We have dabbled in haiku and other Eastern forms, as well as in limerick and “Instagram-verse.” But we haven’t tried to write a complete Western-style poem in as few as 6 words.
So, our project for next Wednesday: write a poem in six words.
What do I mean by "Western-style poem"? For one thing, I mean a poem that does not attempt a radical ellipsis, that does not, like haiku, follow strict rules, such as "seasonal," "surprise," "nature," elided parts of speech, or "numbers" (that is, strict syllable counts, as we tend to perceive haiku here in the West).*
What we should strive for here is a complete poem—a poem that tries to deploy as many of the tools, techniques, figures that we have studied at W@1 as you can put into it. Like the poems you ordinarily write for W@1. What? For a refresher on many of those tools and techniques, scroll back through the various topics and projects in the blog archive to the right of this text block.
Personally, I'd love to see poems that do any or all of the following:
What do I mean by "Western-style poem"? For one thing, I mean a poem that does not attempt a radical ellipsis, that does not, like haiku, follow strict rules, such as "seasonal," "surprise," "nature," elided parts of speech, or "numbers" (that is, strict syllable counts, as we tend to perceive haiku here in the West).*
What we should strive for here is a complete poem—a poem that tries to deploy as many of the tools, techniques, figures that we have studied at W@1 as you can put into it. Like the poems you ordinarily write for W@1. What? For a refresher on many of those tools and techniques, scroll back through the various topics and projects in the blog archive to the right of this text block.
Personally, I'd love to see poems that do any or all of the following:
- Use standard English grammar and punctuation: articles, conjunctions, subordinating pronouns, commas and semi-colons, periods.
- Tell a story with a beginning, middle, and an end; that is, a narrative poem.
- Turn on a volta (thus creating a "before" and an "after," a propositoin and a conclusion, or a generalization followed by an illustration or vice versa).
- Unfold in stanzas and/or rhyme scheme.
- Incorporate a strong voice, a persona or "speaker."
- Establish a point of view and perhaps comments on that point of view (see volta above).
- Develop (perhaps, extend?) an image or a metaphor.
Now, your first temptation will be to eliminate what you think are extraneous parts of speech, in order to get to your six-word target. HOWEVER, DO NOT DROP ARTICLES, PRONOUNS, RELATIVE PRONOUNS, CONJUNCTIVES OR OTHER GRAMMATICAL DEVICES THAT YOU WOULD NORMALLY DEPLOY IN A LONGER LYRIC, NARRATIVE OR CONTEMPLATIVE POEM. You needn't go out of your way to incorporate every part of standard speech into your poem; only, don't write a voiceless snapshot of your back yard that is all nouns and adjectives.
One of our guiding principles at W@1 is Bennett's dictum: poems must move, they must go somewhere.
Write a poem in six words that does just that. In fact, you might want to write a handful of them, first to get the hang of the brevities of this project, then to have something to choose from for next week.
Have fun!
*Of course, you can put season into your poem, you can make nature its subject or locus, you can introduce a surprise or a twist, and you can count syllables, if you wish. What I'm saying here is, no haiku, haibun or anything "snap-shotty" like those forms.
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