The Day 4 assignment offers these challenges:
- Prompt: animal
- Form: concrete poetry
- Device: enjambment
Concrete Poetry
Also known as shape poetry, the idea here is to arrange your words on the screen (or the page) so that they create a shape or an image. The meaning of the image can be obvious at first glance, or require some guesswork after reading the poem.
Enjambment
when a grammatical sentence stretches from one line of verse to the next.
Writing Process
I was glad to see enjambment as today’s device because it’s just about inevitable when you’re playing with a demanding form. In fact, I used this device in a couple of lines of yesterday’s acrostic because I needed the second line to begin with a particular letter:
Unless the day is sunny and clear, when
Nothing her beauty shrouds.
Grammatically and conceptually the second line here should begin with when, but the form required me to fudge a bit. And I expect the same thing will happen with today’s poem when I need to sculpt the line length to create the visual pattern I want.
The Giant Pacific Octopus
The giant Pacific octopus, one of nature’s most intelligent creatures,
Lives an average of three to five years in the wild before she
Reproduces. Then she holds on to the male’s sperm packet
And hunts for a suitable cave wherein to lay her
One-hundred-twenty thousand to four-hundred
Thousand eggs, which she lovingly tends.
She attaches her eggs to the walls
Of the cave, then splays her
Eight arms to seal it.
For six months she
Bathes the eggs,
Never eating,
Until she
Finally
Dies.
Then
Her offspring
Swim out into a
Brave new world, like
Tiny grains of rice, to
Grow and become the legacy
Of their mother’s self-sacrifice.
The Seahawks
The Seahawks
Became in 1975 the
Name of the new Seattle
National Football League team.
This name was chosen from more
Than one-thousand-seven-
Hundred entries
By fans.
This one looked more like a football in my word processor than it does here.
OK, this one’s corny.
It uses the form
Of the day but contains
Not very much poetry.
