Saturday, April 11, 2015

FIRST CONSIDERATION OF A SAPPHIC POEM

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Dear lord. Write a what today? I had rather a busy day, wasn't around the computer much, went to hear Naomi Klein talk about climate change over at the Brilliant Cultural Centre tonight, and now it's 11PM and, well, here I am!

Today we are being asked, and nicely, I might add, for in the event we do not wish to play with the prompt we can write any darned thing we choose, to write a poem using "Sapphics". These, and here I quote the NaPoWriMo site, are "quatrains whose first three lines have eleven syllables, and the fourth, just five. There is also a very strict meter that alternates trochees (a two-syllable foot, with the first syllable stressed, and the second unstressed) and dactyls (a three-syllable foot, with the first syllable stressed and the remainder unstressed). The first three lines consist of two trochees, a dactyl, and two more trochees. The fourth line is a dactyl, followed by a trochee." 

Sounds like something you might encounter on a dinosaur hunt, doesn't it? Well, here goes, and it's going to have one stanza:

First Consideration of a Sapphic Poem


Why oh why oh why must I try to write when
all the words I find in this churned up word soup
won't be caught, or, certainly not by one so
          ignorant as I.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Love this and the dino idea! I agree. Those trochees make my head swim. April is a challenge isn't it? Too many poems too few days!

Carol

Anonymous said...

Gotta hand it to ya, Linda...Well done. I'm not following any of the prompts--or at least not on the day of the prompt.

You nailed the Sapphic, though. Salute!