Sunday, September 13, 2009

Gogyohka Sonnet?

I've been thinking about the form of this for some time now, and when it finally took root with content and inspiration, it spun out into a slightly different shape. But that's science for you, I guess. In any event, I'm hoping to work with the idea of even lined poems with fives and threes buried within them (as in 3 linked five-line poems that add up to a thirteen-line stanza and 1 three-line stanza that add up to 16 lines), so that I can get odd lined Eastern poetry embedded into even lined Western poetry. It's hard to explain, and might be boring. Better to read:

Out on the vast sea
we need a boat
sure
but the boat can spring a leak
What we really need
is a gauge
we can consult
from the inside out
Some internal navigation
that can't be soaked
something we can call
our own
out on the stormy crashing waves

Out on the vast sea
What we really need
Some internal navigation


The last three lines, ideally, are interchangeable. You can read them in any order and they make sense. I don't know how often I can do that, but I'd like to try and find out.

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