Making New Forms, Part 1

run wild on the page

I think that many (most?) writers get a bit spooked when trying to write “in form.” I know the sonnet (traditional English or Petrarchan) was a bugaboo in my writing for years (more than a few years). I like writing these now, mostly English because I do enjoy a good couplet. I enjoy the 8 lines of the triolet and a nice pantoum or villanelle makes me happy. I’ve even done a few sestinas, but not my fav.

So what changed? Did I suddenly get smarter or more accomplished? Nope. I just got feisty. Knowing the nuts and bolts (aargh, a darned clichê!) I decided that I could recompose the forms into something that didn’t scare the life out of me. I discovered I like to “break” things. It happened in 2001 when we were living briefly in London on one of my (almost daily) visits to the British Poetry Library. It happened after reading a children’s book, something about snow. I got the idea to write a sonnet about snow and sat right down there and put pen to paper (one of my ubiquitous notebooks). When I got back to our flat, I typed it into my laptop and hit save. Something strange happened. My poem came out “rearranged” as in the line breaks were not marginal at all, but shaped with loads of white space (ironic, right?). All the sonnet elements were there but not at al lineated as a sonnet shape. Aha moment there! I didn’t HAVE to keep the sonnet in a box! It wanted out and I wanted to let it out. I was out of my box too. Here is that poem:

Snow

			From hidden gardens of a fertile sky.
					fall showy ice-spun blossoms made of air.
            It’s God’s design that we on earth might sigh
            			as we watch them silently sifting here.
   Each pristine flower cut, then folded, sent
		flying stringless, pure. Latticed crystal kites
            drift soft across the star-blank firmament.
            			From deep within the muted spiraled light,
   saints and angels try to shake the news,
			the frightful rumors they’ve been told:
						of death that overtook a child of two
           who wandered out into the dazzling cold,
 							  blinded, lost, and then beguiled
				by winter’s flowery, frozen smile.

— Bachofner 2002

The only thing different from a traditional sonnet is the shape. But it lit the match for me.

From that point onward I began looking at all formal poetry as an opportunity to break, remake, tweak, and

This new freedom gave me another idea: why not try to make a form of my own. In its honor, I chose the sonnet. I proceeded to mix it up in any of its traditional elements, while keeping SOME. I’ve done sonnets that have the couplet at the beginning or in the middle of 2 six-line stanzas, rhymes at the fronts of lines, sonnets with only couplets, variations of rhyme or no rhyme at all other than the couplet. I created something I call the “perfect revering sonnet,” where line 7 repeats at the place line 8 would be and rolls back to line 1, which ends the poem. 14 lines written using only 7. I have done prose sonnets with 14 “chunks” of elements and have numbered the chunks. Of course, au fond, I’ve done many “normal” sonnets too. The sonnet and I are good pals now. Full on po-mance.

(to be continued tomorrow in Part2)