[Tony Barnstone]

Hi Friends,

I am putting together my formal poetry workshop for the spring and want to beef up my set of examples of syllabic poetry. I have of course Marianne Moore and Dylan Thomas and some wonderful poems by Michael Hulse, but would love to have more that are amazing poems, good for teaching newcomers to poetry. I'm open to the Japanese on this, but tanka and haiku are usually translated as free verse or translated badly in form, padding out the poems so they are no longer precise and imagistic. If you know of some amazing translations that don't fall into those traps, I'd be grateful.

Also, I'm looking for a very rare form, word count poetry. My father, Willis, did a whole book in this form, Stickball on on 88th Street (http://redhen.org/book/?uuid=4BCD23F...7-2A3D077A8090), and William Carlos Williams's "The Red Wheelbarrow" is written in this form, but I haven't found other examples. Anyone know of some?

Thanks in advance,

Tony

[Roger Slater]

Some of Philip Levine's earlier poetry is syllabic, if I'm remembering correctly. Also, though I'm not a huge fan of his work, Robert Morgan has written extensively in syllabics.

What are the wonderful examples by Michael Hulse? I have a book or two of his, and I wonder if the poems you have in mind are in them. (Michael and I have known each other for decades, though it's been a few years since we last spoke).

[Maryann Corbett]

Sylvia Plath's "Mushrooms" is one syllabic example.

Richard Wilbur's "haiku stanza" is a form both syllabic and rhymed. "Thyme Flowering Among Rocks" is an example.

[Roger Slater]

As far as word count poetry is concerned, you might have a look at the form known as the fib -- after Fibonacci sequences. It was invented a few years ago by Greg Pincus, and it became so popular that the NY Times wrote it up and several of us here had a go at it. Alicia Stallings, as I recall, actually came up with some fibs that were fine poems, so you might start by tracking those down.

PS--
Oops. I might have this wrong. The fib may be syllabic, not word count. I'm not sure. In either event, I'll leave my mention of fibs here since you're looking for both kinds of poems.

[Julie Steiner]

Several examples are explicated by Alicia Stallings in this old thread.

Mitchell Geller has done several syllabic sonnets. This one starts out scanning, but then the rhythm gradually decays, until it's just a matter of ten halting syllables per line sometimes, before returning to meter. Chillingly appropriate to the subject.

He has another, more-fully syllabic sonnet titled "1984" that I like even better, but I can't find it online and don't want to post it without his permission. Stay tuned, I think I have his email address somewhere...

[Clive Watkins]

You should look at late-period Auden. He very often wrote in syllabics and with characteristic fluency, intelligence and panache. Lower down Parnassus, you might look at the syllabic poems of Elizabeth Daryush.

Clive Watkins