This is an invented form created by Mary Boren, aka Meter_Maid on Allpoetry.
It is a poem of 7 lines
It is metrical, requiring several specific metrical feet, to wit:
L1: A pair of spondees
L2-3: Dimetrical dactylic couplet plus a hard beat at the end
L4-5: Anapestic dimeter, not rhyming with each other
L6: Anapestic trimeter, rhyming with L4
L7: Anapest. amphibrach, or iamb, which may, but is not required to rhyme with L5
It is formulaic, requiring a person’s name in either line 2 or 3.
It is themed:
” to capture a person’s unguarded moment, breaking stereotypes.” I’d like to somehow convey that the task is to zoom in on descriptive details that plant a distinct concrete image, preferably an unexpected one. You could almost say it has a volta at L5, as it catches something a camera would miss.
It is rhymed with rhyme pattern: xaabzbz, where “z” lines may rhyme or not.
My Example
Just Notions
Think long, think wrong!
Lawrence R. Eberhart thought
thinking of things he was taught
would most surely reveal
at least one salient fact
he was wrong all along on that deal
looking back.
© Lawrencealot – August 23, 2014
Note: This poem fails to be a Snapshot lacking the apparently candid moment required by the theme.
Try this one:
Neighborly Chat (Snapshot)
Stop, look, think back.
Shoveling snow from the walk
Jerry MGee stopped to talk
with the girl from next door
he’d forgotten her name,
but remembered her shape from before,
quite a dame.
© Lawrencealot – August 23, 2014
Visual Template
Note: Several options exist for L7.