Dabbling in Form

On one of the poetry websites I frequent, they got a new moderator. She is an expert (though I bet she'll hate that term) in meter and formal poetry. My poems are largely free verse. I have found form stiffling and haven't really done a lot to develop any skill there. There seem to be two camps among poetry people: There's the free verse side that wants no restrictions and finds form archaic and irrelevant. There's the form side that finds free verse poetry unstructured and in the extreme--not poetry. There are of course the hundred shades of gray in the middle.


So, this moderator decided to put a poetry practice out to get us used to meter and form. We were asked to write a Kyrielle. Here's the background and the form for those of you that are adventurous:


The word kyrielle comes from "kyrie eleison", Greek for "Lord have mercy" -- a popular refrain in Christian Mass. A kyrielle consists of quatrains (at least three, but without limit to the number), each with the refrain as the last line. The form is generally written in the hymnal meter (iambic tetrameter) -- whatever meter you choose, it should be consistent enough that the rhymes fall in the right places.


The rhyme scheme is:


a-a-b-B
c-c-b-B
d-d-b-B
and so on...


with B being the refrain.


So, I read this over-and-over again and try to decide what I'll write. Here's how I finally got the idea.


My convoluted thought process:

• I talk with my friend Brendan from Vermont and we make a reference to bad dental hygene by the people living in the backwoods up there.
• I write down the phrase: The Land of Bad Teeth
• I think of the nightmare where your teeth fall out.
• I think of Nightmare on Elm Street
• I think why did Freddie Kruger target teens (probably a "don't have sex or you will die message"). I also figured teenagers don't have the same type of fears that the older set does. Maybe just maybe they would welcome death.

So, I tell my wife, Erica, what I'm writing about, and she get's annoyed with me for taking something pretty like an Anglican Mass and tying it to a 1980s slasher movie.


I finished the poem and while our meter expert did acknowledge that I stretched the meter on one line she said that in her opinion it was perfect iambic tetrameter which felt really good (people hear stresses differently so it's likely that others may hear the poem with a different meter). I was pleased that she at least thought so. I've resisted form also because it felt like starting over. What I found out though was that isn't really true. I used to be so concerned about rhyme that I ignored imagery. I feel that didn't happen here. I'm happy with how this one came out. In fact, the form actually made some lines better when I had to shift words around for it's sake.


Here's the poem:

My Nightmare on My Street

As knives stretch from your fingertips,
the boiler's hiss, the darkness drips,
but young men's fears aren't mine to take.
Could I please die before I wake?

I understand you didn't need
young teens who only wish to breed.
I'd kill them too. I've lost that ache.
Could I please die before I wake?

Each day I sit in asphalt haze,
a brake light death of small delays.
Of this communion I partake.
Could I please die before I wake?

The miles form a metronome
of cell phone calls and shining chrome,
a slow decay with each mistake.
Could I please die before I wake?

From empty cube, to empty room,
the jasmine scent of stale perfume
a window blackened now, opaque.
Could I please die before I wake?