Tzara
Continental
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- Aug 2, 2005
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An "American Sentence" is a poetic form invented by Allen Ginsberg that is intended to be something like an Americanized haiku. Rather than a short three-line poem broken into five, seven, and five syllables (really quite a different thing in Japanese), Ginsberg created a form that is also seventeen syllables in length, but in the form of a single, horizontally formatted sentence. The form first appears in his collection Cosmopolitan Greetings (1994). Some of the poems have titles, like this one, the earliest composed (1987) of those in the book:
Anyway, give it a try, even if you're not American. Incomplete sentences and multi-line poems are OK, per the original. You Brits and Canadians get the same syllable constriction, but your own syllabification ("aluminium," anyone?).
Here's some external links:
Tompkins Square Lower East Side N.Y.
Four skinheads stand in the streetlight rain chatting under an umbrella.
Most of the poems Ginsberg prints in Cosmopolitan Greetings have no title, and are comprised of a single seventeen syllable sentence. However, one is formatted as multiple sentences with the total of all sentences being seventeen syllables:Four skinheads stand in the streetlight rain chatting under an umbrella.
Rainy night on Union Square, full moon. Want more poems? Wait till I'm dead.
(which, incidentally, seems to imply that "poems" should be pronounced as disyllabic), one is an incomplete sentence:To be sucking your thumb in Rome by the Tiber among fallen leaves...
and one is comprised of a single sentence consisting of two seventeen syllable lines:He stands at the church steps a long time looking down at new white sneakers—
Determined, goes in the door quickly to make his Sunday confession.
Some are surreal in imagery, some blatantly sexual, some at least implicitly political. There are several sites on the Internet that talk about American Sentences, including one by a poet who claims to have written one a day since January 1, 2001, which kind of makes Neo's 30/30 thread seem like Little League batting practice. Determined, goes in the door quickly to make his Sunday confession.
Anyway, give it a try, even if you're not American. Incomplete sentences and multi-line poems are OK, per the original. You Brits and Canadians get the same syllable constriction, but your own syllabification ("aluminium," anyone?).
Here's some external links:
- About.com article on American Sentences.
- Paul E. Nelson's page: Lots of information and examples (he's the guy that's been writing one daily for fourteen years).
- Online poetry journal issue on American Sentences