I wrote two poems today - well, maybe one of them would be called a verse. The verse is about pulling ivy (again - yard waste is collected every other week). The poem is another one about the dance that we often go to on Friday nights. I wanted to try an Italian form sonnet; the rhyme scheme is more demanding than the Shakespearean style I have used most often.
The constraints of the sonnet are: line length and rhythm (iambic pentameter); number of lines (14); rhyme scheme (Italian: abbaabba for the eight, with the following six related to each other - I’ve seen cdfcdf or, as I did here, cdcdcd). Plus there’s an intent for the first eight lines to present a scenario and the finishing six to comment and conclude.
I like to let the rhythm vary a bit from the iambic. I don’t like to turn a sentence inside out for a rhyme. I don’t say something that’s not true for the sake of a rhyme. Those are my added constraints.
I find that writing within constraints is interesting. It sometimes helps bring out the meaning more clearly than writing without them.
I’ll share the sonnet tonight:
Ode to the dance
Stepping softly in between the shafts of sound
the trancing hum of chords reverberating
weft and warp in fabric of relating
threads of touch remembered and rewound
In dancing eyes fresh lines of light are found
a joyful glee of friends appreciating
the playful moves, the games of their creating
the sudden bursts of energy unbound
As music, words, and movement thus are one
so are we one in the reverberation
that still remains when all the music’s done
and we have voiced our final incantation
The web of our connection lightly spun
reprised thus in a quiet exaltation.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 27, 2011
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