do,
And signed up to The Scrivener’s Review,
“The connoisseur of poesy’s magazine”,
Where scribes will scratch your eyes out to be seen.

I found it was a terrifying place,
Where people were obsessed with lower case,
Allusions veered from cryptic to absurd,
And “meaning” seemed to be a dirty word.

Their poetry was like the peace of God,
That passeth understanding – truly odd.
Some claimed to write for womxn and for mxn,
Though none had come across the verb, “to scxn”.

With open mind, I asked, “Is it my fault
That there is nothing here I can exalt?”
But days of dredging through this awful rot
Confirmed beyond all doubt that it was not.

Each new excrescence served to reinforce
That I had veered disastrously off course.
I wheeled around and fled back to the light
Which shines upon the droll and erudite,

Bring on a world where rhyme and meter matters,
And isn’t full of folk as mad as hatters.
Adieu to “Scrivener’s Review”, I quit.
Do I need what you’re full of? Not one bit.

*****

Stephen Gold writes: “The idea for So Pseud Me came from wading through an august poetry periodical which had better remain nameless, and coming to the following conclusion: WTF?
There was some good, thoughtful work, but much of it was pretentious drivel, written by the deservedly obscure with their heads rammed firmly up that place where the Lord causeth not the sun to shine.
If you were to ask them, I guess most would place high verse on a pedestal, way above light. But on this, I am with Kingsley Amis, who wrote in the New Oxford Book of Light Verse:
“Light verse makes more stringent demands on the writer’s technique. A fault of scansion or rhyme, an awkwardness or obscurity that would damage only the immediate context of a piece of high verse endangers the whole structure of a light-verse poem. The expectations of the audience are different in the two cases, corresponding to the difference in the kind of performance offered. A concert pianist is allowed a wrong note here and there; a juggler is not allowed to drop a plate.”
‘So Pseud Me’ is a light-hearted attempt to speak up for jugglers.”

Stephen Gold was born in Glasgow, Scotland, and practiced law there for almost forty years, robustly challenging the notion that practice makes perfect. He and his wife, Ruth, now live in London, close by their disbelieving children and grandchildren. His special loves (at least, the ones he’s prepared to reveal) are the limerick and the parody. He has over 700 limericks published in OEDILF.com, the project to define by limerick every word in the Oxford English Dictionary, and is a regular contributor to Light and Lighten Up Online (where this poem was first published).

Illustration: “A group of poets carousing and composing verse under the influence of laughing gas. Coloured etching by R. Seymour after himself, 1829.” is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Using form: Couplets: Barbara Lydecker Crane, ‘Secret Adages’

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“Write nothing down in ink” is the secret’s first rule;
“You promise not to tell?” said the secret’s first fool.

A secret’s likely safe if entrusted to a stranger;
one who knows no English will further lessen danger.

Don’t hide a guilty secret no other person knows;
like mold behind a ceiling, a spreading fester shows.

Secrets may be sweet, too delicious not to share.
To savor them together might double tempting fare.

Revealing every secret, a link to each regret,
will drain away a soul to an empty fishing net.

“Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead.”
. . . but more about the bodies, Ben Franklin never said.

*****

Barbara Lydecker Crane writes: “Sometimes when I am casting around for new ideas to write about, I browse Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.  That’s how this one got started; the rest is classified information!” (But it is known that the poem was first published in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily.)

Barbara Lydecker Crane was a finalist for two recent Rattle Poetry Prizes. She has received two Pushcart nominations and various awards from the Maria W. Faust and the Helen Schaible Sonnet Contests. Her poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, Ekphrastic Review, First Things, Light, THINK, Valparaiso Literary Review, Writer’s Almanac, many others, and in several anthologies. Her fourth collection, You Will Remember Me (ekphrastic, persona sonnets) was recently published by Able Muse Press, and is available from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/You-Will-Remember-Me-Ekphrastic/dp/1773491261. Barb lives with her husband near Boston.

Photo: “The Secret” by CEBImagery.com is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Using form: Monorhyme: D.A. Prince, ‘Cold’

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Outside the glittering air is bright,
frost crystals glisten in the light,
a bitter wind sharpens its bite,
teasing a few stiff leaves to flight.
It finds in restlessness a tight
fierce chill, like muscles clenched to fight,
needling uncovered skin with spite
and then breathes out a cloud of white,
a moment’s ghost, a shape so slight
it freezes almost before sight
has marked its passing. Snowflakes write
their shaky message to unite
cold’s elements in silver night.

*****

D.A. Prince writes: “This poem came together very quickly: the garden thick with frost and the idea of catching the vowel sound in ‘ice’ as a way of capturing the sharpness of the scene. A mono-rhyme, playing with this crispness, seemed the way forward. It was fun, and that’s an important element in poetry.” The poem was published in the February 2024 Snakeskin (issue 314).

D. A. Prince lives in Leicestershire and London. Her first appearances in print were in the weekly competitions in The Spectator and New Statesman (which ceased its competitions in 2016) along with other outlets that hosted light verse. Something closer to ‘proper’ poetry followed (but running in parallel), with three pamphlets, followed by a full-length collection, Nearly the Happy Hour, from HappenStance Press in 2008. A second collection, Common Ground, (from the same publisher) followed in 2014 and this won the East Midlands Book Award in 2015. HappenStance subsequently published her pamphlet Bookmarks in 2018, with a further full-length collection, The Bigger Picture, published in 2022.

“Frost Blooms – Fleurs de givre” by monteregina is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Using form in translation: Virgil, tr. George Simmers, ‘Rumour’

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Through Africa vile Rumour raced,
Of all the plagues the fastest-paced.
She’s supple, smart, light on her toes,
And gains momentum as she goes.
She may start small as creeping mouse
But soon she’ll overtop the house
Till, though in muck her feet may stand,
Her head is in Cloud-Cuckoo-Land.
Watch Rumour go! Her huge black wings
Hide fearful eyes, a tongue that stings,
Lungs that can bellow till they burst
And ears fine-tuned to hear the worst.
By night she’ll hiss round that odd place
Nor earth nor sky, but cyberspace,
And through those small hours she will keep
Alert and growing — she won’t sleep.
Come daylight she’ll observe with malice
Events in cottage and in palace.
Great cities then will shake in fear
At the enormities they hear,
And shudder when they taste the brew
In which she’s mixed the false and true.
Whenever men, fraught with disgust,
All eye each other with mistrust,
Great Rumour grins, her strength unfurled.
She relishes our post-truth world!

from Aeneid, Book Four

*****

George Simmers writes: “Plodding through a book of the Aeneid for O-level Latin when I was fifteen, many many years ago, I took a strong dislike to Virgil. But several decades later, a talk I attended made me think he might not be entirely tedious. The talk’s handout included a prose translation of this ‘Rumour’ passage. I decided to versify it myself, and found that it slipped quite easily into tetrameters. The eight-syllable line is fast and sharp, and avoids the temptation to ponderousness that always lurks within the pentameter.
Since then I’ve read more of Virgil, and have found that he is one of those poets whose writings have the knack of seeming topical. I have attempted some more translations. If I had to choose a top ten of poems that say something profound about the human condition, I would include his description of the souls purged of suffering, re-crossing the Styx to attempt a new life.”

Editor’s note: Both ‘Rumour’ and the Styx-recrossing passage that Simmers mentions are in his recent volume of translations, Riffs, along with his translations from Ovid, Catullus, the Greek Anthology and Francois Villon. Riffs costs £5, and should be available from Amazon, but if you’d like a signed copy, email him: simmersgeorge@yahoo.co.uk and he’ll arrange one for you at no extra cost.

George Simmers used to be a teacher; now he spends much of his time researching literature written during and after the First World War. He has edited Snakeskin since 1995. It is probably the oldest-established poetry zine on the Internet. His work appears in several Potcake Chapbooks, and his recent diverse collection is ‘Old and Bookish’.

Photo: “Dark Angel” by Novafly is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Using form: John Beaton, ‘Killing a Coho’

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I grip its tail, hammock its back,
and swing its head down with a crack
on rock, then feel its spasms judder
through my hands as, with a shudder,
it stills,
a grand finale that fulfills
some ancient impulse in my mind.

Poking my finger through a gill,
I cause the raker fronds to spill
blood that drip drips as I carry
the silver deadweight of my quarry,
my kill,
toward a tidal pool
the sunset has incarnadined.

My knife begins behind its throat
and blood-clouds billow out and bloat
then seep into an outflow, seaward,
where baitfish burrow in the seaboard
in schools,
their heads in sand, small fools
kidding themselves they’re hard to find.

I slit its stomach. From that sac
their half-digested eyes peer back,
sandlance dumbstruck at being hunted
in shallow flats this prowler haunted,
this fish
whose every feeding flash
signalled flesh to seals behind.

Somewhere nearby a black bear roars;
wolves salivate; an antler gores
a starving cougar; orcas cripple
humpbacks, bite their fins, then grapple
great bulks
till bleeding, savaged hulks
sink; and then there’s humankind.

No kindness here. This salmon swam
full speed to seize my lure then, wham,
became a madcap, hell-for-leather,
death-row inmate on a tether
and fed
the caveman in my head.
This coast is one big hunting blind.

*****

John Beaton writes: “I’m a lifelong fly-fisher but I’ve always had twinges of conscience about hurting and killing fish. Catch-and-release makes me question whether I’m being cruel. But there’s also a part of me that still connects with the beautiful brutality of the eat-or-be-eaten ecosystems in which we live. This poem tries to express that perspective in the context of an actual experience—the catching and killing of a coho salmon off a rocky shoreline near Tofino.

I chose a form to tell the story with some element of shock and violence. Each stanza has seven lines: one and two are tetrameter with masculine rhymes; three and four are also tetrameter but with feminine rhymes to cushion what comes next; five and six are monometer and trimeter respectively with masculine rhymes and these cropped lines set up a sense of surprise and violence; and line seven is tetrameter with a masculine ending that ties the poem together by rhyming with all the other seventh lines.

There’s some justification for killing the coho—the victim is itself a killer. And the turn at the end of the penultimate stanza connects humans with the savagery of the wildlife.

Sometimes you find a ‘eureka’ word—one that fits rhyme, meter, and sense so well you think ‘wow.’ This poem has one I think of that way: incarnadined.”

John Beaton’s metrical poetry has been widely published and has won numerous awards. He recites from memory as a spoken word performer and is author of Leaving Camustianavaig published by Word Galaxy Press, which includes this poem. Raised in the Scottish Highlands, John lives in Qualicum Beach on Vancouver Island.
https://www.john-beaton.com/

Photo: “Coho Spawning on the Salmon River” by BLM Oregon & Washington is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Ann Drysdale, ‘Winter Song’

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When blizzards blow under the tiles
and the dishcloth crisps on the draining board
and the snowscape stretches for miles and miles
and only the idiot ventures abroad.
When it’s early to bed, and thank heavens for that,
then coldly keens the cast-out cat:
Miaow! Miaow! – a doleful din –
and who will rise and let him in?

When slippery stones by the pond
make filling a bucket an effort of will
and you’re walled-up for weeks in the back of beyond
in a farm at the foot of a hell of a hill
then it’s early to bed, and thank heavens for that,
till coldly keens the cast-out cat:
Miaow! Miaow! – a doleful din –
and who will rise and let him in?

*****

Ann Drysdale writes: “It was published in my very first collection, The Turn of the Cucumber (Peterloo Poets 1995) and dates from a time when I was bringing up three children as a single mum on a hand-to-mouth smallholding on the North York Moors.”

Editor’s note: Ann Drysdale takes the structure, but not the precise metre, of Shakespeare’s ‘Winter Song’ from Love’s Labours Lost. Her rollicking metre allows her “and the snowscape stretches for miles and miles” and the wonderful “in a farm at the foot of a hell of a hill”, for a bigger wintry landscape than Shakespeare shows.

Ann Drysdale now lives in South Wales and has been a hill farmer, water-gypsy, newspaper columnist and single parent – not necessarily in that order. Her eighth volume of poetry, Feeling Unusual, has recently joined a mixed list of published writing, including memoir, essays and a gonzo guidebook to the City of Newport.
http://www.poetrypf.co.uk/anndrysdalepage.html
http://www.shoestring-press.com

Photo: “Hole of Horkum, North York Moors” by reinholdbehringer is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Using form: villanelle: Ann Drysdale, ‘A Harmless, Necessary Cat…’

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(Shakespeare. The Merchant of Venice, IV, I)

Sing, in the season when convention brings
Frivolous gifts and merry masquerade,
A song of harmless, necessary things.

See how each household purposefully strings
Its fairylights, a debt of honour paid
To obligation that December brings.

Joy to the world! Hark how the welkin rings!
Joy to the merchant and his stock-in-trade!
Let us not think of necessary things!

Across the world the timeless story sings:
A homeless baby, refugees afraid,
The human need that dispossession brings,

Yet round and round the hurdy-gurdy swings
And up and down the characters parade
With scant regard for necessary things.

A placid cat, angels with cardboard wings
And all things heaven-given and home-made
Are at the heart of what this message brings.
I wish you harmless, necessary things.

*****

Ann Drysdale writes: “It was originally written as a Christmas card and was circulated only among friends. Compliments of the season to you and yours.”

Ann Drysdale now lives in South Wales and has been a hill farmer, water-gypsy, newspaper columnist and single parent – not necessarily in that order. Her eighth volume of poetry, Feeling Unusual, has recently joined a mixed list of published writing, including memoir, essays and a gonzo guidebook to the City of Newport.
http://www.poetrypf.co.uk/anndrysdalepage.html
http://www.shoestring-press.com

Using form: ghazal: Barbara Lydecker Crane, ‘Love Refrains’

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Mom banged her hairbrush down in a reprimand of love.
“What an awful question! You don’t understand love.

“Of course Dad loves you. How can you question that?
He doesn’t have to blare it out, like a brass band of love.

“You aren’t a princess to be coddled on a lap or praised
without good reason. That’s a never-never land of love.

“Your father works hard, with a great deal on his mind.
Now don’t go causing trouble, making a demand of love.

“Yes, I know he yells and sends you to your room a lot.
But be glad he never hits you with the backhand of love.

“Once, banished to your room, you drew a picture poem
for him. I watched him beam at you with unplanned love.

“He said he’s proud of you. I’ve heard him tell you twice.”
She brushed my hair, hard. “Barbara, that’s a brand of love.”

Barbara Lydecker Crane writes: “Based on a real interaction with my mother when I was about five, I think this poem reflects a different style of parenting back then (this was in the 50’s), perhaps a British approach: “don’t spoil your children with a lot of praise or affection.” I like modern ways better! As for the form, I love ghazals because you always know where you are headed–the fun is choosing your route to get there.”

Barbara Lydecker Crane was a finalist for two recent Rattle Poetry Prizes, including with this poem.  She has received two Pushcart nominations and various awards from the Maria W. Faust and the Helen Schaible Sonnet Contests. Her poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, Ekphrastic Review, First Things, Light, THINK, Valparaiso Literary Review, Writer’s Almanac, many others, and in several anthologies. Her fourth collection, You Will Remember Me (ekphrastic, persona sonnets) was recently published by Able Muse Press, and is available from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/You-Will-Remember-Me-Ekphrastic/dp/1773491261. Barb lives with her husband near Boston.

Photo: “She’s On The Naughty List” by Cayusa is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Using form: John Beaton, ‘Legacy’ (excerpt)

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Inside his penthouse office
he views his Inuit artwork,
carvings from a culture
reduced to buy-and-hold,
then scans the evening city,
his bar chart on the skyline
where real estate has grown his stake
but cost him bonds he’s had to break –
he hadn’t meant to so forsake
his parents. They looked old

that day outside the croft house
when cowed farewells were murmured
as cattle lowed in wind blasts
keening from the sea.
His mother and his father
stood waving from the porch step;
next year she’d crack her pelvic bone,
when winter iced that slab of stone,
and never walk again. I’ll phone,
and he was history.

(…)

He downs his drink and glances
again at his computer –
an email from a neighbour:
Your father died last night.
He’d lately gotten thinner
and seldom had a fire on –
what little peat he had was soft.
Some things of yours are in the loft
so mind them when you sell the croft.
The city lights are bright;

he turns again and faces
his metamorphic sculptures
of walruses in soapstone
that never will break free
from rock that locks the sea waves –
past fused against the future.
Another gin? That’s six. Or eight?
So be it. Clarity’s too late.
His real estate’s no real estate –
he’s left his legacy.

*****

John Beaton writes: “This is a composite. Elements of it are taken from my life but I’ve borrowed significantly from the trajectories of others, especially some of my father’s contemporaries who left Camustianavaig physically but never in their hearts. There are also aspects of the lives of some people I’ve known in business. 

I worked out the form so that each stanza would start out steadily and rhythmically for six trimeter lines then build pace for three rhymed tetrameter lines and rein to a halt with a single trimeter line that has a masculine rhyme with line four. Even though they limit word-choices, I thought feminine endings for the first three lines and lines five and six were worth it for the rhythm. And I like how they form a sort of rhyme and closure gradient with lines four and seven to ten.”

John Beaton’s metrical poetry has been widely published and has won numerous awards. He recites from memory as a spoken word performer and is author of Leaving Camustianavaig published by Word Galaxy Press, which includes this poem. Raised in the Scottish Highlands, John lives in Qualicum Beach on Vancouver Island.
https://www.john-beaton.com/

Photo: “‘V for Vendetta’, United States, New York, New York City, West Village, Skyline View” by WanderingtheWorld (www.ChrisFord.com) is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.