any tried a cadralor yet? i've not, but perhaps this will encourage some to try

[butters]

came across this on another site: https://gleampoets.org/about/
they're also looking for submissions (according to their front page, anyways)

The cadralor is a poem of 5, unrelated, numbered stanzaic images, each of which can stand alone as a poem, is fewer than 10 lines, and ideally constrains all stanzas to the same number of lines. Imagery is crucial to cadralore: each stanza should be a whole, imagist poem, almost like a scene from a film, or a photograph. The fifth stanza acts as the crucible, alchemically pulling the unrelated stanzas together into a love poem. By “love poem,” we mean that your fifth stanza illuminates a gleaming thread that runs obliquely through the unrelated stanzas and answers the compelling question: “For what do you yearn?”

It is left to the poet’s discretion to decide how much, if any, contextual connection or linguistic connection will exist between the stanzas. The more unrelated in context, the sharper–riskier–the poem. Ultimately, the more unrelated the stanzas, the more successful the poem will be as a cadralor: they contain oblique connections that are illuminated by the fifth stanza. End punctuation between stanzas is also at the discretion of the poet.

i've just read a couple by other poets that used a four line per stanza formatting...4 individual pieces but when you add that fifth it brings everything together!

 

[butters]

https://gleampoets.org/submit/

subs open in september

main points:

Cadralor: Rules of the Form​

A poem must adhere to the rules of the form in order to be considered a cadralor, and to be considered for publication in Gleam. All cadralore must:

1. Contain 5, numbered stanzas of up to 10 lines each;
2. Maintain consistency in number of lines in all stanzas;
3. Maintain approximate consistency in line lengths across all stanzas;
4. Be non-narrative poems; the stanzas should be contextually unrelated. By this we mean that there should be no clear connection of any kind between stanzas. This is very important to this non-narrative poetic form. The reader should be surprised, even shocked, as they move from stanza to stanza. Poems containing narrative threads, such as a recurring image, are not cadralore. This contextual distance between stanzas is one of the most important rules of the form;
5. Be imagist poems. The cadralor is a collection of word images, much like a set of five short clips from different films or five unrelated photographs—as any good imagist poem, they should show, rather than tell. Cadralore avoid explanation;

 

[29wordsforsnow]

So, in theory, you can get away with a minimum of, let's say, five abstract American Sentences? Fulfilling their demand of 'up to ten lines...of consistent length'?

 

[butters]

i guess

well i got a sort of poem out of it, tried for a cadralor but the link between them is too obvious, oh well it was my first try...it doesn't meet the criteria


experiments in transmission

1:
by the stair's bare treads
her faded avocado phone
with kinked & twisted coils
rings & rings, rings & rings
echoes in a nicotined hall

2:
Floyd's picture disc revolves
getting stuck on the dark side
Elton's dandy, everything's pink
'cos his rocketman landed with
stars on his eyes, no prisms

3:
winds blat at eighty per hour
a clean white page on which to
notate the music of mush dogs
igloo-deep in dense, thick drifts
as they wait to sing, wait to Hike!

4:
her dad floats, wired up, tubed
his show's over. he's glassy, lost
in space, seeks star-men through his
u.v visor. she splashes down—no signal
she sighs and pats his bland, milk hand

5:
he plucks at his courage, ditches
his cap, tucks poetry in his pocket
and offers to buy Venus at the Bar
a drink—she spins, slow, on her stool
smiles, asks to hear what he's written

 

[29wordsforsnow]

yeah, unrelated, non-narrative that's quite the challenge if their is the tiniest grain of writer within one's fingers...Is that a loophole, "no clear connection of any kind between stanzas"?

 

[butters]

yeah, unrelated, non-narrative that's quite the challenge if their is the tiniest grain of writer within one's fingers...Is that a loophole, "no clear connection of any kind between stanzas"?

their rule no.4: Be non-narrative poems; the stanzas should be contextually unrelated. By this we mean that there should be no clear connection of any kind between stanzas. This is very important to this non-narrative poetic form. The reader should be surprised, even shocked, as they move from stanza to stanza. Poems containing narrative threads, such as a recurring image, are not cadralore. This contextual distance between stanzas is one of the most important rules of the form;

it's hard still, even if we just get non-caddy poems out of trying it, it'll be worth a go

 

[butters]

attempt no.2...i need a title. i think this one works better by being less obvious?




1:
a lone, worn brown bottle
dips and bobs—here, gone
plays peek-a-boo in waves
as it holds a broken brush

2:
Amazon light—green, wet
frogs wear bright splashes
make bubble nests up high
in salmon-brash bromeliads

3:
pocked sedimentary bedrock
drives granular investigations
yellow-tape talk of sand & stars
if memories erode, or fossilise

4:
palsy sneers, relentless bitch
grips a cigarette; smoke tails
jitter on the air, wreathe small
cheap frames with dirty panes

5:
windows wide-open to summer
a lemon-yellow cottage perches
on a clifftop, children chiming
delicious wild clambering roses

 

[EllenMore]

The Ancient Practice of Divination

1.
High black walls shimmering with young spiders
migrating toward a distant red light.

2.
My husband lies quietly in his bed.
I close the windows. Death may be outside.

3.
New asphalt, yet to be striped. Still as warm
as a fresh pancake left whole, uneaten.

4.
Some few birds chirping. The dew has settled
on lawns. But the acrid scent of ozone.

5.
They carefully brush bits of sandstone off
the artefact—the goddess of language.

 

[29wordsforsnow]

1. Among shiny toys with price tags eyes start to water, a dented tin.

2. Eight thirty, his jeans peeled like an expectant banana in her hand.

3. A sunny day at the coal mine, lunch break, rain, pencils, the last paycheck.

4. Bitter fly endlessly sailing my cup of tea, "It was the butler."

5. Hip-deep in the clay, clarifying, "An extra handful for Goddesses."

 

[Remec]

Date Night


1.
Soft, moistness hangs about
keeping secrets in the dark.

2.
Images are shadowed, but I
can still hear a familiar breathing.

3.
Letting myself open up, other
senses begin to focus themselves.

4.
Distant bells mark the hour and a
look at my wrist confirms things.

5.
Agreeing to meet a friend’s sister
amid the misty fog of a spring evening,
was probably taking ‘Blind Date’ a
bit too literally.

 

[EllenMore]

The Transitory Elegance of Honeycomb

1.
A spider's web, tattered, clinging to the few
unbroken limbs of the old cherry tree.
Shattered glass silts leaves and sidewalk.

2.
Travertine buffed smooth as calendared paper,
blank as her mind as she walks to the office.
The rap of her heels in the empty foyer.

3.
An abandoned classroom, its chalkboards
covered in squiggles and hieroglyphs
as if proclaiming the secrets of life.

4.
A library, silent in weak morning sun.
All of the books shelved, spines aligned,
stacked as if to support the heavy, arched roof.

5.
The climb to the Acropolis—stone, scrub,
stairs—to view Athena's crumbling temple
with its empty frieze, its looted sculptures.