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Was fascinated by Robert Lee Brewer's description of rondeaus today, so decided to step up to the challenge and posted two. Here they are:
==========
I HOLD MY BREATH
I hold my breath as I check mail
Wait for the cruel words to impale
my fragile writer soul so low:
it shudders, rails against the blow.
Yet I will triumph, I'll prevail!
I start again, revise & quail
as my poor baby soon sets sail
into the ether, tidal flow -
I hold my breath.
An answer comes: they like my tale
but want some changes ("do prevail!")
so back to editing below
and next month I will let it go...
and hold my breath.
===========
OH RONDEAU WOE
Oh rondeau woe afflicts me now
as angst and sweat drip from my brow
and once again I wonder why
self-torture so appeals to my
twisted need to figure how.
Because this form does not allow
straying from the path, I vow
to master it before I die
Oh rondeau woe.
I grit my teeth and on I plow
trying to find rhymes somehow,
but my syllables go awry
I curse the French then start to cry
so to this form I do bid ciao...
Oh rondeau woe.
The other day, I posted an explanation of this form, which I tackled as a challenge along with several of my sister poets. For today's Poetry Friday, I'm posting my original poem.
The challenge was to write a rondeau redoublé (my bright idea) that dealt with fresh starts (Liz Garton Scanlon's idea). I started several times to write an upbeat poem about new beginnings, and it never took off. Then one night, I came up with this one, which is, as you will see, not particularly upbeat. But it was a whole poem, and so I kept it.
Rondeau Redoublé
by Kelly Ramsdell Fineman
There's no such thing as a new start.
At least, that's what I think of saying.
I wish things different with all my heart,
That you would go, or I'd be glad you're staying.
Time was, we couldn't bear to be apart;
I couldn't see you go without dismaying.
Now I look forward to your go-awaying.
There's no such thing as a new start.
What was behind my change of heart?
It wasn't sudden, more like a slow fraying,
Our life unraveled, part by part.
At least that's what I think of saying.
I'm not quite certain why I am delaying,
I make up lists, draw up a chart:
Which things are whose, what goes, what's staying.
I wish things different with all my heart.
I cannot stop my memory from replaying
How things between us got their start.
How I would feel the breaking of my heart
When you would go, and I'd be glad you're staying.
I've seen it written losing is an art.
Not one I've mastered, I guess. I keep praying
That losing will grow easier, in part
To suffocate the small voice that keeps saying
There's no such thing.
Cheery, no? What can I say? Dour moods can create poetry, too. The phrase "losing is an art" is borrowed from the wonderful villanelle by Elizabeth Bishop entitled "One Art".
Analysis of form: If you're wondering (and even if you're not), the poem is written in a mix of iambic tetrameter and iambic pentameter, meaning that the lines have either four or five iambic feet each. An iamb is a two-syllable poetic "foot" composed of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one (taDUM). In keeping with one of the more obscure "requirements" of the rondeau redoublé form, I've alternated a "masculine" and "feminine" ending. A masculine ending is a straight-up iamb; a feminine one has an additional unstressed syllable at the end (taDUMta) - a three-syllable foot also known as an amphibrach.
To read the rondeau redoublé written by my fellow poetry princesses, you may follow these links:
Tanita Davis
Sara Lewis Holmes
Andromeda Jazmon
Laura Purdie Salas
Liz Garton Scanlon
0 Comments on Rondeau redoublé for Poetry Friday as of 3/5/2010 4:46:00 AM
As is my wont, I often post poems on Tuesdays, because everyone knows that once a week is not enough. Today, however, I'm going to talk about a particular poetic form, and it's for a particular reason: On Friday, the lovely poetry princesses (Tanita Davis, Sara Lewis Holmes, Andromeda Jazmon, Laura Purdie Salas, Liz Garton Scanlon, Tricia Stohr-Hunt) and I are going to post our original rondeau redoublés on our blogs, part of another group project/challenge/exercise in hysteria. So I thought perhaps a primer as to what the heck a rondeau redoublé is, anyhow, might be in order.
The rondeau redoublé is, as you can likely deduce from the spelling, a French form, which has been described as follows by the entertaining and educational Leonardo Malcovati:
this seriously minor, somewhat twisted and exclusively French metre, of which no more than a handful of examples (two of which, 'A Sylvie' and 'A Iris', of course, by Banville) exist, to show how twisted prosody can be, even in Europe.
Technically speaking a rondeau redoublé is made of six quatrains ended by a hemistich (of exactly the same type as the one in the rondeau form, and built on the first verse as well). The 24 verses, 4 of which are found twice (in the first stanza and as endings of stanzas 2-5) all belong to only two rhyme groups, one of which must be feminine and the other masculine; according to the usual conventions of this chapter, the tricky scheme of this form is:
ABAB BAB1 ABA2 BAB3 ABA4 BABAh
I'll bet I lost you at hemistich, right? I'll try to make it a bit simpler to follow than that technically correct (but presumes you speak poetic form language) definition.
Let's start with the name:
rondeau redoublé, or "doubled round". The most famous of all
rondeaux in the English language is
In Flanders Fields by the Canadian poet, John McCrae, which
you can read all about in this prior post of mine. The rondeau takes the start of the first line, usually three or four words (technically called a
hemistich), and uses it as a refrain at the end of the following two stanzas - hence the repetition of "In Flanders fields" twice more in that poem. The rondeau does not require a particular number of lines per stanza, but usually comes in with three stanzas and a total of 13-15 lines.
The rondeau redoublé, like its simpler sibling, uses a form of refrain, and it also borrows from the start of the first line in order to end the poem. The rondeau redoublé, however, has rigid stanza and line requirements. It traditionally has six stanzas and a total of 24-1/2 lines to it. The first five stanzas all have four lines each; the last has four full lines plus the hemistich (the snippet from the start of the poem), thereby ending the poem precisely where it started (although hopefully having taken you somewhere else in the middle). The "refrain" in a rondeau redoublé is derived from the first four lines of the poem, each of which serves in turn as the
last line of the next four stanzas. The final stanza goes its own way, but must end with that hemistich we talked about earlier.
Oh. And one more thing: the entire poem consists of only two end-rhymes. Traditionally, the first stanza uses ABAB rhyme, which means that stanzas two and four end with an A-rhyme, whereas stanzas three and five end with B. The last line of the stanza helps dictate the rhyme scheme to be used in that particular stanza - it may therefore rhyme BABA/ABAB or ABBA/BAAB, but whatever it does, it must end with its assigned line from the first stanza. The sixth stanza has to stick to the scheme, and must end using that hemistich.
Here are examples of three good rondeau redoublé in English
