Sunday, March 4, 2007

Serious about Writing Poetry Again

I guess I'm getting serious about writing poetry again and having it published. I bought a copy of 2007 Poets Market and have been looking for markets for the type of poetry I do and want to write, primarily traditional lyrical forms.

I ran across a form I hadn't tried before: the cinquain. This form has five lines (hence the name) with two, four, six, eight, and two syllables, respectively. It can be iambic, but that isn't necessary. When I first read about this form, I thought it would be interesting to write one with all synonyms for being alone. Here's what I came up with:


One

alone --
solitary --
solo -- isolated --
segregated -- separated --
lonely


I like the way the syllable "lone" frames the middle three lines. I also like the irony of all the words for being alone having an even number of syllables.

Yesterday I also wrote a couple of haiku, scifaiku, actually. I'm not going to post them because I want to try to get them published, and some publishers apparently consider being posted in a blog or on a web site to be prior publication, which means they will pay less or not accept them.