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Scifaiku

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The following descriptiion and example is reposted with permission from Poetry Magnum Opus, with thanks to Judi Van Gorder for years of work on that fine resource.

The SciFaiku is what the name implies, science fiction haiku an invented verse form introduced by Tom Brinck in 1995. Scifaiku combines science fiction themes with some of the elements of the haiku.

The elements of the Scifaiku are:

  1. minimal, in the moment with human insight.
  2. written with a haiku frame, normally, 17 syllables or less. The poem can be written in the classic 3 lines of 5-7-5 or a variation of line and syllable count. (because of the nature of the subject some technical words could exceed the standard syllable count per line, therefore, as long as minimal amount of words and syllables are used to get the point across, there could be more or less than 17 syllables in the poem.
  3. composed of a single concept or image.
  4. written with “uncluttered and direct words”.
  5. written in the moment.
  6. finding the Ah-ha, light bulb realization through the understanding of the possibilities of science.

    poets dance with words
    cyber ballroom fills with song
    line dancing in space
                       –judi van gorder

My Example

Form: Scifaiku

[untitled]

big bang disputed
universe is infinite
it matters not

© Lawrencealot – February 12, 2015

Varselle

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The Varselle is an ambiguous form invented by Linda Varsell Smith of Rainbow Communications.

  • It is stanzaic, consisting of any number of eight line stanzas.
  • It is either rhymed or not.
  • It is either syllabic or word-based.
  • It is either centered or left justified.
  • The number of (syllables or words) per line is 2/3/4/3/5/5/4/6
  • If rhymed the rhymed scheme must be ababcbca

Smith’s Examples

Oregon Spring

Raining–
Spring’s too wet!
Hail is straining
patience, yet
sometimes sun streaks through.
Sun turns chills to sweat.
What can we do?
Confusion remaining.

For Kip

Someone
remember
our dear passed son.
Heart-ember
love-warming through years.
Can’t disremember
the joys or tears
from grief of everyone.

My Example

Form: Varselle


Don’t Feed the Cat

That brat!
We do feed
our funny furry cat;
we do indeed,
and mother nature does too!
So please neighbors, take heed,
he’ll beg from you.
Ignore him, he might get fat.

© Lawrencealot – February 12, 2015

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Tho Bon Chu

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The following description and example are reposted with permission from Poetry Magnum Opus, with thanks to Judi Van Gorder for years of work on that fine resource.

Tho Bon Chu or Four Word Verse is written as its name implies, measuring the number of words per line rather than syllables. The elements of the Tho Bon Chu are:

  1. stanzaic, written in a series of couplets.
  2. measured by the number of words in the line, each line has 4 words.
  3. rhymed, tonal rhyme in 1 of 2 distinct patterns and often end-rhymed at the poet’s discretion. w=word Language specific.
    When end-rhymed.           
    w ♭w a#
    w # w a♭
    or
    w # w a♭
    When not end-rhymed
    w ♭w #
    w ♭w a#
    w # w ♭
    or
    w # w ♭
    w ♭w #

My Example

Form: Tho Bon Chu

Since I have no notion about the Vietnamese tonal qualities for words, I have anglicized the rules to interpret Sharp tones as end-stressed words and Flat tones, as not.

Hollering

Sounds normal to shout
with children at home.
To shout in office
is not my suggestion.

© Lawrencealot – February 11, 2015

William Kenneth Keller, writing on Allpoetry as Shades of Bill added this comment and poem which do much to explain the concept which I merely relegated to stress. I am including his work as it really helps things make a little more sense.

The idea of tonality in poetry intrigues me! So here is my humble take on this. In English a word’s pitch comes two ways: stress, (rise and fall) and the tonality assigned to vowel sounds. (long or short)

Here is how I would assess your first line:
‘ow’ in ‘sounds’ would define the baseline for line. (This brings up an interesting point: you can have a baseline that changes line to line, or an overall baseline carried throughout the poem; the latter obviously far more difficult than the former.)
‘or’ in ‘normal’ should be flatter than baseline. (It is: the voice drops slightly.)
‘ooh’ in ‘to’ should sound at same pitch as baseline’. (It seems close enough.)
‘ow’ in ‘shout’ should be sharper than baseline. (It is identical. As an example, the ‘ee’ in ‘sleep’ is pitched slightly higher than the ‘ow’ in ‘sounds when voiced.)

So I took a light-hearted stab at it:

She walks too stiff
Like an old lady
Talks like a sailor
Too long at sea
Looks like an angel
And so I stay

Might not be suitable as an example, but it does seem to have that necessary rise and fall to it. I may try to give it another go, but regardless, the idea of pitch and tonality is going in my Batman Utility Belt!

Bill Keller

Folía

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The following description and example ares reposted with permission from Poetry Magnum Opus, with thanks to Judi Van Gorder for years of work on that fine resource.

The Folía is a nonsensical or a ridiculous poem, originating in 16th century Spain, probably influenced by a Portuguese dance song.

The elements of the Folía are:

  1. stanzaic, written in any # of quatrains.
  2. syllabic, 8 syllables lines or shorter.
  3. rhymed, rhyme scheme abab cdcd etc.
  4. ridiculous or nonsensical.

    Silly Willy by Judi Van Gorder

    In old 16th century Spain
    when poets felt a bit silly
    they’d dance circles round in the rain
    and write rhymed verse willy nilly.

My Example

Form: Folía

Bump and Grind

A kangaroo on roller skates
and polar bear on skis
were clumsy when they went on dates
excuse them if you please.

© Lawrencealot – February 11, 2015

Cadae

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According to Wikipedia:

Cadae is an experimental Western poetry form similar to the Fib. While the Fib is based on the Fibonacci sequence, the cadae is based on the number Pi. The word “cadae” is the alphabetical equivalent of the first five digits of Pi, 3.1415.

The form of a cadae is based on Pi on two levels. There are five stanzas, with 3, 1, 4, 1, and 5 lines each, respectively for a total of fourteen lines in the poem. Each line of the poem also contains an appropriate number of syllables. The first line has three syllables, the second has one, the third has four, and so on, following the sequence of Pi as it extends infinitely. 

The following description and example are reposted from thebakerypoetry.com (site no longer accessible).

As a name, cadae is the alphabetical equivalent to the first five digits of the transcendental number pi (3.1415…). Pi, often represented as π, is a mathematical constant that is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter approximately equal to the number 3.14 or, to fourteen places, 3.1415926535897. In poetry, these numbers have been applied to line and stanza lengths, resulting in, yet again, a cross between haiku and sonnet.

Here’s an example:

Butterfly
lands
on butterfly
bush.
A starving man eats
maggots, dies. When two days later he
is found
new maggots have begun
hatching in his mouth.
Which image
will you take to bed
like a lover for the first time
touching and turning it all through night?
Which will be there when you wake?

My Example

Cadae

Read It Anyway

I try to
write
what people will
read.
Often times I fail.
Frequently I get carried away
by all
the constraints of a form,
become didactic
in the cause,
lose all pretense of
using poetic devices,
and end up with something that only
few folks will willingly read.

© Lawrencealot – February 10, 2015

Ocarina – Rhymed

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I have no idea who created this form. Thanks to Sara Gosa of Allpoetry.com for bringing it to my attention. I can only tell you that the example was published in the January 25, 1912 edition of New Age, written by A. Tulloch Cull.

Ocarina – Rhymed

  • A sestina discipline using 8 lines per verse and a 4 line enjoy for a 68 line poem
  • MUST be used to write a rhyming poem.
  • Its structure schematic is
    • 12345678
    • 86571243
    • 31426587
    • 75682134
    • 43218765
    • 57864312
    • 24137856
    • 68753421
  • With the envoy:
    • I corrected the occurrence of the words to create complete rhyme which the sample poem did not possess.
    • 31 / 28 / 74 / 65 Giving couplet internal rhyme and alternating end-rhyme
  • Rhyme scheme: Alternating envelope and alternate rhyme.
  • Rhyme pattern:
    • 1st abbacddc
    • 2nd cdcdabab
    • 3rd baabdccd
    • 4th dcdcbaba
    • 5th abbacddc
    • 6th cdcdabab
    • 7th baabdccd
    • 8th dcdcbaba
    • Envoy:
      • (b/a)
      • (b/c)
      • (d/a)
      • (d/c)

To Anna Pavlova (Ocarina)
(In her dance “Le Cygne ” Musique de Saint-Saëns.)

I.

There came to me a vision of sweet song
Borne faintly forward on melodious streams,
A white Chimaera such as stirs the dreams
Of men, who sleep in solitudes and long
To people the dead wastes with strange desire
And breathe between the lips of ancient Death
Stretched mummified in deserts that new breath
That should revive them with its living fire.

II.

White was the vision, white as fiercest fire
And paler far its face than pallid Death,
Begotten of that brood, the Swan’s desire
Raised from frail Leda with its hissing breath.
And as it came its superhuman song
Sang of all those, whom wide relentless streams
Divide from their beloved, towards whom they long,
But whom they ne’er may clasp except in dreams.

III.

They strain to one another in their dreams
But never hear their lovers’ silent song
Pass spectrelike with gliding feet along
The halls of Sleep to Lethe’s stealthy streams
Till conies Old Age, a fouler foe than Death,
To mar the house of their divine desire
And smother with white ashes their young fire
Stifling their bodies’ perfumes with his breath.

IV.

Who of us mortals with ephemeral breath
That saw the vision, did not straight desire
To pass from perfect happiness to death
A holocaust of joy within the fire beneath
That from your cloudlike eyelids streams.
Having for elegy your supreme song
I would have died your death and passed to dreams
On that white breast, for which I longed so long.

V.

Half goddess and half swan, you seemed to long
With yearning eyes for those immortal dreams
Of far Olympus, where Peneus streams
Through Tempe’s hallowed vale. Yet in the song
Of feet and face and form I saw the fire
Of love for men, whose evanescent breath
Lends charm to wayward pleasures, watched by Death,
Who casts a glamour on short-lived desire.

VI.

All mortal sufferings and vain desire
Wept from your eyes and shook your tortured breath.
Yea, goddess though you were, the immortal fire
That shone from your white shape grew dim as Death.
I questioned of your Sorrow-Did you long
For Youth’s brief summer passed in rhythmic dreams
By winding ways of water, where the song
Of many birds mixed with the murmuring streams?

VII.

But though no answer pierced the plash of streams
Your arms that wavered swan-like seemed to long
And beckon for some mystery, which song
Might not reveal lying hid beyond our dreams.
Was it eternal youth, that your last breath
Invoked with prayers so passionate, that fire
Rekindled in those eyes, whose last desire
Was unto life, till clanked the feet of Death?

VIII.

For as you felt the drear approach of Death,
Your limbs relaxed and from your eyes the fire
Fled fainting forth : You drew one sobbing breath
That shook your shuddering wings, and your desire
Quailed before Death : Your hair, where darkness dreams,
Where Moon and Stars hold festival along
With queenly Night, fell forward in dark streams
About your face, and silenced was your song.

ENVOY.

Anna, my dreams find voice within the song
That from the fire of your sweet footsteps streams.
Though dreams and breath and song may pass along
Death’s ways, yet my desire defieth Death.

Trianglet

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The following description is reposted with permission from Poetry Magnum Opus, with thanks to Judi Van Gorder for years of work on that fine resource.

The Trianglet is an invented shape poem found in Berg’s Pathways for the Poet. It forms the shape of a triangle and was created by Mina M Sutherland.  The elements of the trianglet are:

  1. a decastich, a poem in 10 lines.
  2. syllabic, 1-2-3-4-5-5-4-3-2-1 syllables per line.
  3. rhymed, rhyme scheme AbcxddxcbA
  4. composed with the 1st word repeated as the last word.

My Example

Form: Trianglet

Yummy

Worms
don’t look
delicious
(at least to me),
but they’re protein-filled
and the fish seem thrilled
when presented
nutritious
fish-hook
worms.

© Lawrencealot – February 4, 2015

Tree of Life

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Tree of Life is an invented verse form written in the shape of a tree. Found at Poetry Styles (a site no longer accessible) and created by Christina Jusaumme who requests the subject of the poem be uplifting.

The Tree of Life is:

  • a poem in 19 lines.
  • syllabic, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-4-4-4-4-4-4.
  • unrhymed.
  • centered on the page.

My Example

Form: Tree of Life

Be Deciduous

Snow
that falls
on barren
limbs still may break
those boughs. None-the-less
the trees prepare themselves
by shedding platforms to which
snow would adhere, ensuring harm.
Bears can push through piles of snow, yet don’t.
They forecast and hibernate while snow falls.
It seems that man alone insists that he must
strive to thumb his nose and try to dance his forty
hour shuffle, weather be damned, inviting heart attacks.
Stock some lanterns
and candles too
stockpiles some food
that’s good for you
then read some books
and stay inside.

© Lawrencealot – February 3, 2015

Totok

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The following description and example are reposted with permission from Poetry Magnum Opus, with thanks to Judi Van Gorder for years of work on that fine resource.

The Totok is a verse form in 4 unrhymed lines of anapestic tetrameter. I found this form in only one source although I was able to find that the word “Totok” refers to Cantonese immigrants that come to Thailand and tend to retain their Chinese language and customs.  The elements of the Totok are:

  1. a poem in 4 lines.
  2. accentual syllabic, anapestic tetrameter. uuS uuS uuS uuS
  3. unrhymed.

    Anticipated

    A tick ticking of earth’s endless seasonal clock,
    though our Winter stayed late, Spring began without fanfare,
    silent sprouts broke the surface of frost covered ground
    slipping Spring forth with showers and flowers and light.
                                                 ~~ Judi Van Gorder

My Example

Form: Totok

Thinking Ahead

As the weather gets cooler and nights start to chill
and the holiday seasons promote our good cheer
and we wave to our neighbors out raking the leaves
we are thinking ahead to next summer’s warm days.

© Lawrencealot – February 2, 2015

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Toddaid

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The following description and example are reposted with permission from Poetry Magnum Opus, with thanks to Judi Van Gorder for years of work on that fine resource.

Toddaid, todd-eyed is the 19th codified Welsh meter, an Awdl, and an uneven couplet often written in combination with other meters especially the 9 syllable couplet, cyhydedd hir.
The elements of the Toddaid are:

  1. stanzac, written in any number of couplets.
  2. syllabic, L1 is a 10 syllable line and L2 is a 9 syllable line.
  3. rhymed, the main rhyme aa – cc – dd etc.
  4. composed with gair cyrch following the main rhyme and caesura of L1. The gair cyrch end rhyme is echoed in the first half of L2 in secondary rhyme, assonance or consonance.
  5. sometimes written in a shortened version of 16 syllables, L1 is 10 syllables and L2 is only 6 syllables which is called a toddaid byr.
toddaid couplets
x x x x x x x A – x b
x x x x b x x x Ax x x x x x x C – x d
x x x d x x x x ca toddaid byr coupletx x x x x x x A – x b
x x x b x A		Nit digeryd Duw, neut digarat – kyrd
Neut lliw gwyrd y vyrd o veird yn rat;
Neut lliaws vrwyn kwyn knawlat— yghystud
O’th attall Ruffudd gwaywrud rodyat.
                                   Einion 15th century
Shere Kahn by Judi Van Gorder

The young calico keeping cool – eases
slow as she pleases upon the stool .
Her Bengal bones live nine lives – daring dogs,
chasing frogs, tiger dreams, kitten thrives.		 

My Example

Form: Toddaid

Embellished

She wore a steampunk hat and bra – and shoes
She couldn’t lose; she was held in awe.
She was cocooned in metal ware – of course.
a visual force men would touch with care.

© Lawrencealot – February 2, 2015

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