Today's prompt is simply to write a nine line poem of any kind.
NaPoWriMo shares a discussion of nine line forms from The Poet's Garret (a dot com, evidently from Australia), I find a table of forms the names of which are unfamiliar except for the Spencerian stanza, which is nine lines, eight in iambic pentameter (10 syllables) with the ninth line in iambic hexameter (12 syllables); in an a-b-a-b-c-d-c-d-d end-rhyming pattern. Another page about Spencerian stanza gives the end-rhymes as a-b-a-b-b-c-b-c-c. (I'm not sure whether the difference is just a careless mistake on the part of the author, or due to entries made by two different poets, or whether both schemes are equally valid Sp. forms.) Some of the other nine line forms look like what I might made up by instinct, working on my own, some times.
I digress.
If you were to write to this prompt, would you lay out the end-rhyming words of the pattern first?
Would you start with a theme, i.e. the subject matter and just write, superimposing the rhyme scheme later? Write one couplet, trusting the rest to follow? I've used all those and probably other ways as well. 'Feels to me that the second and third way of composing have more integrity than the first. But then who's to say?
It has been noted that Longfellow's "Song of Hiawatha," which my mother loved to read, and later recite, to me while I was growing up, is written in (CORRECTION!) trochaic tetrameter, as is much of the Finnish epic poem ( or, poem epic) 'Kalevala." She was Finnish, which accounts her love of "Hiawatha" and other poems in that meter. It has been noted that Longfellow was also a fan of the Kalevala.
From Wikipedia: "Trochaic tetrameter is a meter in poetry. It refers to a line of four trochaic feet. The word "tetrameter" simply means that the poem has four trochees. A trochee is a long syllable, or stressed syllable, followed by a short, or unstressed, one."
NaPoWriMo shares a discussion of nine line forms from The Poet's Garret (a dot com, evidently from Australia), I find a table of forms the names of which are unfamiliar except for the Spencerian stanza, which is nine lines, eight in iambic pentameter (10 syllables) with the ninth line in iambic hexameter (12 syllables); in an a-b-a-b-c-d-c-d-d end-rhyming pattern. Another page about Spencerian stanza gives the end-rhymes as a-b-a-b-b-c-b-c-c. (I'm not sure whether the difference is just a careless mistake on the part of the author, or due to entries made by two different poets, or whether both schemes are equally valid Sp. forms.) Some of the other nine line forms look like what I might made up by instinct, working on my own, some times.
I digress.
If you were to write to this prompt, would you lay out the end-rhyming words of the pattern first?
Would you start with a theme, i.e. the subject matter and just write, superimposing the rhyme scheme later? Write one couplet, trusting the rest to follow? I've used all those and probably other ways as well. 'Feels to me that the second and third way of composing have more integrity than the first. But then who's to say?
It has been noted that Longfellow's "Song of Hiawatha," which my mother loved to read, and later recite, to me while I was growing up, is written in (CORRECTION!) trochaic tetrameter, as is much of the Finnish epic poem ( or, poem epic) 'Kalevala." She was Finnish, which accounts her love of "Hiawatha" and other poems in that meter. It has been noted that Longfellow was also a fan of the Kalevala.
From Wikipedia: "Trochaic tetrameter is a meter in poetry. It refers to a line of four trochaic feet. The word "tetrameter" simply means that the poem has four trochees. A trochee is a long syllable, or stressed syllable, followed by a short, or unstressed, one."
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