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Fun With Word Pattern Poetry


Poets sometimes like to play around with structure and shape. And because it is #Poetry Friday, I decided to play around with some poetry structures. It was at this point I found myself aware of poetry's connection to mathematics. I began to think of a structure involving a word pattern that went:

First line -3 words
Second line- 2 words
Third line - 1 word
Fourth line -1 word
Fifth line - 2 words
Sixth line - 3 words

So the pattern went like this: 3,2,1,1,2,3. The poem is dependent on word count per line, not syllables.

I'm really not sure what to call this poetic structure. Maybe, I could call them Flip Poems. If anybody has used this structure before and knows exactly what it is called, kindly let me know. My research has so far not turned up anything to suggest these poems have a given name.

Here are a couple of examples from my notebook.

In the morning
Magpies carol
Joyfully
This
Daily birdsong
Warms my heart













 The cruel wind
Complains noisily
Whoosh
Push
Howling, screaming
Blow hard, bully




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Comments

  1. Violet N.22 October 2016 at 10:10

    Hi Alan. I enjoyed these! I like "Blow hard bully" (I'm hearing "blowhard bully" which adds another layer to the wind's personality.) haven't heard of this form before. Flip Poems sounds like a good name for them.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Alan j Wright22 October 2016 at 12:06

    Thank you Violet. Glad you like the name, Flip Poems. You have alerted me to the need to add a comma after hard to clarify the difference between blowhard and blow hard.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Brenda at FriendlyFairyTales22 October 2016 at 13:00

    I like them. I am not familiar with a form like this one. Flip seems like a good name.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Alan j Wright22 October 2016 at 19:07

    Thanks Brenda. The name is growing on me.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous22 October 2016 at 23:49

    They do look like fun, Alan - but you realise you're a rule-breaker from the get-go? Your second poem doesn't follow the format, because it only has one line with one word - not two. I quite like the way the second poem pivots on that one word - almost a centre-twist.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Alan j Wright29 October 2016 at 10:00

      Thank you for your close and considered reading Katherine. It was a typing omission. It slipped out of the original. I have made amends.

      Delete
  6. Bridget Magee23 October 2016 at 00:54

    Fun form - flip poems sums it up perfectly. =)

    ReplyDelete

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