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.

incomplete!

i was the kid that smirked when unfortunate classmates got an angry red "Incomplete Work" scrawled across their notebooks; i always had neat clean and complete schoolwork you see. so it surprises me that i am still unable to reach thirty on 'thirty of each'.
five times round and not a single thirty reached yet.

disappointing.

but i shall start with another thirty. eternal optimist that i am, i hope to complete this series.

5.16

reflecting on what it means when a year ends. i'd thought 2008 was bad and that 2009 would be better. tchah, no such luck. 2009 kicked me in the teeth.
i have no expectations from 2010 so maybe it will be better.

5.15

thinking that i must practise reading between the lines.

5.14

thinking morbid thoughts.
i wonder if dying is painful. i hope not, i hope it's just like falling asleep, you are awake and then ping! you are asleep. or dead. that simple. aah well we'll all find out in due course.