Mistress Bradstreet Stanza: Poetic Forms
Poetic Form Fridays are made to share various poetic forms. This week, we look at the Mistress Bradstreet stanza, an invented form of John Berryman.
I found this week's poetic form tucked away in John Drury's The Poetry Dictionary (between the Fibonacci and paradelle). In it, he cites John Berryman as the inventor of the form. In fact, click here to read Berryman's "Homage to Mistress Bradstreet."
Here are the Mistress Bradstreet stanza guidelines:
- Eight-line stanza
- Beat count of 5-5-3-4-5-5-3-6 (or translated to syllables: 10-10-6-8-10-10-6-12)
- Rhyme scheme: abcbddba
No other rules for subject or length!
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Play with poetic forms!
Poetic forms are fun poetic games, and this digital guide collects more than 100 poetic forms, including more established poetic forms (like sestinas and sonnets) and newer invented forms (like golden shovels and fibs).
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Here’s my attempt at a Mistress Bradstreet stanza:
In Season, by Robert Lee Brewer
In the midnight void that covers us all,
I descend into hysterical joy,
for quite unknown reasons,
though perhaps because I'm a boy
who does not often think by normal rules
and in strict conformists sees only fools
who can't help but annoy
the romantics of winter, spring, summer, and fall...
Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Editor of Writer's Digest, which includes managing the content on WritersDigest.com and programming virtual conferences. He's the author of 40 Plot Twist Prompts for Writers: Writing Ideas for Bending Stories in New Directions, The Complete Guide of Poetic Forms: 100+ Poetic Form Definitions and Examples for Poets, Poem-a-Day: 365 Poetry Writing Prompts for a Year of Poeming, and more. Also, he's the editor of Writer's Market, Poet's Market, and Guide to Literary Agents. Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.
