September 2024 Poetry Challenge B: Your least favorite form

[29wordsforsnow]

Welcome to the other September challenge. Here's your chance to take vengeance on those poetic forms that annoyed you for days and nights, that filled your wastepaper bin, and sucked your fountain pens dry.

Never liked the odd syllable count of haikus? Get even with it!​

The Sestina drove you mad in repeating circles? Make it a Sextina, with every line ending with 'sex'.​

Are Shakespeare's dusty sonnets way too strict for your liking? Shake 'em well, unless you're James Bondage, then stir.​

The Villanelle not too villain enough? Get on its bad side.​

You're invited to break and spoil them to your liking.

There's only one catch. Tell us why you don't like that specific form in the first place, what makes your brain convolutions curl up their figurative toes? Was it a high school teacher

 

[Angeline]

I don't like haiku
All that nature oh boo hoo
Count syllables? Ew.

********************

Ok I don't really dislike it as much as I dislike that it's misunderstood by English speakers. It doesn't really translate well to English imho The line breaks, in English, feel limiting to me which is why I prefer the American Sentence.

 

[XShadynzX]

I dislike this form
Oh haiku,die won't you
Your difficulty kills

I dislike haiku as it feels too restrictive ( don't even know if I've actually written one just now.)
I prefer free writing as I can express myself better
Edit: I do enjoy the Acrostic form though

 

[Tzara]

How to Write a Sonnet​

​

Write about anything. Chickens​

crossing the road, quantum theory,​

bats, balls, papier-mâché.​

It doesn't matter. You're a poet,​

so just write with feeling​

(emotional or physical, like,​

you know, touch) and think​

about standing at a microphone​

in front of a room full of coffee​

drinking word addicts savoring​

an over-roasted Arabica along​

with your personal agony.​

Just keep it to fourteen lines—​

that's a sonnet, mate.​

The sonnet (from the Italian sonetto, or little song) is probably the most common and best-known of poetic forms, with the possible exception of the limerick. There are all kinds of variations of the form: Italian (or Petrachan) sonnets, Shakespearean (or English) sonnets, Spenserian sonnets, terza rima sonnets, as well as cut-down versions (Hopkins' curtal sonnet) and lengthened versions (the caudate, or tailed, sonnet). Generally, though, sonnets in English are fourteen lines in length, written in iambic pentameter, state some kind of theme or problem in the early lines and make a "turn" (volta) to a resolution of some kind in the latter part of the poem.

All well and good. But some modern poets seem to think that any poem of fourteen lines in whatever meter or no meter, rhymed or not, without any volta is a sonnet, as if it's simply the total number of lines that matter. Although it shouldn't, this always irks me. I have no problem with such a poem as a poem, but why claim that one has written a sonnet? It always strikes me a bit as being like writing a limerick and calling it a villanelle—sure, you can do that, but what does it accomplish?

So my poem. Fourteen lines, non-metrical (unless I miscounted, none of the lines even have ten syllables, though one has eleven), unrhymed, no particular problem or volta. Just to get it out of my system.

Sorry. That's all.</rant>

 

[Angeline]

Those of you who know me know there is one poetry form I truly despise: the sestina. I have written a half dozen or so and have hated it every time. But why Angeline? Why so bitter? You don't even have to rhyme anything.

Welp I'll tell ya. First off it's 39 lines, so it's longish. In free verse that's not so bad at all right? But a sestina has diabolical repetitions. Look at this~

First stanza, ..1 ..2 ..3 ..4 ..5 ..6
Second stanza, ..6 ..1 ..5 .. 2 ..4 ..3
Third stanza, ..3 ..6 ..4 ..1 ..2 ..5
Fourth stanza, ..5 ..3 ..2 ..6 ..1 ..4
Fifth stanza, ..4 ..5 ..1 ..3 ..6 ..2
Sixth stanza, ..2 ..4 ..6 ..5 ..3 ..1

Concluding tercet:
middle of first line ..2, end of first line ..5
middle of second line ..4, end of second line..3
middle if third line ..6, end of third line ..1

So you have to choose six end words, one per line, right off the bat that you then have to rework in various permutations of those end words through the next five stanzas. And then when your head is spinning and you are beyond sick of those effing six words you do a lil magic trick in the concluding three lines where you repeat two of the six words, one in the middle and one at the end, in each of those lines. And don't forget, you don't want gobbledegook; it should flow and make sense as a poem. So you try for all that. Then, if you're me, you have a nice vomit and a long nap.

So thank you Snowy for this exciting opportunity for me to slap, bite and throttle this form...um metaphorically. Consider my rant a placeholder. You have the why. I'll be back with the poem once I figure out how best to abuse it.

ETA: You can actually write sestinas that rhyme and follow a specific meter. I did once write a sestina that rhymed and was in iambic pentameter. I screwed up the stress pattern in a bunch of places but I did complete it. I wasn't hospitalized afterword but it was a close call.

Hmmm maybe this should be my sestina: just me bitching about the form. No I'll write a damn poem. I have all month to procrastinate er I mean compose.

 

[Tzara]

This Is Not a Triolet​

​

A triolet is just eight lines.​

The first line is repeated thrice,​

so poets are thus quite confined​

in triolets of just eight lines.​

And, as some poets fuss and whine,​

Another line's repeated twice.​

God! Triolets, in just eight lines,​

thus force line's repeats in a trice.​

I don't really have anything against the triolet per se. In some ways, they are pretty easy to write—eight lines long, two rhymes, and five of the eight lines are duplicates (lines 1, 4, and 7 and lines 2 and 8), so besides the first two lines, you only have to come up with three others.

The problem is that makes it very hard to write a good one—the repetition gets in the way. In that, the form is kind of like Angie's bane, the sestina; how do you keep the repetition from becoming boring? Some alter the syntax slightly or punctuate the repetons slightly (just as sestina writers will use things like homonyms of the six end words to vary the line endings). I sort of tried to do that here, though the last line is kind of an egregious mangle of the second line. A much better example of how it might be done is this poem, by Thomas Hardy:

Birds At Winter​

​

Around the house the flakes fly faster,​

And all the berries now are gone​

From holly and cotoneaster​

Around the house. The flakes fly! – faster​

Shutting indoors the crumb-outcaster​

We used to see upon the lawn​

Around the house. The Flakes fly faster​

And all the berries now are gone!​

All in all, not exactly my least favorite form, but one I find difficult to complete in a satisfactory manner. So I fall back on my usual trick of being somewhat silly. Better, probably, than my trying to write a sonnet redoublé.

 

[dennis88]

Finally, a chance to unleash my grudge against haikus! The 5-7-5 always felt too restrictive—like trying to tell a whole story in three puzzle pieces that don’t quite fit. As for the Villanelle, the endless repetition makes me feel like I'm trapped in a loop. Ready to break these forms apart and make them my own!

 

[puddle_girl]

Haikus are so blah.
honestly, who thought of this?
Anyway, here's mine.

 

[haventgotaclue]

What a delightful challenge! It will be rather interesting to observe how the frustrated imagination can bend and fold all those tired poetic forms to get even with those that drove one out of one’s mind.

On a not so serious note I am going to attempt to write a poem of every line containing ‘Sex’, in fact I plan on making it a Sextina. It is a very effective way of under cutting the sestina form, which often can be rather rigid due to the repetition of the end words. And who knows, maybe the result will be a poem that is considered not only as a provocative work but also as a work that provokes the reader’s thought.