The triversen ("triple verse sentence") is a verse form invented by William Carlos Williams. Each stanza is composed of a single sentence, broken into three parts, which together form a stanza. The poems are generally unrhymed and often contain alliteration. They can be composed of any number of tercets.
You can learn more about the triversen and read some examples at Poetics and Ruminations.
So, there's your challenge for the week. I hope you'll join me in writing a triversen. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.
I seem to have been writing this form without knowing its name or pedigree for some time. It seems natural to me.
ReplyDeleteThere Is No Single Month for Mourning
There is no single month
for mourning,
none.
Flowers droop,
under the heavy burden
of dew.
Rain comes in volumes,
like a Russian novel,
sonorous, heavy, unending.
All of you under
the dark cover of earth
understand this.
Why is it we dwellers
still in the light
expect something else?
When I am gone,
my shadow will no longer
illuminate and confuse.
But memory does not
distinguish
between the two.
I will come to you
in memory
heavy with grief.
Or perhaps burdens
of old anger;
ignore them.
There is safety in mourning,
regrets, too,
do not confuse them with living.
Do not confuse them with life.
©2016 Jane Yolen all rights reserved
Cousins
ReplyDeleteI see my cousins
at a wedding on a Saturday,
clustering in from out of state.
I see cousins
from the other side, somber,
at my aunt’s funeral a few days later.
Who are these people,
and why do they look
like my mom and dad?
Why do they hug me,
when I haven’t seen them
for 5 years, for 10 or 15?
Why do I hug them back,
glad to be with them,
wanting them to be happy?
We exchange stories
at the viewing and eat
chocolate eclairs at the reception.
We mark the great events
of lifetimes together
in our best dresses and suits.
The clan is bigger
at times like these,
swirling like a highland fling.
A hundred years ago, two hundred, three,
the cousins gathered in Scotland,
Germany, Ireland, Denmark, France.
They gathered for weddings,
for funerals, crying
and giving each other hugs.
—Kate Coombs, 2016
all rights reserved
Hmmmm--both poems referencing mourning. We need someone to write a HAPPY occasion poem.
ReplyDeleteHey, chocolate eclairs! (But yeah.)
DeleteTruth rarely works to calm my fear
ReplyDelete"Angels bowling strikes" was once the gentle
explanation someone used to soothe me through
a raging thunderstorm when I was a child.
That would not have been my mother as she'd
have jumped at the opportunity to tell the truth
and expound the pure physics of the storm.
"Super-heated by electric charge of the
lightening strike, molecules of air slap-back
and resound as they are cooled."
© 2016 Judith Robinson all rights reserved.