Showing posts with label syllable. Show all posts
Showing posts with label syllable. Show all posts

Saturday, August 23, 2014

Changing colors, counting syllables


Changing Colors
by JoAnne Growney

Blue
yoyo --
awkwardly
stopping-starting,
rising-plummeting,
seeking self-control. Please,
mother-friend-lover-child, don't
pull string.  Let me collect myself.

I  lift  myself  to  the  treetops,
soar with the golden eagle,
find rest on fleecy clouds.
My orb embraces
everybody --
powerful,
yellow 
sun. 

Friday, July 26, 2013

Another 17-word Haiku

If a poet uses only one-syllable words, the resulting Haiku is a bit longer than usual -- as in this Haiku in which the word lengths also follow an increase/decrease pattern, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1: 

I am the girl voice.
Drafts scribed -- thoughts stretched, smoothed, squared, sighed --
catch here now my I.

I have offered other 17-word Haiku in these postings -- 27 June 2013 and 16 July 2013 -- and the latter of these is my entry into the Haiku-to Mars contest.  To vote for that Haiku to be one of three sent to Mars by NASA on the Maven spacecraft next November, click here.  (Voting ends July 29.)

Thursday, June 27, 2013

17-word Haiku

     On 25 May 2013 this blog contained an announcement of NASA's Haiku-to-Mars contest.  The contest rules are here -- and July 1 is the deadline for submission.  Voting to select three favorite submissions will begin on July 15.  For my own submission I decided to use numerical constraints -- I limited my Haiku to one-syllable words and used an increasing-decreasing pattern of the lengths of words.  Here is an example (not the one I submitted, which begins "I go for Mars . . .").

A is the sign first
spread through thoughts –- stretched, breathed, squared, sighed.
Trace thru all to Z.

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

5 x 5 and 6 x 6

Many poets have found the sonnet to be an ideal poetic form -- its iambic pentameter lines are like five heartbeats assembled in a single breath;  its fourteen lines are a good number for considering a matter carefully. My own frequent form is different -- not a sonnet but a square of some or another dimension.   Here are two of my recent syllable-squares.

     I squint with tension,
     puzzle over this:         
     dissatisfaction's
     itchy appetites
     are my happiness.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

A square riddle -- by Sylvia Plath

Metaphors     by Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)

I'm a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.
Money's new minted in this fat purse.
I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I've eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there's no getting off.

This 9 x 9 square first appeared in Crossing the Water (Faber and Faber, 1971).