[Jamison W. Richardson]

Eratosphereans,

I don't know if this is a new form, but if it is, I'm tentatively calling it the Grammar-kofa, a portmanteau melding of grammar and Sankofa. The Sankofa bird is African and is depicted as bird looking backwards, yet flying forward. The grammar kofa takes a line (syllables and meter may vary from poem to poem) with one internal punctuation mark. The line and punctuation remains the same throughout the poem. The only thing that changes with each first line of each stanza is the position of the internal punctuation. In "Rehearsing Ecstasy," the colon is the punctuation that changes position with each new stanza:

Rehearsing Ecstasy


Consider the glory of us two creatures: breathing
is a vicious alchemy; tongue and fingers
potion a lucid aloe vera sap.

Consider the glory of us two: creatures breathing
surrender ghosts and language;
only the rain has syllables.

Consider the glory of us: two creatures breathing
pair like lungs, well-hung in the anxious air;
we are the talk of spring.

Consider the glory: of us two creatures breathing,
who is wiser to the passing hours? Our tongues
have swallowed whole our names.

Consider: the glory of us two creatures breathing
quivers like red, melting suns;
ululates through spheres wider than alleluias.

So is this a legitimate form? Anyone want to try to write one?

jr!

[Rose Kelleher]

Yikes, this is a tough one. It seems like it'd be good if the meaning of the line changed significantly each time you changed the punctuation. This is all I could manage, sorry.

Animalia

I'm lost in the big kingdom;
can't find my family, or even my phylum.

I'm lost; in the big kingdom
even the duckbill platypus knows its place.

[Jamison W. Richardson]

Hey, Rose,

Sorry it's taken me this long to reply, but I've hard at work revising a sonnet AND a slippery sestina that our fellow Sphereans have been helping me with. Anyway, I think you're off to a good start. Maybe, though, what's really called for is one of those convoluted IP sentences that my tortured prose readily lends me. Something like the following:

Permit one who has never loved to speak
Permit one who has never loved to. Speak . . .
Permit one who has never loved. To speak
Permit one. Who has never loved to speak . . .
Permit. One who has never loved to speak . . .

Thanks to enjambment, the succeeding lines might make something really profound. Anyone care to make sense/poetry/beauty out of this weird line? . . .

jr!