Lariat, here is my amateur spiel:
Is the poetic form used in a poem relevant to its theme? For instance, is the triolet to be used only for light verse? What theme(s) work best with the villanelle? Should I, a new poet, limit myself to the sonnet because it is the easiest to work with in English language?

-Nadia

Since nobody else has answered: I think Alan would protest at the characterization of sonnet as the easiest form. Far simpler are poems composed of couplets or quatrains. I think quatrains with rhyming schemes ABAB or ABBA - or possible xAxA (x stands for unrhymed) are the best to begin with. But why let yourself be stopped if you have an idea that just pushes you towards one of the more set forms like villanelle, sestina or sonnet? I mean: If the idea itself carries or can carry the repetition, then a versification of it would have a good chance of doing so as well.


------------------
Svein Olav

.. another life

Just jumping in, with apologies to the lariat. In my experience, it is the poem that chooses the form, not the other way round. But of course, early on, one might want to do some exercises in particular forms. The sonnet is NOT the easiest form in English (and honestly, we see far too many "exercise" sonnets on the boards). Writing in quatrains, particularly xaxa is a good start. Or even blank (unrimed) metrical verse. Pantuoms and villanelles are "easy" forms, but are very, very difficult to get good poems out of.

Nadia, I think what Alicia says is exactly right: the theme brings its form with it, not the reverse. Sometimes it's not clear at once why that form is "right" for this particu-lar poem, but trust the poem, at least until it's written: after tht, if you want to make revisions, and even radical ones, that's your right, and it's up to the poem to argue with you from line to line.

She touches on something else that's true, too: there's a difference between a poem and an exercise: the poem comes to you because it needs to be written, and before it becomes conscious a great deal of the work has already begun: the choice of meter, form, central metaphor, point of view, tone toward the theme and tone toward the reader, for instance. The poem knows before you do if it's going to be chummy or hostile or guarded, if it's going to speak openly or keep one hand in front of its mouth and so forth.
And exercise, on the other hand, is something written on purpose to learn or practice a technique. You decide consciously to write it, you set up the "problems" you're interested in solving in it, and you don't expect to keep it but to throw it out. Some very few of mine have surprised me by becoming "keepers," maybe because in the process of "practicing" I touched on something that really wanted to be said. But most of them end up in the waste basket.

In that sense, all forms are both "easy" and "hard." Easy to play with--and great fun!--in the process of mastering them, but hard to use in some fresh way that takes advantage of what specific forms can do without simply repeating, as if you were adhering to a template.

No, I don't think the triolet, for instance, has to be light verse: it may be used ironically to sound light and be saying something very different that belies the tone. That kind of opposition between tone and substance can be wonderful. My own villanelles--that's a form I like very much--tend to deal with obsessive thoughts, questions I can't answer that won't go away, but I did write one that imitates my mother's circular, demented speech during the late stages of Alzheimer's disease, while also conveying my grief over her condition. That one wrote itself with so little conscious "help" from me that I sometimes think I should have signed her name to it. When a poem begins with its mind made up as to form that way, the results surprise you as if you had had nothing to do with the process.

Solan is right: go with whatever you feel "can carry the repetition," do your exercise, and then see if something in it makes the leap into poetry.

from one beginner to another...I sometimes play around with forms when I find it's been a while since I've written anything. It helps me get something on paper. Starting with an idea not really worthy of an entire poem and seeing what directions the demands of form takes it is quite fun. And there have been several times that it acts as a sort of meditation, bringing out ideas I wasn't aware existed in the first place. If they're really good ideas, though, they often grow to the point where the form begins to feel confining and I end up re-writing in free verse. But, imho, starting out with form helps give the resulting free verse piece a rhythm and shape it might not have had otherwise.

I remember reading somewhere, a quote from Robert Graves perhaps, that the poem dictates the form; that some thoughts want to be vilanelles, sestinas, etc. I also remember thinking at the time that one would have to be some sort of genius to think in sestinas. But I've found that the more I read the more I see what he was talking about. Sort of like learning a foreign language. At first one thinks in his or her native language and then translates into the second language before speaking. In time though, one becomes comfortable enough that the second language comes more naturally and translation is less necessary.

Ginger

Dear Ms. Lariat,

I love that villanelle about your mother. Would you mind posting it here?

P.S. This is probably the greatest triolet in the language (by Thomas Hardy), and it isn't "light" by any stretch of the imagination.

AT A HASTY WEDDING

If hours be years the twain are blest,
For now they solace swift desire
By bonds of every bond the best,
If hours be years. The twain are blest
Do eastern stars slope never west,
Nor pallid ashes follow fire:
If hours be years the twain are blest,
For now they solace swift desire.

Thank you all for your clarifying my confusion. Sorry for that comment about the sonnet being easiest. I do find it easier than other forms but I'll admit I didn't give that comment much thought.

Solan and Ginger, thanks for the pointers.

Alicia, thank you for posting that triolet by Hardy. I understand exactly what you mean now.

Rhina, thank you for your comments. It seems I spent too much time shaping what might have been finished work into a form. I'll try your approach and see what happens. I also love the villanelle but it doesn't seem to be a favorite here. I would like to read the villanelle about your mother if you don't mind posting it here. My poems always flow better in Spanish. In English I fret too much over form and meter and I often give up on what I've written. I love the process, though, so it's worth the trouble. I am also from the Dominican Republic. I truly enjoy your poems. I just took a peek at Tim Murphy's threads (Questions to Rhina and Introduction...) and learned that you are Quisqueyana. It gives me pride and pleasure to see what you've accomplished!

Again, thank you all.

-Nadia



[This message has been edited by NADIA (edited August 30, 2001).]

Gracias, Nadia! And here goes the villanelle, for both you and Alicia:

SONG

From hair to horse to house to rose,
her tongue unfastened like her gait,
her gaze, her guise, her ghost, she goes.

She cannot name the thing she knows,
word and its image will not mate.
From hair to horse to house to rose

there is a circle will not close.
She babbles to her dinner plate.
All gaze and gaunt as ghost she goes--

smiling at these, frowning at those,
smoothing the air to make it straight--
from hair to horse to house to rose.

She settles in a thoughtful pose
as if she understood her fate,
her face, her gaze, her ghost. She goes

downstream relentlessly, she flows
where dark forgiving waters wait.
From hair to horse to house to rose,
her gaze, her guise, her ghost, she goes.

Ginger, I meant to tell you that what you're doing--playing around with forms to see what happens--is a wonderful idea. Sometimes surprises happen, and you stumble onto a poem that you didn't know was there! But don't get discouraged and let it become free verse if it began formally: if you can, stick with it, even if it means struggling for rhymes and working with lines to make them "fit" into a meter. The best things happen, sometimes, as a response to that kind of struggle, connections that you wouldn't have seen other-wise. Resist the impulse, if you can, to just say what you mean in free verse, and see if you can sing it instead by sticking with some form. If it doesn't turn out, you can always throw it out, since it's an exercise you're doing to learn, after all.

Thanks, Rhina. I will definately take your advice. I always listen hardest to people who are accomplishing the kinds of things I'd like to accomplish. Reading the sonnets posted here, and a few other poem on Caleb Murdock's site, I was tremendously impressed. What struck me particulary was the way you've taken the sonnet form and really made it your own. The voice is very fresh and very modern as is your subject matter. In your case, form seems to enhance rather than confine your content. The only way I'll ever be satisfied with a closed form poem of my own is if I learn to do the same thing.

Thanks for being here. My college is not offering a poetry workshop this semester and poets like you, who volunteer your time here, are an invaluable resource for learning poets like me.

Ginger

Dear Rhina,

I wonder if you might also post another of my favorites here, "Where Childhood Lives," from <u>Landscapes with Women</u>. I think Nadia would like it particularly. The ending makes the hairs on my arm stand up.

Rhina, you give excellent advice about the difference between exercises and poems. A poem will tell you when it wants to be written, although sometimes the way it tells you so is by taking over an exercise. I guess that gives some justification to the school of thought that says "set aside some time each day and just write." But all I seem to be able to write on demand is light verse. Serious poems are a long time incubating, though they hatch fairly quickly when they are ready. I find serious ideas too hard to come by to waste them on exercises.

Your villanelle is delicate and deep and touching. I don't know what ghose is and can't find it in the dictionary, please help.

Carol

Alicia, you are absolutely right on. That Hardy triolet
is hands down the best (and a marvelous example of a form
perfectly suited to its subject: the swiftness of the
triolet could not be more expressive than it is here).
I think the second and third best triolets in English
are also by Hardy, a pair of them---the only poem I
regret omitting from my edition of his poems:

THE COQUETTE, AND AFTER

BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POST I

For long the cruel wish I knew
That your free heart should ache for me
While mine should bear no ache for you;
For long---the cruel wish!---I knew
How men can feel, and craved to view
My triumph---fated not to be
For long!...The cruel wish I knew
That your free heart should ache for me!

II

At last one pays the penalty---
The woman---women always do.
My farce, I found, was tragedy
At last! ---One pays the penalty
With interest when one, fancy-free,
Learns love, learns shame...Of sinners two
At last one pays the penalty---
The woman---women always do!

What wonderful triolets by Hardy! Perfect examples of how the right form doesn't hamper or interfere with the expression of meaning, but on the contrary, fuses with meaning until the two can't be separated. I had never seen the first of these before; thanks for posting them.

Carol, forgive my typo: that should have been "ghost," not "ghose."

Alicia, here goes the "home town" poem you requested, and I hope you enjoy it, Nadia. The home town I'm thinking of is La Vega, in the heartland of our native country:

WHERE CHILDHOOD LIVES

In my home town the nights are warm
and flies are watchful at the net,
as if Remember posted guards
along the borders of Forget.

And all night long in slow exchange
a dialogue of plunk and plink
from leaky roof to rusty basin
echoes what the raindrops think.

Along the wall where lizards hunt
mosquitoes urge their long complaint
and pious photographs commingle
the dead, the living and the saint.

One rooster, two, then five or six
from hill to valley rout the night
and maids sigh up from creaky springs
to morning prayer and kitchen light.

Along my narrow shuttered streets
trot little donkeys gray as dust,
stopping to nuzzle here and there
at orange peel and cracker crust.

And morning takes the river road
down to the bank where childhood lives,
where stones and water know my name
and stroke me with diminutives.

Dear Rhina,

I've taken the liberty of correcting the typo in your post. Hope that is OK.

Lovely poem. Diminutives--would that be Rhinita? or Espaillita?

Well, I have to say that this has turned into the most pleasant thread I've seen in Eratosphere. http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif

Rhina, thanks for posting your lovely poems. I've truly enjoyed them. I am from the capital but have visited El Cibao plenty of times. Your poem is charming and its nostalgia touched me. Thank you.

Professor Mezey, thank you for the Hardy triolets.

Thank you all for the opportunity to learn from the best.

-Nadia

Yes, Tim, the diminutive for me would be "Rhinita," which is what all my relatives call me. It beats me what Hispanic relatives--if you had any! would call you, as "Timito" sounds all wrong. No, it has to be faced: English is simply diminutive-deprived, as "Timmy" doesn't cut it either.

But to get back to forms: since there seems to be an interest in those, in the triolet and especially in the sonnet, I'd like to issue an invitation. Why doesn't each visitor to the site post a poem of his own in which he feels he's used an established form to some advantage? And that includes variants: for instance, the Mason sonnet, a form with some wonderful features. I'd love to see those.

Diminutives: Alan and I were riding in a fishing boat beneath an island cliff on the Sea of Cortez, and the fisherman excitedly cried "aguillitos!" We peered up, and there peering down at us from their brushy aerie, were two baby ospreys. Yes, our language is diminutive-deprived.

Yes, Tim is much too tough to be called
Timmy. How about Timbo?

Tim's forefathers would have called him Timin pronounced Timeen but only when he was young.

Jimeen- quite a while back.

[This message has been edited by Jim Hayes (edited August 29, 2001).]

Oh, no! "Timbo" is entirely too unloving. We need to import several things from Spanish, clearly: chief among them the diminutive, without which the Spanish-speaking person who wants to love anybody, of any age and either sex, is rendered speechless.

Another is the upside-down question mark at the beginning of interrogatory sentences. Without those, you may begin a sentence without recognizing it as a question, if its syntax is not clearly interrogative, and find yourself at the end not knowing what to do with your voice, and having to adopt the quetioning "lift" at the last minute. It makes much more sense to let the reader know, right at the beginning, that he's about to ask something. I use inverted punctuation in English--so as to encourage its use--even at the risk of seeming weird, in the belief that weird is sometimes right.

And third--see how inexorably I'm leading back to form!--the "ovillejo," an old Spanish verse form that means "tight little bundle." "-ejo" is one of our blessed diminutives, and "ovillo" means "tangled ball of yarn." I've seen only a few of them, but it was love at first sight, because of the
fun involved. Here's a home-made sample that will show why it's called what it's called, and illustrate the way the lines are related to each other. The last line is a "redondilla," a "little round" that collects all three of the short lines. The rhyme scheme is established, but the meter is at the poet's discretion, although in Spanish the longer lines tend to be octosyllabic. Here goes:

OSTINATO

Evidence says I lie
But I--
Though all the world concur--
Prefer
One voice, and one alone:
My own.
The experts cluck and groan,
"No, no! It's round, not flat!"
Their data second that.
But I prefer my own.

Ovillejos don't have to be light verse, of course. Now, all of you gifted gringos, try one: I dare you. I double-dare you.

Well, I for one am going to try to write an ovillejo. (For those who don't know, "ll" is pronounced like "y", and the "j" like an "h" (right, Rhina?) -- O vee YAY ho, although the long A sound of the "e" (the "YAY" part) is spoken with a shorter sound than in English.)

It seems to me that the best way to write an ovillejo is to start with the final line and then break it up in parts for the lines leading up to it.

I would love to have diminutives in English also -- I recently had a three-year relationship with a Dominican man, and it never occurred to me to call him "Hectorito"; now, of course, it's too late. I'm not so sure about the inverted question mark, though -- there is something nice about not knowing how a sentence will end.

Thanks, Caleb, for explaining the pronunciation: that will be very helpful to Jimeen and Timeen. Yes, by all means let's see those ovillejos, from the four corners of the world!

Ovillejo, what a beautiful name, Thank you Rhina.

Well let's see how I got on with your challenge-

The Dream of the Mean Bachelor

Each time I sleep I seem
to dream
of you and dreaming so,
I know
compatibility
is free,
it is no cost to me
to go and buy you flowers—
nor hold your hand for hours.
To dream, I know, is free.

Jim

[This message has been edited by Jim Hayes (edited August 30, 2001).]

Rhina, in response to your first challenge of posting poems in established forms, here is a villanelle of mine, which I once posted in Metrical. I've reworked it a thousand times, I'm afraid. Here's what's left of it.

The Almond Tree

They danced under the almond tree
enduring the revolution.
Sometimes I hear their memories.

The war was snubbed by folded leaves.
While flitting, their unmindful feet,
they danced under the almond tree.

When suitors sneaked love serenades
the girls would dance seductively
(sometimes). I hear their memories.

One girl found love and from her lips
he tasted almond sweetness as
they danced. Under the almond tree

they wed. She left and gradually
her family followed her north.
Sometimes I hear, there, memories.

I never got to see their tree.
Through almond shaped stories I know
they danced under the almond tree.
Sometimes I hear their memories.


Next, I will take on your ovillejo challenge.

-Nadia


[This message has been edited by NADIA (edited August 30, 2001).]

I can never resist a dare, especially a double-dare.

In this Garden

He asks that I proclaim,
or name
the blessings love is for,
what's more
he'd like to see a chart:
The heart
hardpressed by flesh or art --
when even Eve could not conceive
of what's to come, what's to grieve,
or name, what's more, the heart.

````````

wendy v
(gringito poet)

How delightful to find new poems this way! Let's hear it for NYC and Kilkenny! Jim, this ovillejo is so good, so feathery-light and yet damning of the "mean bachelor"--who is doomed to solitude, I'd say!--that I have only one small suggestion: should "nor" in line 9 be "and"? I can follow the logic of a negative conjunction there, but if you want one of those, should it be "or"? I think, in fact, that one might be best. I love the way he seems to be thinking out loud while the reader overhears!

Nadia, your villanelle is very moving, especially for some-one who's heard such stories from elders, as I have, in the tropical setting you suggest. The "serenades," the "almond sweetness," the travels "north," are all heavily freighted with meaning. And that telling summing-up--"I never got to see their tree"--tells so economically the separation of one generation and another, hints at all of what our young people "never get to see." I like this poem so much that I wish you would work it into as good a poem as it could be, by using, rather than bypassing, the sound-repetitions that are its strength and the source of its music.

You do a beautiful job of altering the two repeated lines: every one of your alterations is meaningful and suggests subtle nuances, and you make those alterations by using both homonyms and punctuation.

What needs work is the middle lines: they really should rhyme, to keep up the "song" that is a villanelle. Also, lines 1 and 3 should be perfect rhymes, or at least closer to it: I wonder about the use of singular and plural as rhymes in any poem, but especially in a form so dependent on sound. "Leaves" and "trees" may work, but not "leaves" and "tree," and not "serenades" and "memories."

You might begin by making the tree plural, and then finding better rhymes for some of those lines. What I would emphatically NOT do is abandon this poem: it's too good, it has too much it needs to say.

This is a delightful thread - and very helpful to another novice metricist. I can't resist a challenge. In fact, Clive is always posting poems in new forms that I just have to try. I find that when I just allow it, the form will carry me where a poem wants to go, and then I begin the arduous task of editing. The poets here have been so valuable to me in understanding what differentiates a good draft from an excellent poem. Here is one that emerged after Clive posted a viralais:

Vera Lays

How warm the sheets where Vera lays
by night or day, the salty mates
who dock in port
on leave from draft at sea extended.
How skillfully their pipes she plays.
Their idle prates
she listens to with lively sport
while prone to prow or ass up-ended.
But Vera says
that soon she'll have to close the gates;
she's heard the imminent report
of her intended

It was great fun just taking a bit of word play and letting it roll around to its own conclusion.

With a double-dare, I'll have to work twice as hard or perhaps I'll just have twice as much fun.

Wendy, you've given the ovillejo a serious turn in this lovely poem. As I read it, "she" feels that the lover is asking her to limit the meanings of love, to name it and list "what its' good for" or "will do." But she is aware of the impossibility of doing that, of the mystery at the heart of it, hidden even from Eve. Have I read this right? I wonder if everyone else had questions about line 3, which is not wholly clear to me. And I wonder, also, if anyone else was troubled by the extra syllables in lines 8 & 9. They could be shortened by eliminating "even" and "what's," respectively, and I don't anything would be lost.

Prtty Ktty, this "Vera Lays" is even more hilarious than your "truck bed" love poem on the Metrical Poetry Board! A great form: I plan to do one as soon as I can. I love the fact that there are two different kinds of "counting" going on: 3 stanzas of 4 lines each (ABCD rhyming)but a short line each 3 lines, cutting right through the stanzas.

I wonder where Clive found this form of the Virelai, which I've never seen before. What I know by that name is very different. In fact, it's an extension of the Lai, a 2-rhyme form illustrated below. what the Virelai does--those I've seen before, anyway--is use several Lais as stanzas, with the rhymes interlinked so that AB becomes BC and then CD in the next stanza, until the final rhymes are NA, N being whatever you;re up to by then.

This sample of the Lai is dedicated to all of you, because I must tell you that this board has been a very bad influence on a formerly serious and responsible woman. I'm on this computer early in the mrning, again at night, and in between, with no thought of cookery or laundry. And what's worse, I'm enjoying it. Here goes:

LAI OF THE LAX LARIAT

Let each unwashed plate
fuzz and germinate:
come see
what these six or eight
have cooked up, to date,
(oh glee!)
with the formal bait
fed to them of late.
Look, he--
our Kilkenny mate--
has composed a great
ovi-
llejo! Hesitate?
No1 Come celebrate
with me;
let the housework wait;
poetry's our fate!
We're free!


Isn't that disgraceful?

Rhina, thank you for your kind words and suggestions on my Almond Tree. I will work on it some more and post the revision on this thread. Let's see where it takes me.

Nadia

P.S: I'll have an ovillejo shortly.

Nadia, your villanelle has some good moments, but
the villanelle is a metrical form (I think it needs
meter even more than sestinas do) and rhyme scheme
is part of the essence. Your poem seems to be mostly
in tetrameters, and it wouldn't take too much work to
get the other lines to get in line. The first line
of every tercet must rhyme with the refrain lines, and
all the middle lines must rhyme. But don't be discouraged;
the villanelle is a very tough form, maybe the toughest---
I can think of only three or four in English that really
pull it off. I've wrote a fair number of them over the
years and thrown them all away, until the last one, written
last spring. It has a few things that bother me, but it's
the first I've done that's worth keeping and I'm probably
more than thirty years older than you. I'm afraid it's
rather grim (no doubt because of all those years).


Once they have closed the door,
That is the final day
And time will be no more.

Forget "the other shore"---
No earth, no sea, no way
Once they have closed the door,

No after, no before,
Nothing for clocks to say,
For time will be no more---

Vain the discarded core,
Useless the feet of clay
Once they have closed the door.

For soldier, queen and whore,
All persons of the play,
Time will be no more.

No time now to restore
This burden, this cliche.
Soon they will close the door
And time will be no more.

Tim was right in calling you metaphysical, Bob. Your villanelle made me wonder if philosophical themes might be better suited for villanelles than most other themes.

------------------
Svein Olav

.. another life

Maybe so, but I tend to think that almost any form can
be adapted to almost any kind of subject matter. The
themes of various villanelles are certainly different.
But it's easy to fail with any subject in this form---
I think the Dylan Thomas attempt, probably the most
famous of all, is a pretty bad poem, far from his best.
Even Auden's, though very good, is imperfect, and the
well-known Bishop villanelle, One Art, also
very good, has a couple of real flaws. My nomination
for the bext job in English is one by Donald Justice,
In Memory of the Unknown Poet, Robert Boardman
Vaughn. It has an epigraph from T. S. Eliot:
BANNED POSTBANNED POST
But the essential advantage for a poet is
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTnot to have a beautiful world with which to
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTdeal: it is to be able to see beneath both
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTbeauty and ugliness; to see the boredom, and
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTthe horror, and the glory.

(Nadia--notice that although both refrain lines---indeed
the whole first tercet---are iambic pentameter, the poem
makes it clear very early that it will vary pentameters
with loose five-beat lines and that all rhymes except
the refrain lines will be slant. He's masterly enough to
take such liberties; not many are.)


It was his story. It would always be his story.
It followed him; it overtook him finally---
The boredom, and the horror, and the glory.

Probably at the end he was not yet sorry,
Even as the boots were brutalizing him in the alley.
It was his story. It would always be his story,

Blown on a blue horn, full of sound and fury,
But signifying, O signifying magnificently
The boredom, and the horrow, and the glory.

I picture the snow as falling without hurry
To cover the cobbles and the toppled ashcans completely.
It was his story. It would always be his story.

Lately he had wandered between St Mark's Place and
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTthe Bowery,
Already half a spirit, mumbling and muttering sadly.
O the boredom, and the horror, and the glory.

All done now. But I remember the fiery
Hypnotic eye and the raised voice blazing with poetry.
It was his story and would always be his story---
The boredom, and the horror, and the glory.




[This message has been edited by robert mezey (edited September 01, 2001).]

I'm going to try some of these new forms--they attract me strongly and if I ever have a non-senior moment I'll try writing some of them. I particularly like the ovillejo and the terzanelle, feel that they are worthy of poetry rather than simply being exercises, but poetry needs inspiration and excercises just need words. My villanelles have all been in the exercise category, either inspired by a challenge or written in answer to somebody else's poem, like this one:

Good for the Soul

Your filler phrase I must confess
works once, but as a repetend,
used twice or more, makes for excess.

The logic fails when you obsess
on what you must confess, my friend:
your repetend. I must confess

I do not love the IRS
nor is it they whom I defend;
but twice or more makes for excess

and shows a certain laziness
the villanist did not intend
in phrases like "I must confess."

I like your poem, nonetheless
and hope my words will not offend.
Still, twice or more makes for excess.

A villanelle requires finesse;
rethink that line, for I contend
your filler phrase I must confess
when used four times makes for excess.

Carol Taylor

Carol, very smooth. I think it could stand alone with a different title, e.g., To a Villanist.

------------------
Ralph

Carol, I too am intrigued by the different forms, like the veralais, villanelle, terzanelle. My first attempts are usually, just as you say, exercises, but surprising things happen after I get the exercises done. I think I'm freer in thought when I do the exercises, because other than the form, I don't have a preconcieved idea of what its going to be - its almost association - the search for a rhyme or a meter solution sometimes takes it where I never intended to go, but I end up in a much more interesting place. It's funny, I popped over here after I read your comments on my terzanelle on the meter board, and that first attempt was just that, an exercise and the second attempt turned it into something else. That is why I love metrical poetry. It's fun and challenging to find just the right word for a thought. I also love crossword puzzles, by the way, which is in my way of thinking, terrific exercise for poetry, because good ones, like the NYTimes force you to think about words in different ways, and find homonyms and puns, etc. I was doing crosswords long before I was writing poetry. Bob, I agree with you that form can fit any topic and with surprising results. My best work comes when I just play--my worst is when I impose my own self-consciousness into it.
Mary

Mary, that goes along with what Rhina said about poems surfacing out of exercises. Sometimes you find out there was something you wanted to say after all and it might not have emerged without the vehicle of form.

Ok, here's a senior moment, my attempt at an ovillejo. Rhina, I wasn't sure if the rhyme scheme in the ending lines was variable, so I followed yours.

Stop the Clock

I hide from truth, although
I know.
A thousand wrinkles chime
the time.
And what I cower from
has come.
Resisting martyrdom,
I beg for one more day
of youth—an hour; a stay;
a moratorium.
I know the time has come.

Carol

Robert, I do like very much the Justice villanelle you've posted, but I must confess that I like yours even better, mostly because it plays with the ear more gently, teasing the form without breaking it. Some of those longer lines in the Justice poem break the meter beyond the possibility of mending: I'm all for being daring, as you know, but that presupposes that the daring succeeds! You do have to come back alive. Your poem does. I also like the short lines and the direct "inescapable" quality of your simple diction. That's hard to achieve if you begin with words as loaded as "horror/boredom/glory," which are poised to jump over the railing at once. No, I'm afraid my vote goes to you, and to Elizabeth Bishop: that one is very high on my v. list, maybe #1.