[Roger Slater]

Originally Posted by Janice D. Soderling

Like Maryann and I

Calling the Word Nerd police!

[Janice D. Soderling]

Like Mary and and I (have already done), they will take action when they do (log in).

Here we are, what's the complaint, citizen Roger?

[Maryann Corbett]

Janice, I'm not sure about that analysis. You'd need AS, wouldn't you, to introduce a clause? If like is the first word, we've just got a phrase. Let's look at the sentences when there's only the 'I' involved:

Like me, they will take action...

As I have done, they will take action...

The case requirements don't change just because there's another noun in front of the pronoun.

Nerdfully submitted, Maryann

[Janice D. Soderling]

All right, I'll go peacefully. Peaceably? Without protest. Whatever.

[Orwn Acra]

We could just post each other's poems.

[Susan McLean]

No one has mentioned George Starbuck's "Space-Saver Sonnets" in hemimeter (one syllable per line). I got a huge kick out of them.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/176436

I love suiting the form to the content. I won't post any of my own poems, but one was "My Own Two Feet," in dimeter, about learning to walk. For "Medea" I invented what I call antiheroic couplets in which all of the rhymes were eye rhymes that were pronounced differently from each other. For "Brief Lives of the Poets," about the short lives of female poets, I came up with thirteen lines of all feminine endings that did not rhyme with each other but all ended in "-er." I took Kim Addonizio's rules for a sonnenizio and applied them to a villanelle, which I called a villanizio. Even if no one notices why I used a particular form, there is a great pleasure in knowing that the reason is there. It's a kind of poetic in-joke. This is where the real playfulness of poetry comes out, I think.

Susan

[Maryann Corbett]

Thanks for those examples, Susan; I'll hunt up those poems of yours, which sound intriguing. (And if they're online, I think I'll link as Walter suggests.)

The Starbuck examples have been making me think hard. The one-syllable form reminded me of another discussion we had way back about a sestina consisting of one-word lines. Having searched for the discussion and found it, I've been forced to remember, with some awkwardness, that I didn't like the thing, although I liked some of the parodies better. The people who discussed that sestina here had very different views.

Experiments with form have risks: a given result delights some people and annoys others. It can come across as "gimmicky," the formal goal overwhelming the poetic content. Can we say anything useful about why experiments fail?

Editing back to add: the villanizio.

[Janice D. Soderling]

The people who discussed that sestina here had very different views.

That's what makes the Sphere go round.

[Lance Levens]

Here's a spanner in the works: is it possible that the urge to find newer forms is merely an admission--this is brazenly autobiographical-- than one can't master the old ones. (Loud teeth gritting.)

[Susan McLean]

Lance, I don't think so. If you think in architectural terms, many structures from the past are still around, some of great beauty. Some are pulled down to build new structures, but some are renovated to remain useful. At the same time, architects want to develop their own forms, not because they don't know how to build or renovate the old forms, but because they have a vision they want to express or are trying to fit current demands. None of these facts are likely to change in the near future. I could choose to live in a modern tract house, but instead I live in a house built around a hundred years ago because I like the look of it.

Susan