The next form for the Poetry Seven year-long writing project is the etheree. Since I've promised myself I won't wait until the last minute this time around, I'm posting the form now as a reminder to get to work!
An etheree is a poem of ten lines in which each line contains one more syllable than the last. Beginning with one syllable and ending with ten, this unrhymed form is named for its creator, 20th century American poet Etheree Taylor Armstrong.
Variant forms of the etheree include the reverse form, which begins with 10 syllables and ends with one. The double etheree is twenty lines, moving from one syllable to 10, and then from 10 back to one. (I suppose a double etheree could also move from 10 syllables to one, and then from one back to 10.)
You can learn more about the etheree at The Poets Garret and Shadow Poetry.
I hope you'll join me this week in writing an etheree. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.
I just wrote a few fibs for a project, and I was reminded how tricky these short, unrhymed but counted syllable poems could be to do well. But I can do bad ones, no problem! :D
ReplyDeleteThanks for the practice. I'm going to try one today!
bee
ReplyDeletebuzzing
one bee lost
forgot the dance
east west north south hmm
whirling breeze swirling bee
visiting roses daisies
hyacinths dance of flowers buzz
like bee dance remembering bee flies
north hips laden with pollen humming home
—Kate Coombs
whirling breeze swirling bee - love!
DeleteA Companion to Kate's poem:
ReplyDeleteBeeHiving: An Etheree
bee
hiving
behaving
as bees will do,
buzzably flying
making a beeline to hive,
kept alive by wind and honey
both promises made by her own queen
as she hips home with pollen to the hive.
©2015 Jane Yolen all rights reserved
Nice! I love hips as a verb.
DeleteWonder if we could get them both published somewhere together?
DeleteWonder if we could do a book together in which we write in wonderfully odd forms and echo one another? Maybe in email) we could discuss this????? xxxJane janeyolen@aol.com
hips home with pollen - so lively
DeletePrint.
ReplyDeleteEbooks.
Not the same
but somehow… yes.
A format question.
Encyclopedia
Britannica online claims
it updates daily and covers
the world. In print it fills a bookcase
back home in my father’s dusty study.
Fabulous ending!
DeleteThese are all wonderful! Kate and Jane, can't believe you did bees...that was going to be my topic (Tricia will back me up in this)! Funny that we all have bee brains.
ReplyDeleteBuzzzz!
DeleteIt's been awhile since I played, though mine is certainly not playful. I'm following such wonderful examples, too!
ReplyDeleteGrief
slips in
when you least
expect it to
pooling tears in eyes
already damp from the
previous day, when it punched
you in the gut with its fistful
of memories, doubled you over
in pain, reminding you how much you loved.
DESSERT
ReplyDeleteJosh
smiles, smacks
His lips as
He is about
to embark on the
last piece of pie when his
wife Mandy jabs her fork down,
flicks up this tasty confection,
smooshes it down her gullet, then shows
off her new, bedazzled, blueberry smile.
(c) Charles Waters 2015 all rights reserved.
Fun poem, Charles. Love bedazzled, blueberry smile. Mandy sounds like me ;)
Delete