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Flexible Forms:
"a personal speculation"
Larry Kimmel,
US
Form, whether it is a set form or an organic form, is one of the
fundamentals that every poet must come to terms with. What I’d
like to discuss here, is something between the set forms, such as
ballad stanzas, sonnets, or the sestina, and the organic forms, which
act as the armatures of effective free verse. For the purpose of
this essay, I will call that something a ‘flexible form.’
As a young poet, I yearned for a form that would be a handmaiden
to all my needs as a poet. Fortunately, I didn’t find it, and
eventually grew away from the urge to have the form, or perhaps I
should say, the format, of my next poem handed to me. I wrote
mostly in free verse, that is to say organic forms. But once I
discovered haiku, and, a short while later, tanka, I had discovered
something that somewhat met this old desire for a handmaiden for all
occasions, though at first I did not realized this.
Let me explain.
Syllabic forms in English have little meaning, of course, except as a
way of creating a resistance, which I believe can be of great value in
the creating of a poem. Sometimes resistance happens in the
search for an organic solution to the poem in question, or because the
poet is having, for one reason or another, difficulty in realizing his
or her poem. But the poet can, also, create resistance by
imposing, or inventing, a form.
What I like about an imposed form is that it makes me work harder, and
when I work harder, I very often write a better poem. Part of
the pleasure of writing poetry, I think, is this particular challenge
of playing content against form. But what of the times when the
form damages the final product, by a need for padding it or cramping
it to accommodate the syllable count? This is where the flexible
form comes in. English-language haiku and tanka can work in
this manner. Or one can invent such forms. But first,
let’s consider the nature of English-language haiku and tanka, as a flexible
form.
I believe it is generally conceded that in English poetry, syllabic
forms are of little value, except as they may serve any particular
poet, as a format to work within. And though in English-language
haiku and tanka we are concerned with syllabic counts, they are not
precise. There has been, of course, the English tradition of the
5-7-5 syllable haiku, but we are long past the point where we feel
compelled to stick with this first English-language concept of haiku.
An important factor--not the only, but an important one, to my
thinking—is that once we begin to deal with a 17 or fewer syllable
haiku, we leave behind that danger of damaging our haiku or tanka by
padding or cramping it to accommodate the syllable count. And
here, I suggest, we have entered into the realm of the flexible
form.
The haiku remains a haiku, with its two-element (fragment and phrase)
form, but there is a flexibility as to the number of syllables used.
Up to a point, that is. The size, or the syllabic length, of the haiku
is still an important factor in determining its form. One can,
of course, go beyond the seventeen syllable limit, but if it is taken
too far, it is not likely that the resulting poem will be accepted as
a haiku. The same for the tanka, with its underlying five line,
short-long-short-long-long, structure, originally imported into
English as a 31 syllable form. Also, the tanka, like the haiku,
ideally has a two part structure, a turn between the first three lines
and the last two, although where the turn comes in English tanka is
variable. Still, we have here a form, but not a form that is fixed at
a certain number of syllables. The sonnet, for example, is a
fixed, or set, form, in that it is fourteen iambic pentameter lines,
usually rhymed. To change that, is to play with the form, and in
the strictest sense, whatever results would no longer be a sonnet.
So, it was that I, at last, found something that satisfied my one time
desire for a handmaiden for all occasions, the flexible form,
providing, or course, that I was dealing in the very short forms of
haiku and tanka. But there are other flexible forms available.
I’d liked to discuss one such form - the cherita.
Cherita is the Malay word for story or tale and was created by ai li,
the founding editor of still, a journal of short verse,
with its now independent e-zine offshoot dew-on-line. A cherita consists, according to its creator, of “a single
stanza of a one-line verse, followed by a two-line verse, and then
finishing with a three-line verse.” The cherita tells a story.
More can be found about the cherita’s origin, on the still
website at:
http://www.aili.co.uk/home.htm Here you will find examples of ai li’s cherita, and others, by
looking under the section "linked forms" and under
that for "Cherita."
. . .
In December 2004
and January of 2005 there were postings of
cherita and about cherita on the WHCpoetrybridge website. At one
point, I posted the following thoughts on the cherita.
“in thinking about what a cherita has been to
me, one thing I’ve noticed in writing them is that they have a
'beginning' a 'middle' and an 'end.' and one way [in which] they
work well, is to have that [first] line be brief and [used to] set
the scene, [give] the tone, etc. the next two lines are the body of
the poem, and then (and I think this is important) the last 3 lines,
obviously the end, should be fairly short, the climax and denouement
in one. this gives it impact. even if the ending is one
phrase, it can be broken to fit the form. i think that when the end
spreads too much, say, into Whitmanesque lines, what one has is a free
form poem put into 1/2/3/ line verses. the essence of the cherita is brevity. it grew out of the haiku [and renku]
experience, and I feel it should retain something of that brevity and
elliptical phrase and fragment quality. to me that is the
essence of cherita. it often has a story, or anecdotal, quality,
though I believe it can be used as a lyrical form, as well. but
I stress it needs the same care as in writing a haiku. though no
exact syllable count has been imposed, it is about haiku length or
less in each of its verses. the first line, perhaps, being the
exception. it is as short as a single line of a haiku. of
course, this is my own opinion, and as it is a new form there is a lot
of room for experimentation. to me the beauty of the form, and
the game, if you like, of the form, is to see how concise i can be. there is power in conciseness.
in a recent e-mail chat with
Sheila
Windsor about cherita, she had a somewhat different idea of the length
of the different verses, than I have, but I think she has a valid
point, which should be considered carefully. i believe when she says, below, that a three line
verse should be longer than a two line verse, she means that the
syllable count is longer over the total [of a] three line [verse],
than it is over the total [of a] two line verse. that is to say,
that her cherita do not become longer and longer [in line length, as
the poem progresses], but that the [three line] verse contains
more syllables [than the two line verse]. her cherita look very
similar to mine and to ai li’s, who first devised the 1/2/3/ line
unit as part of a linked form, called the Lunenga. here are sheila windsor’s comments, for which I have asked permission to
post.
the post:
i'm not by nature a 'rule' person but one thing i try to observe with
my own cheritas is that each verse be longer than the one before
(taking syllable count as the measure). so that the two line verse is
longer than the one line verse and the three longer than the two. it's
something i aim for in renku and rengay too. my attention was first
drawn to this by john carley (in relation to rengay) posing the
question: if the two line verse is to be 'longer' than the three, what
meaning does the distinction have? i saw his point immediately and
ever since have found myself needing to have a more meaningful
distinction between, say, a two and a three line verse, than mere
formatting. arguably there should be other differences too, though
less easily definable, differences of tone and sensibility for example
. . . reasons why a one line verse is a one line verse, rather than a
two or a three . . . reasons other than merely: "the form calls
for one line at that position"
sheila
[a point well taken by this author]
Incidentally, I think cherita is, like haiku and tanka, used for both
one or several poems, that is, I don’t think it uses an ‘s’ for
its plural.
Here are two examples of cherita, to illustrate my point about
conciseness. You will notice that one tells a story, while the other,
though suggesting a story, is more lyrical.
his clothes to charity
unpacking the suitcases
of the vacation no longer awaited
finding
the Valentine meant
for today
© 2005 by Larry Kimmel
still, a journal of short verse: Issue Two 2000 Spring
_________________________
after seeing you off
taking the path along
the canal
a rustle of
leaves
underfoot
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EXPERIMENTAL
VERSE............