[Gregory Dowling]

As Alicia suggested, I'm opening a Mastery thread on the subject. And I'm taking up her proposal of Plath's poem, "Mushrooms", as a successful example of a syllabics poem. Here's what Alicia wrote over on GT:

This is a subject I am very interested in--and I do wish I saw more successful syllabic poems, as I think it a very fruitful exercise. Purely free verse poets aren't very interested in it on the whole, and there is some snobbery against it in formal circles. Sylvia Plath's "Mushrooms" in five syllables is a successful one--it occasional slips into a dimeter swing, but resists that impulse often enough to be truly syllabic.

I confess to the fact that I find it difficult to read this aloud without imposing a "dimeter swing" (although some lines resist my imposition, as Alicia points out), but that presumably is due to my lack of familiarity with the way syllabics work. If anyone can teach me how to break myself of this habit, I'd be grateful.

Anyway, I now declare the Syllabics Mastery Thread officially opened and look forward to seeing more examples and comments.

Mushrooms

Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.

(Sylvia Plath)