Way back when I was an English major in college, I took a poetry course from an ancient-looking professor (probably no older than I am now). He was kind of boring, and I remember only two things he taught us.
One was his contempt for poets who cared mostly for the way a poem resonates and less for its meaning (he didn’t like Dylan Thomas, who was all the rage at the time). “Worry about the sound, and let the sense take care of itself?” he snorted. “That’s Jabberwocky!” (I think he was wrong about Dylan Thomas.)
But I remember more fondly a verse form he shared with our class. It has haunted me, from time to time over these last 50 years. I forget its name, or the name of the poet:
The roses are dead,
And black swans are flying.
White, yellow, and red’
The roses are dead.
So tenderly tread
Where their petals are lying.
The roses are dead,
And black swans are flying.
That’s it. A simple octave (eight lines), with only five distinct ones: the first line repeats three times, and the second line, twice. But I find some things intriguing about this form. The first line and second line appear to have some connection – but what is it? Also, the first line, “The roses are dead,” hints at a different meaning when it changes place to become the second line of the rhyming couplet (“White, yellow, and red / The roses are dead”) – only to resume its original place at the end of the poem.
Lastly, what seems to start out as a nature poem becomes much more personal by the fifth and sixth lines, “So tenderly tread / Where their petals are lying.” Does it hint at a death beyond that of the roses, a death that leads the poet to urge us to be respectful? And the black swans – are they part of some funereal ritual? Or has the poet left that enigma up to us to figure out?
Anyway, I have lately attempted to create some new poems following the same verse form. It seemed impossibly difficult at first, especially trying to limit the lines to five, six, or at most seven syllables. But then I began to get the hang of it. Here are a few of my first attempts:
At dawn of the day
I pause for reflection.
Shall cares come my way
At dawn of the day?
I’ll hold them at bay
With my mind’s insurrection.
At dawn of the day,
I pause for reflection.
Crickets in chorus,
Fiery sun setting
They sing, but not for us,
Crickets in chorus.
Light becomes porous
As night drops its netting
Crickets in chorus,
Fiery sun setting.
Cat at the window,
Tail swishing frisk’ly
What holds her in limbo,
Cat at the window?
Things build toward crescendo
As wren dawdles risk’ly.
Cat at the window,
Tail swishing frisk’ly.
Now it’s your turn. Play with the form; start with two lines; add a new line that rhymes with the first; then repeat the first line, etc. See what you can come up with.
I’ve had to work some to avoid the temptation to add extra small words, like “the” or “and” at the beginning of the lines. Try to create tension within the poem, so that the first line seems different when it is repeated. Here’s another of mine:
When lovers grow old,
Their silences longer,
As seasons unfold
When lovers grow old.
Their stories retold,
Their magic made stronger
When lovers grow old,
Their silences longer.
And one more from our recent trip to Scotland:
In Scotland, the heather
Spreads o’er the broad highlands,
In sun and rough weather,
In Scotland the heather,
Blends beauty together
With stag lands and rye lands
In Scotland, the heather
Spreads o’er the broad highlands.
Send me your examples at rob.fried@gmail.com and, with your permission, I’ll try to include them in a future column. And by all means, let me know if you’ve discovered the name for this verse form.
(Robert L. Fried of Concord is a retired educator who is now a writer, gardener and tinkerer. He can be reached by email at rob.fried@gmail.com.)