The Blunden is named for the English World War I poet, Edmund Blunden (1896- 1933 or 1974??), a stanzaic form with variable meter patterned after his poem The Survival. Blunden unlike most “War Poets”, wrote about the loss of beauty in the war torn landscape of France. The easy rhythm of the form brings a kind of melancholy to the poem. This poem could almost be considered a débat. Two voices are heard, the mind’s need to cope versus the soul’s devastation at the mindless destruction.
The Blunden is:
- metered, L1, L3, L4, L5 iambic tetrameter and L2, L6 iambic trimeter.
- stanzaic, any number of sexains or sixains (6 line stanzas).
- rhymed, rhyme scheme abccab deffde etc.
The Survival by Edmund Blunden
To-day’s house makes to-morrow’s road;
I knew these heaps of stone
When they were walls of grace and might,
The country’s honour, art’s delight
That over fountain’d silence show’d
Fame’s final bastion.
Inheritance has found fresh work,
Disunion union breeds;
Beauty the strong, its difference lost,
Has matter fit for flood and frost.
Here’s the true blood that will not shirk
Life’s new-commanding needs.
With curious costly zeal, O man,
Raise orrery and ode;
How shines your tower, the only one
Of that especial site and stone!
And even the dream’s confusion can
Sustain to-morrow’s road.
Pasted from http://www.poetrymagnumopus.com/index.php?showtopic=668
My thanks ot Judi Van Gorder for the fine resource site above.
My example:
Wake Up (The Blunden)
A successor of Mohammed
that is a caliph’s claim.
Control and domination rules
(embraced by fanatics and fools)
Why would one grasp a burning thread
with slavery it’s aim?
Five thousand other dogmas give
adherents special hope.
All based on miracles and fraud
each claiming theirs is truly God.
But most will let opponents live.
Will truest Muslims?- Nope.
© Lawrencealot – June 17, 2014
Visual Template
Syllabic: 8/6/8/8/8/6
