{"id":2035,"date":"2010-06-18T14:26:43","date_gmt":"2010-06-18T18:26:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lanternreview.com\/blog\/?p=2035"},"modified":"2010-06-18T14:29:11","modified_gmt":"2010-06-18T18:29:11","slug":"weekly-prompt-writing-through-form","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/18\/weekly-prompt-writing-through-form\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekly Prompt: Writing Through Form"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Few of us ever sit down to write and think, &#8220;Wow, I feel like writing a double abecedarian today!&#8221; or &#8220;I&#8217;m not sure why, but this feels like a sestina type of morning.&#8221;\u00a0 If you&#8217;re anything like me, you have a somewhat removed relationship to form: you know it\u2019s out there, and have grown up loving sonnets and sestinas, but you&#8217;re steeped in contemporary free verse and it\u2019s not often that you turn naturally toward the formal constraints of meter, rhyme schemes, and patterns of repetition.\u00a0 What I\u2019ve discovered however, is that <strong>using form (or multiple forms, even) as part of a <em>drafting process<\/em> can be tremendously helpful.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Take this process, for instance.\u00a0 I begin with a page and a half of rough, ill-formulated free verse (part of my stream-of-consciousness generating process), cut everything that seems extraneous, then apply a ten-syllables-per line rule that reads roughly like iambic pentameter.\u00a0 Some lines feel forced, others buckle with newfound muscle and verve.\u00a0 In certain places, the syntax torques into interesting patterns and the language tightens with sharpened verbs and image.\u00a0 I extract all the lines that are working well and weave them into a pantoum.\u00a0 The language overlaps, recontextualizes, and surprising new meanings are forged and unforged.<\/p>\n<p>My pantoum reveals the weaknesses of specific lines, so I cut them, keeping only the lines strong enough to stand alone.\u00a0 Strong enough to pass, if you will, the \u201ctest\u201d of the pantoum.\u00a0 What\u2019s left is a hodge-podge of lines and my poem looks like a newspaper with the headlines cut out, but one or two stanzas remain untouched.\u00a0 I smash them into a rough fourteener form, then work and rework the language until what emerges\u2014hammered, refined, and carefully tuned, is a new poem.\u00a0 I am pleased.<\/p>\n<p>Your process (or experiment) doesn\u2019t have to be as involved as the one I\u2019ve just described.\u00a0 Writing <em>through <\/em>form (where form is not the final destination, but rather, the means by which one reaches the poems one really wants to write) can be as simple as: free verse to blank verse, or free verse to haiku to heroic couplets.\u00a0 Be creative.\u00a0 Mix and match, invent unexpected combinations of form (ie. \u201cWhat do you get when you cross iambic tetrameter with an elegy?\u201d).\u00a0 Some pairings may prove disastrous, but no worries.\u00a0 <strong>Since you\u2019re writing <em>through<\/em> form as part of a drafting process, even the most awful results can be redirected in the next draft.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Feel free to either post a sample poem or share a few process notes from your attempts to write through form.\u00a0 Good luck, and have fun!<\/p>\n<p><input id=\"gwProxy\" type=\"hidden\" \/> <input id=\"jsProxy\" onclick=\"jsCall();\" type=\"hidden\" \/><\/p>\n<p><input id=\"gwProxy\" type=\"hidden\" \/><input id=\"jsProxy\" onclick=\"jsCall();\" type=\"hidden\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Few of us ever sit down to write and think, &#8220;Wow, I feel like writing a double abecedarian today!&#8221; or &#8220;I&#8217;m not sure why, but this feels like a sestina type of morning.&#8221;\u00a0 If you&#8217;re anything like me, you have a somewhat removed relationship to form: you know it\u2019s out there, and have grown up [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[13],"tags":[345,325,347,346,348],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2035"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2035"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2038,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2035\/revisions\/2038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}