Back in November we discussed haiku here – the traditional Japanese poetic form. Haiku, as you may remember, is a form that is typified in Western writing as three lines of poetry with a distinctive 5-7-5 syllable pattern. Well, now it’s time to look at the tanka – five lines of poetry with a syllable pattern of 5-7-5-7-7.
To illustrate:
You undress for me Exposing hidden contours And then the fun starts We explore our nudity Until our climaxes come
For many writers the middle line is the essential balancing part of the tanka. Sometimes called the pivot line, this middle line can end the sentiment of the first three lines of the poem and it can begin a separate sentiment for the final three lines.
We’ve fucked for an age Our bodies fluid with sweat Orgasm evades Yet seems to linger so close Tantalisingly nearer
Of course there are ways to interpret the tanka for writers who don’t care to be bound by the rigidity of counting syllables. There are also ways to incorporate the tanka into renga poetry – collaborative writing in a similar form. But this version, as disciplined as the traditional haiku yet with a little more scope for narrative and lyricism, is well worth attempting.
I look forward to seeing your tanka in the comments box below.
With this being April, and our annual celebration of Shakespeare’s
birthday (April 23rd) looming on the horizon, I figured it was time to
look at the sonnet. However, the sonnet is not a simple warm-up exercise to be
tackled before writing a day’s worth of prose. The complexities of the sonnet
can steal an hour from the most talented writer, and maybe take a month from
the rest of us. I offer this as a project to pick at over the next month,
whenever you’re between bursts of inspiration.
The Rules:
All sonnets contain 14
lines.
There are three main styles of
sonnet: Petrachan, Spenserian and Shakespearian. Each one of these forms is made
distinctive by its rhyme scheme.
Sonnets are usually written in iambic
pentameter (that is, ten syllables made up of five unstressed/stressed pairings).
Because this month celebrates Shakespeare’s
birthday, I figured it would be appropriate to consider the Shakespearian form.
The Shakesperian sonnet usually follows the rhyme scheme of abab cdcd efef gg.
Sonnet 18
Shall I compare thee
to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal
summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,
So long as men can
breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
W. Shakespeare
In the example above we can see
the poem divided into the three quatrains (abab cdcd efef) and a final couplet
(gg).
We can also see the volta or turn
on the ninth line. The volta of the ninth line is a traditional turnaround in opinion
from the poet. Note how, in the first eight lines, the persona of this poem has
been telling us that the addressee is lovelier than a summer’s day. Summer is
crap in comparison to the addressee. In the ninth line the direction changes. Shakespeare
moves on to discuss the summer that the addressee will be facing in future
years.
The final couplet, usually,
brings all this together.
How can we apply this to erotic poetry? Let’s try the
following:
Sonnet 18+
Shall I compare thee
to a porno star?
Thou art more lovely and more sexy too:
I’ve yearned to have you naked in my car,
And I would really love to service you:
Sometimes you let me glimpse your muffin tops,
Your shorts reveal your sweet and cheeky cheeks,
The view’s enough to make my loins go pop,
And make me long to have more than a peak:
But I know you’re no exhibitionist,
You’d never ever play games of team tag,
Not even if I got you truly pissed,
Because, I know, you’re really not a slag,
So long as I can hope
there’s half a chance,
I’ll dream about what’s there inside your pants.
A Lister
Your turn – please share your
sonnets in the comments box below.
The triolet is a one stanza, eight line poem with a
distinctive rhyme scheme of ABaAabAB. Usually it’s written in iambic tetrameter
(in other words, it typically includes eight syllables per line). Note here
that the capital A and B refer to refrains: lines that are repeated later in
the poem.
My fingers slip between your thighs
You part your legs and beg for more
Desire burning in your eyes
My fingers slip between your thighs
And as I listen to your sighs
And feel you dripping from your core
My fingers slip between your thighs
You part your legs and beg for more
A
B
a
A
a
b
A
B
In the above example we can see that the refrain lines are:
My fingers slip between your thighs
and
You part your legs and beg for more
That the poem keeps returning to these lines gives them a
sense of gravitas and importance. This helps to give the triolet a hypnotic
feel that adds to the appeal of this often overlooked form. Note also that the musicality
of the form can help writers to include par rhymes, as with the example below:
I’ll keep this short. Rhyme is denigrated by
snobs. Syllable based poetry becomes complicated by the inconvenience of
diphthongs and triphthongs (as well as the vagaries of pronunciation). And so,
I’ve gone for something short and sweet with my contribution to this week’s
excursion into poetic forms. I’ve elected to tackle the septolet.
Long Days
Days
that stretch
for
endless,
infinite hours
until
we are
together
alone
and naked.
The
septolet has fourteen words. It is broken between two stanzas that make up the
fourteen words. Each stanza can have seven words but that is not an essential requirement.
The division can take place where the poet decides.
Unclothed
Wearing
only
a
smile
you
have enchanted me
and
I offer
you
my heart.
Both
stanzas of the septolet deal with the same thought. Ultimately they create a
picture. Please take a shot at contributing a septolet to the
comments box below.
The nonet is nine lines of poetry – an ideal poetry writing exercise for the start of the New Year. Like the haiku, the nonet is defined by a syllable count for each line. However, because it’s so regimented in its form, the layout of this one is easier to remember:
The first line contains nine syllables.
The second line contains eight syllables.
The third line contains seven syllables.
This pattern continues down to the final line which consists of a single syllable word.
To illustrate:
soft, silken, slippery, soapy fingers
touching, teasing, taunting, pleasing,
swiftly – faster and faster.
And then. Hesitating.
Slowly. Too slowly.
Drawing out
the rich pleasure
until…
sigh
The nonet can be used as a single verse, or a collection of nonets can be used as stanzas in a longer poem. The nonet can also be reversed to give 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 pattern.
A
single kiss. Tongues touch.
Lips together.
Mouths meet.
Hands explore.
Caresses grow bolder.
Clothes are stretched, tugged, then removed.
Bare flesh is finally exposed.
And then, at last, the fun can begin.
As always, I look forward to reading your nonets in the comments box below.
There’s no specific tradition of Christmas poetry. There’s
no rigid form where a poem has to comply with restrictive-rhyme-scheme A or
arbitrary-syllable-count B.
However, there are some features of poems that do make some
poems typical of Christmas.
Typically, a Christmas poem will mention Christmas or the baby
Jesus or will include some capitalist allusion to gift-giving. Sometimes a
Christmas poem will mention Santa and some bullshit about this being a magical
time of the year. Quite often it will be easy to make cynical comments about
their content.
Most commonly a Christmas poem will be written in rhyming
couplets. These are fun because they give a piece a sing-song quality. They can
be even more fun if you have to force a rhyme because it allows the poet to
share a joke with the reader/audience about the complexities of rhyme.
I’ve written a poem below that illustrates the way a
Christmas poem can include some of these features of couplets and forced rhyme:
‘Twas the build up to Christmas
and the regulars here
Were writing their way to the end
of the year
Through me and M Christian: and Craig
and RG
Writing and blogging – erotically.
From Donna George Storey and
Lisabet too
Perfecting our blogs for the
reader (that’s you).
There’s Kathleen, KD and (of
course) Jean Roberta.
There’s Lucy and Elizabeth (who
write every querter)
It’s more than just blogging about
the sex/writing scene
So make sure that you visit us
through 2013.
If you have time, why not write your own Christmas poem that
starts with the words, ‘Twas the night before
Christmas…
The challenge here will be to do something erotic with the
subject matter. Most material written around the holiday season tends to focus
on satisfying the demands of children. The innocence of childlike expectations
does not always sit well with the experience of sexualised adult fiction. Nevertheless,
I know the readers of this blog are nothing if not innovative and so I look
forward to seeing your poems in the comments box below.
I can’t believe we’ve gone almost a year on this blog without discussing haiku as a writing exercise. The haiku is one of the most accessible forms of syllable based poetry. When used as a warm up device before writing, it’s a form of poetry that can help a writer focus on the essence of the words in her or his vocabulary.
As most people know, the traditional haiku is a three line poem based on a strict syllable count. Obviously there are some variations.
There’s the pop haiku, characterised by Jack Kerouac’s interpretation of the form.
There are senryu, identical to haiku in form, but with a content that is wry, ironic or whimsical.But today we’re looking at the traditional haiku with its rigid format:
1st line = 5 syllables
2nd line = 7 syllables
3rd line = 5 syllables
It’s worth noting here the definition of a syllable. The definition below is taken verbatim from the trusty dictionary sitting on my desk.
syllable ►noun
a unit of pronunciation having one vowel sound, with or without surrounding consonants, forming the whole or a part of a word; for example, there are two syllables in water and three in inferno.
Pearsall, J., Hanks, P., (2005), Oxford Dictionary of English, 2nd Edition, Revised, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
However, even with such an authoritative definition, there will obviously be anomalies in the words we select. We hit words like sure, fire and wheel and can’t
decide whether the word includes one or two syllables. Is it ‘shoor’ or ‘shoe-er’? Is it ‘fire’ or ‘fie-arr’? Is it ‘wheel’ or ‘wee-ell’? My usual response to such observations is: How do you pronounce the word? It’s your poem. Own the word.
And that’s all there is to this form. Obviously haiku can be studied in greater depth. There are some forms that demand the author should mention a season or kigo. There are some forms that require a break at the end of the first line and insist on the juxtaposition of two images in the whole poem. But, for the purposes of this warm-up exercise, it’s enough to craft seventeen syllables of serious sensuality into a single haiku.
After the climax:
Glossy flesh lacquered with sweat
Heartbeats race-racing
As always, I look forward to seeing your poems in the comments box below.
My friends call me Ash I don’t have much cash I write about writing And about sex scenes that can prove positively exciting
As I may have mentioned before, I enjoy poetry exercises because I believe they help all of us with our writing:
Poetry is a wonderful way to warm up the writing muscles before starting any writing project.
Poetry gets the writer to focus on the strengths and merits of individual words in ways that aren’t usually considered with regular fiction writing.
Poetry can be a lot of fun.To that end, I thought we could look at one of my favourite pieces of fun poetry this month: the clerihew.
Edmund Clerihew Bentley Say his name gently He pioneered this verse form Though critics say there could not be a worse form
The clerihew is a type of verse invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956). Traditionally, the clerihew is a four-line poem made up of two rhyming couplets (aabb). The metre of the clerihew is intentionally, and often ridiculously, irregular. The purpose of the clerihew is to offer a satiric, absurd or whimsical biography of a character.
The Marquis de Sade Liked his punishment hard He was an aristocrat – first class And he liked spanking servant girls on the ass
In the comments box below please feel free to write your own four-line clerihew introducing yourself or introducing one of the characters from your fiction.
The kyrielle is a French form of poetry written in quatrains. Each
quatrain concludes with a repeated line or phrase that works as a refrain for the
poem.
The first book we opened had pictures
It’s title was The Joy of Sex
We followed the instructions on Monday
I wonder just what we’ll do next?
The kyrielle has a meter usually composed of eight syllables per line
but it can be varied. There is no limit to the number of stanzas but three is really
the minimum.
On Tuesday we read marriage manuals
On Wednesday it got more complex
On Thursday and Friday you filmed us
I wonder just what we’ll do next?
The normal structure of the kyrielle is a/a/b/B, c/c/b/B, d/d/b/B. with
B being the repeated line. A varied structure could be a/b/a/B, c/b/c/B,
d/b/d/B. etc. or even a second line that didn’t rhyme.
Now we’ve gone through the whole the Kama
Sutra
We’ve explored every page of that text
But now we must look to the future
I wonder just what we’ll do next?
As always, if you fancy writing a kyrielle and sharing it in
the comments box below, we all look forward here to reading your work.
The ode is one of my favourite
styles of poetry, partly because it can take whatever form the poet decides. Traditionally
the ode is written in praise of something.
One of the most famous odes in poetry, Keats’s ‘Ode to Autumn’, begins
with the following lines:
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that
round the thatch-eaves run;
I could go into a pretentious
poet mode here, discuss the fact that this is written in iambic pentameter and
mention the a-b-a-b rhyme scheme in these opening four lines.
But, really, there’s no hard
and fast rhyme scheme for the ode. And there’s no definite metre. And, rather
than discuss immaterial points of poetry, instead I’d prefer to dwell on the
obvious reverence Keats is bestowing on his beloved season of autumn.
Note the affectionate language
used in this piece. In the first two lines we have:
‘mellow
fruitfulness’
‘close
bosom-friend’
‘maturing
sun’
This is the language of
someone who adores autumn. This is the work of someone who has used the concept
of the ode to fully lavish praise on what he perceives as the most deserving of
seasons.
I’m discussing the ode this
month because I think it’s singly the most appropriate form of poetry for erotica.
It somehow feels right to lavish ode-worthy praise on an erotic partner or some
aspect of eroticism because they’re deserving of such high esteem.
Elevated language is no longer
a necessary requirement of this type of poem. All that’s needed is the desire
to write with adoration about something that deserves praise. Below is my
humble attempt.
Broad and boundless round backside
Cheeky cheeks just made to twerk
Built to bounce and buck and slide
Help me put your ass to work.
As always, I look forward to
reading any contributions that appear in the comments box this month.
From Adam & Eve - Based on the Book by New York Times Bestselling Authors Selena Kitt
Affiliate Disclosure
Disclosure: We use affiliate links on our site. What are affiliate links? Affiliate (or partnership) programs are created by businesses (like Amazon) that pay sites (like ERWA) for referring visitors to the business. Affiliate programs pay the referring site a percentage of products purchased via the affiliate link. You can help keep ERWA alive and kicking by doing your online shopping for books, movies, sex toys, etc., via ERWA affiliate links. Help support ERWA.
