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This week: Visual or Spatial Verse: Part Seven Edited by: Red Writing Hood <3  
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"A poem is a communication from one soul to another that makes one or both hearts sing."
Walter Mayes
"A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself."
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Visual or Spatial Verse: Formatting Poetry to Create Added Depth, Part Seven: WDC Member Invented Forms
No matter how you format your poetry it creates a visual by the way you choose things like line lengths, syntax, punctuation, fonts, poem length, stanzas, etc. All these choices and more create a visual; however what I will explore in the next few months is the genre of shaped verse that creates a particular visual for the reader—meshing art and the written word. Today I will share the spatial forms/variations created by WDC members.
Hourglass Verse—A WDC member Variation
This variation was created by Sum1's Home  . He was playing around with shape poetry and was challenged by his girlfriend to create a poem shaped like an hourglass, and he rose up to the challenge.
His example is here: "Hourglass" [E]
MUST HAVES
--Number of stanzas: 1 unless you are creating a chain.
--Rhyme: Must rhyme. The above example’s rhyme is – AABBCCDDEEFFGGGHHIIJJKKLLMM, but feel free to have a different rhyme scheme.
--Alignment: Center.
COULD HAVES or WHAT IS THE POET’S CHOICE IN ALL THIS?
--Line count: 27 in the example, but feel free to adjust this as needed for your hourglass.
--Meter: None. Focus is on the shape, however this syllabic count for each line can help guide you: 14, 14, 13, 13, 12, 12, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 2, 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 12, 13, 13, 14, 14 (adjust as needed for your line count)
--Word count.
--Topic/theme, although to fit the traditional elements of spatial verse you might want to keep it along the lines of hourglasses, time, etc. You may also want the top portion to be an opposite of the bottom portion.
The Mushroom Cloud
This form was created by WDC member Christopher Roy Denton  , and I’ll let him share more in his own words: “My poem "Silly Boys" uses a shape I call "The Mushroom Cloud" that I use to create a visual dimension to my anti-war song. But it isn't only about the image. The form allows the argument to be developed in varied multiple feet iambic meter within a mirror form stanza before the rhythm picks up dramatically in six mono meter lines and then concludes in a non rhyming, straight concluding sentence.”
Here is a link to his poem, "Silly Boys" [18+]
MUST HAVES
--Alignment: Centered.
--Line count: 14
--Meter: Iambic, and in the following pattern of feet per line: 3, 4, 5, 6, 5, 4, 3, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 3
--Number of stanzas: 1.
--Rhyme: ABCCCBADEFDEFG
COULD HAVES or WHAT IS THE POET’S CHOICE IN ALL THIS?
--Topic/Theme, although to fit the traditional elements of spatial verse you might want to keep it along the lines of war, bombs, fighting, etc.
NOTE TO REMEMBER: One of the biggest pitfalls I see with this type of formatting is a great urge to create a visual that somehow this becomes the driving force and the poem suffers for it. Either the careful word choice is scrapped to make sure the specific shape is adhered to, or the use of metaphor and simile and other tools to create a depth of meaning are lacking because the focus was all about the shape. As in anything in life, the key is balance. Remember, you are creating a poem. Don’t let the formatting take over. Instead let it enhance and entrance the reader.
Don’t forget to send me the spatial forms you’ve created so we can share them with the newsletter next month!
SOURCE NOTES:
Sum1's Home
Christopher Roy Denton
Thanks for sharing, guys!
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Comments on last month's newsletter:
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Poetry: July 04, 2018 Issue [#8983]
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