Poetry Project #2
Option 1: In My Craft or Sullen Art
Write a sonnet, a sestina, a villanelle or other traditional stanza form. Or write a poem in blank verse, at least 30 lines long. (See Form and Poetry.)
Option 2: In My Craft or Sullen Art (II)
Make up your own fixed form for a poem, limiting yourself in terms of at least four of the following items:
1) number of lines per stanza
2) rhyme scheme
3) pattern of stresses in each line
4) pattern of syllables in each line
5) repeated words
6) repeated lines
7) mandatory words or phrases
First describe the rules of your invented form, then
write a poem accordingly.
Option 3: The Big Country
Take one of your already-completed free verse poems and rewrite it with completely different line and/or stanza breaks. (You might try completely arbitrary breaks, as well as breaks which adhere to some definite principle.) Reflect a bit on why you broke the lines the way you did in the original version, then consider what this rewrite does to help or harm the poem. And be sure to draw on our discussion of form in free verse for your reflective comments.
Hand in both the original, the rewrite, and a short paragraph discussing what happened to the piece in its new version.
Option 4: Language that Sings
Write an intensely sound-oriented, musical poem, using at least five distinct kinds of rhyme. (You'll need to investigate the types, obviously.)