Tag: writing

About Englyn Cyrch

This week I am writing Welsh quattrains, one a day for the whole week. The particular Welsh quatrain (four-line poem) form I have decided to focus on is called an englyn cyrch. The best sense I can make from what Google Translate tells me the term means is “attack verse,” or maybe “verse attack,” or even possibly “verse raid.” So, maybe they’re little four-line blitzes.

Englyn Cyrch are very math-y. Each line has seven syllables. The first, second, and last lines must rhyme, and the third line must rhyme with the second, third, or fourth syllable in the last line. I appreciate the strict form as well as the brevity. My challenge is to make them seem somehow natural, or at least musical.

The ones I have written so far this week have not been stellar, but I’m enjoying them as little word puzzles, or language exercises, or little sketches. They’re fun to make on that level. As of this writing, I have produced five (the fifth one went live a half an hour before this post did, the third will appear later in the week) and I think that they are trending towards better as the week goes on, though I liked the one I wrote first best so far.

I hope you find them amusing, and I invite you to try making your own. Happy writing!

Three Month Mark

CHALLENGE: Answer these questions by the time this post goes live: Do I go on hiatus or do I keep doing this? If I keep going, when do I stop? If I stop, how long until I start again?

I have found it difficult lately to meet my self-imposed deadlines here. I think that I may need to keep trying to challenge myself to do these posts for the simple reason that it is difficult.

I mean, that makes sense, right? Oh, good. Another question.

Well, really it’s all the same question: Keep doing this? I think I need to. Pushing through anything that might seem like writer’s block would be a great reason to keep plugging away. The challenge of finding subjects and following whatever research and/or soul-mining paths that are necessary to keep producing blog entries could be seen as an end in and of itself.

What’s been happening lately is that I will start working on an entry and then realize that I’ve taken on a bigger subject than can be handled in a blog entry. I also need to place work elsewhere than here. The fine line I have not found yet is the one around what is appropriate for this blog, and what fits better elsewhere.

Not finding a way to quickly identify the proper place for each new writing impulse means that I have more work to do here.

RESOLVED: Keep going! There will be a new entry here on Tuesday of next week, and for the next several weeks.

A Bit About the American Sentence

This week, I am posting at least one American Sentence per day, and a few extras randomly during the week.

What is an “American Sentence”?

The American Sentence is a poetic form that was invented by Allen Ginsburg, who felt that the English language was not well suited to the 5/7/5 format of Haiku. He proposed eliminating the three lines with the strict syllabic formula and keeping the seventeen syllables. An American Sentence can have as many or as few sentences as will fit in those seventeen syllables.

I have tried my hand at it here and there through the years. I enjoy the challenge of stripping a thought or story down to bare, and sometimes lyrical, essentials. This week, as I have given myself the challenge of making one or more per day, I notice some things about how I work to create these little bullet-point-like poems.

I have started each one so far with about 30 to 50 syllables, and then I whittle them down, going through anywhere from 5 to 12 drafts. The refining of these drafts clarifies and brings into focus what I am trying to capture: the final version of the Sentence has, to this point, consistently been more vivid. It’s like panning for gold.

My standout examples so far, I find, are directly experiential, rather than reflective or philosophical. I’m not entirely convinced that this will be true always, but as I continue to work with the form, I am learning more of what’s possible within it. I am finding that simple language seems to shine brighter in these compact poetic bursts.

Because these little poems are coming directly from my experience, they are snapshots of my environment, shutter clicks from my world view. In my hands, they are truly American sentences.

I invite you to give them a try. You can post your American Sentences here in the comments, if you like.