6.4

an epitaph is usually the text inscribed on a gravestone. however this often takes the form of verse and some poets have written particularly appealing epitaphs for themselves. today i post one from don blanding:

Do not carve on stone or wood,
"He was honest" or "He was good."
Write in smoke on a passing breeze
Seven words… and the words are these,
Telling all that a volume could,
"He lived, he laughed and… he understood."

6.3

Troubled heart meets troubled soul
Hate and angst have taken their toll
Intuitively reaching for the other’s pain,
Searching old memories soaked in rain.
Elemental sadness pervades the air
Xenocrysts of hope in grey despair
Every dream dry and old
Rueful remembrances remain untold.
Catharsis needed but not found
Increases desperation unbound
Seeking seeking an outlet or vent
Eroding inside of discontent.
Islands of peace difficult to find
Strange, considering it’s all in the mind
Frustration grows day by day
Ultimately it will have its way.

Non est vivere sed valere vita est.

this is an acrostic i made up. an acrostic is a kind of poem where the first letter of each line when read together has some meaning in itself. like the letter arnold schwarzenegger wrote to his lawmakers.

6.2

a clerihew is a four-line poem usually humourous and always biographical. in fact, it takes its name from a person too, edmund clerihew bentley. oh and the rhyme scheme is always a-a-b-b.

here's an example i liked

Martin Luther King was not a king.
He did not have horses, a crown, or anything.
He preached a lot and had a dream
Of everybody eating ice cream.
-ben gieske

6.1

a sonnet is a poem with fourteen lines which originated as a form in europe. typically english poets have written sonnets in the iambic pentameter [which i don't much about, but i do love to day the words]. while there have been many poets who wrote sonnets, shakespeare's sonnets are probably some of the best known. he wrote almost all of them to a specific rhyme scheme too; they follow a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g structure.

i am in no way a big shakespeare fan but here's one of his that i particularly like:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose Worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:

If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

-William Shakespeare [Sonnet 116]

6. types of poetry

the new 30 is poetry again - but the poems will be of different types, sonnets, couplets, epitaphs, haiku, and so on.