This form started as a nonce form written by
Michael Fantina, aka Eusebius of Alllpoetry for his poem
“Magics”
Michael is much too busy writing beautiful and entertaining poetry to be bothered with the practice of giving names to forms which he writes on the fly, often consciously or subconsciously influenced by Algernon Swinburne, from whom he thinks he might have borrowed this pattern. Definitely he was influenced to occasionally merge two un-stressed syllables, or to add an occasional syllable deviating from a strict syllabic or accentual pattern where his creativity and mind’s ears says that it works.
Neither was Swinburne the only great to invoke this technique. In fact is it is hard to find truly creative and expressive poets where this technique has not sometime found deployment.
I have been just learning to conform to form and pattern, and like anyone just learning, have always felt safer abiding strictly to the defined pattern of a form.
I define and name each new form that I see (and/or like in any manner at all) so that we may speak of it by name and all be speaking of the same animal when we give it a try.
My specifications:
This is a stanzaic poem, consisting of one or more sestets.
It is syllabic, each stanza being 10/10/6/5 syllables.
Rhymes: aabcbc, where the b-rhymes are feminine.
Metered subject to the following pattern:
DUM da da DUM da da DUM da da DUM
DUM da da DUM da da DUM da da DUM
da DUM da da DUM da
da DUM da da DUM
da DUM da da DUM da
da DUM da da DUM
Note: if you write this same form beginning each of the long lines with a Spondee as did Gary Kent Spain, writing as venicebard on Allpoetry, you will have written a Spondiddle.
Original poem Magics by Eusebius
Gather the stars and the moon for a spell,
With holly and sard and an umber conch shell.
And sing to the sound of
A bell left unrung.
With a pestle ground love
Till your song is re-sung.
Call on a harlot who’s pale as the moon,
Call on her nightly, but call on her soon.
And while she is weeping,
Take one crystal tear,
And when she is sleeping
One jewel from her ear.
Gather them there near your hearth at the dawn,
Drench them with dew from the grass on the lawn,
And while it is brewing
Like some frothing sea,
You’ll soon then be wooing,
But me, only me!
© February 2014
You will see that the above poem, and the one illustrated by the visual template below, stray 0ccasionally from the specified pattern.
That is what I refer to a creative diddling around, and led me to the name of this form.
This represents a step forward in my poetic growth, as my rigidity is lessened for I realize now that poets always have this license, but can never take a knock for exercising it in competition with this form.
My example poem:
Sweet Apparition (Trochadiddle)
Watched as the moon and the clouds seem to pose
with stars bunched so closely the Milky Way glows,
with night now becoming
invitingly cool
I heard something coming
up out of the pool.
She’s an apparition it seems at first glance
formed with perfection and sure to entrance.
Her eyes are green emeralds
but tinted with blue
her voice sweetly heralds
sweet pleasure, I knew.
“Love me tonight while we’re here all alone,
I cannot stay for this form is on loan.”
I did I’m believing,
I slaked both our thirst
and she’s not now grieving-
relieved of her curse.
© Lawrencealot – February 26, 2014
I call this a Trochadiddle
Long lines begin with a trochee and end with an iamb.
You will note that in line 2, I added an unstressed
Syllable before beginning the pattern – and also added an extra unstressed syllable mid-line,
as I did elsewhere. This is the diddling!
So the stressed syllables become
STARS, CLOSE, MILK, GLOWS, as though “with” were on line1.
Visual Template
