[Roger Slater]

MEASURED THINKING

In prosody a single fact'll
puzzle more than all the rest:
although an anapest's a dactyl,
a dactyl's not an anapest.

But if trochees are trochaic,
an arrangement quite idyllic,
shouldn't spondees be spondaic,
shouldn't dacytls be dactylic?

I'm not trying to be hokey,
but I've always wondered who
named a spondee with a trochee
then a dactyl with one, too?

It's a chaos as majestic
as a cloudbank or a fractyl:
though no dactyl's anapestic
every anapest's a dactyl.

[Matt Q]

This one is very old – a one-day draft from one of many poem-a-day challenges I've partaken in.

On writing a ghazal

Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever manage to write a ghazal.
Oh I have tried, but what I write is never quite a ghazal.

Perhaps it’s because a part of me thinks
there’s something not quite right about the ghazal

Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn't want to criticise –
far be it from me to slight the ghazal,

but it’s just that - how can I put this? – most poems
seem to have a just a little more bite than a ghazal,

And I think it's fair to say that very few forms
put up quite so little fight as a ghazal,

and this repetition thing – I mean, there’s a danger
of just going on all night with a ghazal.

But enough, I’m at risk of sounding like
I’m being impolite about the ghazal.

And let’s focus on the positives here, at least
it looks like this one actually might be a ghazal.

Fingers crossed, I may finally
have done everything right with a ghazal.

And I’m not the sort of person who’d
mess things up just out of spite.

[Michael Tyldesley]

Thanks for starting this very entertaining thread after one of my throw away suggestions Michael C. This is a way better idea than Barbie debate.

Some of the poems on here are not even remotely dreadful and they're more than worthy of their publication credits.

I've got something that's so bad I think it might take a few days for me to pluck up the courage to post it. It's a cringeworthy poem with a cringeworthy title (Anal Cunt) that compares writing to love making and reproduction.

In the meantime, this poem might not immediately strike you as being about poetry writing but it's actually not far off my creative process. I have to be mentally ill to even contemplate writing poetry and then I just get the iguana to write for me (no illicit substances are involved).

A Pet-Induced Psychosis

I once owned a gifted iguana
who could sing "On a Plain" by Nirvana.
He would toot on a flute
and write poems to boot,
in the days when we puffed marijuana.

[Julie Steiner]

From the sequence My Sister's Shadow:


My sister gives the clothing she’s outgrown
to me, two years her junior. I accept
her charity resignedly. I own
her boots (still caked with shit in which she stepped),
white blouses for 4-H (with pepper-stains
from sheep who sneezed on her at point-blank range),
her high school gym clothes (bearing the remains
of silkscreened mascots laundered into mange).

My sister’s threadbare hand-me-downs include
her schools (which teem with people she’s impressed).
Although the straitlaced sonnet was eschewed
as “too constricting,” scorned as “overdressed,”
and mothballed as “antique” ere I was born,
at least it’s something Tammy’s never worn.


The whole sequence is self-congratulation for what a brave and noble and unique thing I thought I was doing by becoming a sonnet-writing nerd, instead of another math-and-science nerd like Tammy, as everyone expected. Imagine my disappointment when I found out formalism wasn't quite as dead as my high school teachers had led me to believe.

[Ann Drysdale]

Shit happens. Everybody gets their share;
the sorry stuff doesn’t discriminate –
it hits the fan and then it’s everywhere.
Nobody ducks until it’s far too late.
A canny lass can never have too many
plans for confronting an emergency.
A sonnet is as good a way as any.
It did for Shagsberg; it’ll do for me.
So sock it to me, Sunshine. I can take it.
I’ll dredge the sludge for something new to say.
I’ll squeeze the mental Plasticine and make it
sing itself. Waste not, want not. That’s the way
Creative Writers learn to deal with it.
This is the way a poet handles shit.

[Gail White]

Superfluous Words

The world does not need one more villanelle,
yet teachers still assign the exercise.
Sooner or later someone does it well.

More verses than the damned can read in hell
are written daily, so it's no surprise
the world does not need one more villanelle,

but does it need the countless things we sell
in stores, the million things we advertise?
Sooner or later something is done well.

The lovers meet, the monk prays in his cell,
the married have their kids whose scratchy cries
the world does not need. One more villanelle

or less, what does it matter? Truth to tell,
we all make things for others to despise.
Sooner or later someone does it well.

What if we fail in trying to excel?
We'll all fill coffins of a standard size.
The world does not need one more villanelle,
but still, from time to time, one does it well.

[Roger Slater]

The first poem I ever published was a villanelle, when I was a freshman in college. It would be many years before I learned what an iamb is, as I was about to be overwhelmed by instructors who thought meter had been outlawed a century ago, but I think it scans:



THE LOVE OF MY LIFE ASKS ME FOR A VILLANELLE

You ask me for a villanelle: How’s this?
It’s not too good, but still, it fits the form.
It’s like, if I were missing lips, I’d kiss

Somehow, someway. How could a man resist?
If I could barely rain, I’d play the storm.
You ask me for a villanelle: How’s this?

I’m running out of rhymes. I’m growing pissed.
I wrack my brain but I’m not even warm.
Still, even if I lacked the lips, I’d kiss.

My God, this writing poems is hard business.
So very few real good at it are born.
You ask me for a villanelle: How’s this?

I’ll try real hard, my love, if you insist,
But I can’t help but write the same old corn.
It’s like, if I were missing lips, I’d kiss.

It’s somewhat foggy, but, you catch the gist?
I try for you. You are my guiding norm.
You asked me for a villanelle: How’s this?
It’s like I’m missing lips and still I kiss.