Monday, October 26, 2009

Monday Poetry Stretch - The Zeno

Drum roll please ....
For this week's poetry stretch I am very happy to be introducing a NEW poetic form invented by Pat Lewis. Here's Pat's explanation.
I've invented what I had called a “hailstone," after the mathematical "hailstone sequence." It has nothing to do with Mary O'Neill's Hailstones and Halibut Bones, but it would no doubt instantly be confused with it. Hence, "hailstone" is problematic. So I call the form a "zeno," so named for Zeno, the philosopher of paradoxes, especially the dichotomy paradox, according to which getting anywhere involves first getting half way there and then again halfway there, and so on ad infinitum. I'm dividing each line in half of the previous one. Here's my description of a zeno:

A 10-line verse form with a repeating syllable count of 8,4,2,1,4,2,1,4,2,1. The rhyme scheme is abcdefdghd.
Pat was even kind enough to send along a few examples.
Sea Song
A song streaming a thousand miles
may sound like a
fairy
tale,
but it’s only
love’s bulk-
mail
coming out of
the blue...
whale.

Why Wolves Howl
Gray wolves do not howl at the moon.
Across a vast
timber
zone,
they oboe in
mono-
tone,
Fur-face, I am
all a-
lone.

Telephooone
The great horned owl sits in the tree
answering each
local
call—
swivel-neck and
big-eye-
ball
operator
of night-
fall.

Hags’ Rags
One Halloween two goblin girls,
trick-or-treating,
got an
itch
to make a quick
costume
switch.
Now who can tell
which is
witch?

A Thanksgiving Custom
November: An American
tradition you
can count
on:
Once the family
turkey’s
gone,
like clockwork, they
start to
yawn.

All poems ©J. Patrick Lewis. All rights reserved.
So, that's the challenge for the week. What kind of Zeno will you write? Leave me a note about your poem and I'll post the results here later this week.

Special thanks to Pat Lewis for sharing and inspiring us this week.

16 comments:

  1. Thanks so much, Tricia, for featuring the "zeno." I'm most grateful. I'm afraid I forgot to give credit to my twin for his help in suggesting the term zeno.
    Here are two more of them:

    Travel by Armchair

    You can take a trip by Greyhound,
    motorcycle,
    paddle-
    wheel,
    ocean liner
    (package
    deal)—
    I prefer the
    bookmo-
    bile.

    * *
    Weather by The Old Masters

    The Michelangelo thunder
    of an April
    cloudburst
    hints
    at what follows
    a great
    rinse:
    spring meadows in
    Monet
    prints.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Tricia ~ Yesterday, my daughter and I saw a blue heron (and took some pics) as we walked around a local reservoir. Here's my "zeno" take on it. Thank you, Pat, for this fun new form!!

    Great Blue

    The great blue heron tries to hide
    itself in tall
    grasses,
    yet
    passers see this
    nature’s
    pet,
    take photos to
    not for-
    get.

    © Carol Weis. All rights reserved.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oooh. Math and poetry? Be still my geeky heart! Here's my first attempt at a zeno, inspired by and treading on one of Pat's in the post above:

    Halloween
    by
    Gregory K.

    I counted down October days.
    Tonight, at last,
    Waiting’s
    Through.
    I prowl the dark,
    Seeking
    You.
    My costume on,
    I’ll shout,
    “Boo!”

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oh, most excellent! I am hard at work creating some. More soon.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I suppose it's inevitable that I wrote a Halloween zeno, too. Great name, Pat and Pat's twin!

    October 31st

    Night. A graveyard. A single boy
    walks soft as a
    new-raised
    ghost,
    with each step re-
    gretting
    most
    making that quick,
    daylit
    boast.

    --Kate Coombs (Book Aunt)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Oh, fun! Will be trying one today. These are wonderful. I've gotta say I love the ones most that don't hyphenate words in order to make the syllable count.

    Weather by the Old Masters--fantabulous!

    ReplyDelete
  7. OK, just did my daily poem(s) and tried my hand at a zeno. I wanted to write about Emperor Qin's Terra Cotta Army, which I read a book about recently:

    http://laurasalas.livejournal.com/175649.html

    Weapons Make the Warrior?

    Marching in time, but out of time
    into the harsh
    light of
    day:
    Emperor Qin’s
    army.
    They
    wield bronze swords in
    arms of
    clay.


    Putting the Art Before the Horse

    In Emperor Qin’s afterlife,
    he would rule by
    timeless
    force.
    But death had its
    way, of
    course.
    Lesson? Don’t ride
    a clay
    horse.

    Not terribly poetic, but this was a fun structure to try!

    ReplyDelete
  8. This was a good time...thank you!

    One Hen Speaks

    We make eggs inside our bodies.
    Roosters chase us
    make us
    mate.
    Every egg is
    tempting
    fate.
    Farm life or your
    breakfast
    plate?

    ReplyDelete
  9. Laura--I admit I succumbed to the hyphenation temptation. I really like your clay horse!

    Amy--How very dire! Also cool.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Here's one, but just a place-holder, while I get serious. This zeno is called "In a Nice Restaurant, I Use My Fingers to Tap Out Syllables on the Tablecloth, Which Worries the Nice Couple at the Next Table Who Appear to Be Having a Romantic Anniversary Dinner"

    Constantly counting syllables
    alarms the shrinks.
    While some
    probe
    tales about our
    frontal
    lobes,
    none dare call us
    zeno-
    phobes.

    ReplyDelete
  11. A serious zeno eludes me. Here is one titled "A Zeno to Ze Nose"

    Ze nose eez nice, eet smell ze rose,
    eet shine so pink
    with wine.
    Ooh-
    la-la, ze nose
    eet grows
    blue -
    eet sneeze, eet honk,
    eet drip -
    eeewww.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Thanks for those wonderful zenos on zeno's birthday!

    Apocopated rhymes are not to everyone's taste as, for example,
    Julie's inspired
    lobes/
    zeno-/
    phobes

    But I've never fully understood why. In extremis, the estimable Lewis Carroll gave us this gem (sans hyphen, too):
    "Who would not give all else for two p/
    ennyworth of beautiful Soup?"

    Admittedly, he was writing nonsense, but I don't think a zeno
    would mind an occasional broken word for the cause.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Quite right, Pat. Some of poetry's proudest moments have involved well-placed hyphens. I think of them as equivalent to the hiccups Charlie Chaplin gets when he swallows a whistle in THE LITTLE TRAMP. One of my own proud moments was a double abecedarian with a hyphen between the u- and -gh of ugh. Thanks, Tricia, for the fun again this week! (Pat, let's put together an Acopated Anthology...?)

    ReplyDelete
  14. I don't have a Zeno to contribute. I'm sorry to say the Zeno beat me.

    Random Noodling

    Maybe some day soon I'll wrestle it to the ground!

    ReplyDelete
  15. Julie--

    To use the immortal language of the Internet, LOL! And I like your titles as much or more than your poems. (Picturing that couple in the restaurant. Yep, now it's ROTFL!)

    --Kate

    ReplyDelete