[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

[Matt Q]

Considering the Snail (1961)
Thom Gunn

The snail pushes through a green
night, for the grass is heavy
with water and meets over
the bright path he makes, where rain
has darkened the earth’s dark. He
moves in a wood of desire,

pale antlers barely stirring
as he hunts. I cannot tell
what power is at work, drenched there
with purpose, knowing nothing.
What is a snail’s fury? All
I think is that if later

I parted the blades above
the tunnel and saw the thin
trail of broken white across
litter, I would never have
imagined the slow passion
to that deliberate progress.

[Julie Steiner]

Mitchell gave his blessing, so here's the syllabic sonnet of his that I mentioned above. The meter does reappear here and there, and its reappearance is particularly effective in the final line, I think.

1984

When Billy was dying, grotesquely gaunt,
he said to me, "No one touches me now
but nurses. And that's all I really want --
a pat on my cheek, a stroke on my brow."
So I obliged him; touched his fevered face;
he managed a grateful skeletal smile.
Reluctant fingers steeled themselves to trace
those porphyry lesions -- ominous, vile.
An endless hour passed, and at last he slept.
Compelled by fear, and ashamed of my breach
of reason, into his kitchen I crept
and plunged my hands -- to the elbow -- in bleach.
My friend never knew how I'd lost my head;
he was, in weeks, delirious, then dead.

[Roger Slater]

Julie, I don't think the meter ever goes away. Every line, as far as I can tell, is either tet or pent, and the blend words well. Much more rhythmic than lots of syllabic verse.

[John Whitworth]

I swear I wrote a poem that was syllabic (eleven syllables per line). I wish I could remember what it was.

Hendecasyllabics for Stevie Smith. I wrote it last March. If you should want a look at it, Tony, send me a message and I'll send it back.