Playing with Poetic Form–Monday Meanderings


Today I’m sharing a post from Heidi who blogs at http://biggerthanalasagna.blogspot.com/ A few weeks ago, Gay Reiser Cannon, hosting dVerse Meeting the Bar, gave us the challenge to create our own form. Here, Heidi sends a Thank You to Gay, along with a brief explanation of her response. It’s so much fun, I thought I’d share it. Thank you, Heidi and Gay.

An Open Thank You to Gay Reiser Cannon

Dear Gay,

For the April 10, 2014 dVerse Meeting the Bar post, you challenged us to create our own form.

I created the Geburstag, which uses the writer’s birthday to determine lines and either word or syllable count. In my comments, you wrote that it would also be a good ways to write poems for other people using their birthday. Your challenge and comment opened a whole new way of celebrating my friends for me. I have been using it for birthdays and to commemorate any other special day. (I don’t know if my friends like it as much…) But it has been such a fun way for me to remember and appreciate people who are important to me. I just wanted to thank you for the cool inspiration!

With Gratitude,

heidi

If you’d like to read Heidi’s original post with a sample of her poem, find it here.

I hope you’ll give it a try. Maybe you’ll share it in comments or by adding a link in comments. In the future, perhaps we can deal deal with some more ideas that this prompt generated.

And here’s mine.

Photo: David Slotto

Photo: David Slotto

 

12-29-1943

smooth jazz on a warm night in the california desert

 

yesterday

i heard

smooth jazz

played under stars, palms and a silver slivered moon.

today

i dream of desert skies dancing to saxophone riffs,

drums, a bass guitar,

tasting your kisses.

Gay Cannon Gay Cannon is a Published poet, (she majored in English Lit.) author of children’s stories, musician and lover of music, artist and lover of art, figure skating judge,- covetous of dancers, founder of Stars FSC in Dallas (she minored in Political Science) supporter of the arts, an aesthete but not an atheist She’s a loyal friend, mother of three, grandmother of eleven. She loves to travel, meet people, go to museums; She loves good food and good conversations. She tries to find the music in people’s voices and the poetry in their souls.

Photo: Gay Cannon, Published Poet Photo taken from dVerse Poets

Photo: Gay Cannon, Published Poet
Photo taken from dVerse Poets

10 thoughts on “Playing with Poetic Form–Monday Meanderings

  1. Pamela says:

    Victoria, I love those desert skies. Very lovely poem and I like the form idea.

    Pamela ox

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  2. So great.. what a night to celebrate with smooth jazz like that.. and yes the form is great… but of course swedish way is different way to write dates…

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  3. claudia says:

    hmmmm… that sounds just marvelous… the form is a cool idea as well… maybe we should feature it for MTB

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  4. brian miller says:

    dessert skies dancing to the saxophone riffs….mmm…love that…nice nod to gay as well…i def think we should explore these forms a bit more…i will work on one for this….

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  5. biggerthanalasagna says:

    Dear Victoria, thank you so much for the kind words and the link. I think this is a fun form and was so happy for Gay’s prompt and comments. I love the poem that you wrote. I didn’t realize how beautiful it could be.

    And the form is evolving right now, so I am interested in the different ways that people use it. My only hesitation is that I’m not sure if you can use meter in the States because we haven’t adopted the metric system yet (ahahahahaha, I am not going to get tired of that joke until someone yells at me, I’m afraid.) Please feel free to play with it Viv. 🙂

    Thank you again, Victoria! -heidi-

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  6. Thanks for the referral. Terrific idea. Is it OK if I do it the European way day/month/year? that way I don’t get any gap lines. A possible variant could be to count metric feet (beats) instead of syllables or words

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  7. Mike says:

    ^Standing Ovation^ Well done pioneer poet.

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