Khara House started a form poetry challenge on her blog, Our Lost Jungle. The first challenge was to work in iambic meter. Khara explained " Iambic meters are broken down into a “foot” [also called an iamb] of two syllables, the first
unstressed and the second stressed (like the word “about”)."
I guess you could say I got off on the wrong foot when I started working on my poem. I suddenly had no unstressed/stressed words in my vocabulary. Every word that came to mind was the opposite. I thought about tweaking a few words like "on LY" or "le EFT", but decided even poetic license didn't allow that.
I needed a distraction. What, I tried to remember, is the opposite of iambic? Is it amibic? Actually, it is trochaic meter and the trochees were winning by a landslide.
I took a break for a few days. The finished product is below. I'm sorry its late, but I was having a little trouble with my feet.
Wildfires
Ablaze, the flames
traverse the land.
The trees, the homes,
the towns consumed.
But still, among
the ash remains
a will-resolve
to recreate.
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Thursday, July 12, 2012
My Poetic Meter is Running in the Wrong Direction
I am a poet and photographer who likes sports, jazz and art inspired by other art. I served in the U.S. Marine Corps during the early 1970's and was assigned to the Computer Sciences School in Quantico, VA. I have published a chapbook of grief poems, I Keep You with Me. My work also has appeared in publications such as Thorny Locust Magazine, core. zine,The Enigmatist, Veterans' Voices and Kansas Time + Place An Anthology of Heartland Poetry. My visual art pieces combine poetry and photographs, and have been most recently displayed at InterUrban ArtHouse, Johnson County Arts & Heritage Center, Buttonwood Art Space, and The Smalter Gallery.
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