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The assignment? A terza rima, the interlocking poetic form made famous by Dante's Inferno.

The theme? Gratitude.

For once, I knew instantly how this theme would inform my poem: There was no doubt its subject would be my poetry sisters, without whom I would not have explored poetry's "Here Be Dragons" waters. Without them, I'd still be stuck in my safe, shallow, shoals. (Or perhaps, if Dante were my guide, be marooned in poetry purgatory.) The only trick was putting all that into iambic pentameter in the rhyme scheme of a terza rima:

a
b
a

b
c
b

(repeat as necessary, and end with a couplet, if desired.)


In the end, my poem became a tribute to the poems The Poetry Seven tackled this year. Usually, I try to write to a wider audience, but this one is different. I know I'm a better writer when I write with friends---and I needed to say thank you, loud and clear.


(Links to my sister's Terza Rimas today can be found inside the poem.)


A Terza Rima for the Poetry Seven

Sisters do not let sisters ode alone
Nor do they, solo, rondeau redoublé
If raccontino calls, they hold the phone,

And bellow for some muse-y muscle; they
deep six, by stanza, surly sestinas
and dig a common grave for dross cliché.

Don’t bother asking for their subpoenas
To brashly bait expanding etheree
Nothing stops these pen-slinging tsarinas.

Once snagged, they let no villanelle go free;
Mouthy haiku in operating rooms
are re-lined and re-stitched, repeatedly;

So do not question who wears the pantoums
here; it’s seven sonnet-crowned, brave harpies:
Laura, Kel, Trish, Liz, Andi, T. : nom de plumes

who together with laptops (or Sharpies)
have danced the sedoka and triolet;
and ekprasticated art farandwee.

I’m grateful to wield words with this septet:
Friends, forever. Poetesses, well-met.

---Sara Lewis Holmes (all rights reserved)


Poetry Friday is hosted today by Laura at Writing the World for Kids.

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National Poetry Month, is nearing its end, and the royal wedding is just around the corner, so let’s write poems about it. I’ve made some suggestions below, but all forms are welcome. (If you really want to win me over, I suggest attempting my favorite poetic form, the sestina.) Send your poem care of [email protected] and I’ll post what I can tomorrow. (Keep it clean, please. Humor, satire and effusive excitement are welcome, insults are not.)

Additionally, our Twitter followers are eligible to win one of the below Oxford World’s Classics. To enter, tweet:

Take @OUPAcademic’s #royalweddingpoetrychallenge http://oxford.ly/msrv0S

Entries will be accepted all weekend. Winners will be contacted via DM.

*     *     *     *     *

ghazal (ghasel; gazal; ghazel) A short lyric poem written in couplets using a single rhyme (aa, ba, ca, da, etc.), sometimes mentioning the poet’s name in the last couplet. The ghazal is an important lyric form in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Urdu poetry, often providing the basis for popular love songs. Its usual subject-matter is amatory, although it has been adapted for religious, political, and other uses. Goethe and other German poets of the early 19th century wrote some imitations of the Persian ghazal, and the form has been adopted by a number of modern American poets, notably Adrienne Rich.

cinquain [sang-kayn] A verse stanza of five lines, more commonly known as a quintain. Examples of such stanzas include the English limerick, the Japanese tanka, and the Spanish quintilla; others include the variant ballad stanza employed intermittently by S. T. Coleridge in his ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ ( 1798 ), and many more varieties with no name.

terza rima [ter-tsă ree-mă] A verse form consisting of a sequence of interlinked tercets rhyming aba bcb cdc ded, etc. Thus the second line of eac

I'm trying to find the time to participate in the Poetry Stretch each week at The Miss Rumphius Effect. Tricia always has great ideas, and I always want to give them a try, but often the week is gone before I realize it. I'm trying to do better.

This week's stretch is to write a poem in terza rima--click here to read the post. I've only written a couple of these, both, I think, when I was working on large collections, and I used that as an opportunity to try just about every poetic form I can find. But it's been several years, so I was kind of intimidated by this week's assignment.

We had a snow/wind storm a few days ago, and going outside afterward to walk Captain Jack, it was like the end of the world. It was dusk, and it was like I was the only person left alive on the planet. Very eerie. I decided to try to capture that mood. And then yesterday I got some news from someone I work with in the publishing industry, some news that makes me sad and anxious and nervous. It's not public yet, so I'll wait before sharing, but it made that isolated feeling stronger. I tried to find an image from my stock photo company that captured the desolation, but this is as close as I could come--not all that close! Oh well. Without further excuses, here's my attempt at a terza rima:

 

Tarnished Silver Temperature dives—four degrees below zero. Snow blows down the bare street, carelessly seizes the emptiness, gives it a grey ghostly glow, bathes this world in the twilight of semi-night. There is no one new you will ever know, just you, and the moon, and reflected light— frozen in time, forever alone. Sky dead above, ground eerily bright. Black limbs of trees, like autumn’s bones, etch endless sky as wind whistles and hones its sharp, stripping skills in this bleak, leaden zone. --Laura Purdie Salas, all rights reserved

It's not too late to join in. This is an interesting form that lets you play with rhyme while not constraining you to a particular meter. Zip on over and check out Miss Rumphius' post and give it a try!