This week I am thumbing through my Norton poetry book and thinking about (the ping pong balls tumble and argue) Spenserian stanza. This fits: for days I've been thinking about how I need to read all of The Faerie Queene and see if it's still disappointingly unlike an expedition to a timeless grotto.
This is ambitious; we'll have to follow rules, and those of us with no skill as poets will be quickly outed. (Me, I've been out ever since 4th grade when my homemade poem about my dog was getting a poor reception, so I decided to just keep talking and making up lines on the spot to see if that worked out better. Oh God.)
Spenserian Stanza Rules: Eight lines of iambic pentameter followed by one line of iambic hexameter. "Iambic" means that two-syllable heartbeat (da-DA), "pentameter" means we'll be having five of those heartbeats per line, and switching to "hexameter" means we'll then have six, just because we won't be able to help ourselves. The rhyme scheme is ababbcbcc. Consult the FQ link above for an example as I'm likely to stuff it up.
My topic will be... let's have something inherently poetic... let's say good ole Persephone's abduction. Now, this is a first draft, and I promise not to sneak back in later and fix it up, so be nice. Right now I assume no one is reading this, but someday someone will step through the wrong search engine door and I must insist that pointing fingers come unloaded.
September Brewing
Old springcorn shivers on sky-beaten road
and huddles red rainflowers waning near
What galloping, peat swaying, iron trode
to purpose of gathering maiden here
to pluck vernal beauty, to interefere
and scold against sis, brother, in Hades
where pomegranate sleep tempers the tear
into altar wine for his penates
her weakest finger undressed in green achates.
Whoa. Zeus bless the Merriam-Webster rhyming dictionary.
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