Caccia

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 example is provided courtesy of Jan Haag.

Caccia in Italian, Catch in English, is a hunting song of the 14th and 15th centuries. It originally included two parts for voices who hunt each other. The lyrics were normally accompanied by a musical instrument.

The elements of the Caccia or Catch are:

  1. known to have been composed with random 11, 7 and 5 syllable lines.
  2. usually carries a refrain at the end of the stanza.
  3. composed favoring onomatopoeia, incomplete phrases and the exclamatory statement.
  4. lyrics framed by stanza and rhyme at the discretion of the poet.

Caccia, by Jan Haag

The only hunting I do
is follow the soul’s
twists through corridors of sorrow and laughter

The wild game is illusive
shyly mocking, chase
cantering, cleaving, crocheting and rocking.

Resting in sleep, rising in
gallop, girding, it
grips, rides my laughter, test my pain, leaps over

river-wide splits in the sea.
Peer down O soul! Peer!
Set me aside in a still water pool, clear

from the maples of autumn
hung from the boughs
glimpsed through surface of still lakes, silent waters.

I will be gone, I will be
the reds and the golds
are but leftovers of greens, greens feed the beasts

Ah, beasts I will leave alone.
They deserve peace more
then the bee buzz of my soul, quiet refrains.

My Example

Form: Caccia

Peaceful Prescription

Uncertain, and unconcerned I set upon
my undaunted daily walk.
Oh, the things I see.
Doves and blue jays and their friends converse with me,
they tweet and twitter, perhaps
just because of me.
How many years I thought I was too busy
to wander willfully. My
doctor says I should.

© Lawrencealot – February 10, 2015