S+7: Poetic Forms
Poetic Form Fridays are made to share various poetic forms. This week, we break out our dictionaries and look at the S+7, a unique experimental form.
For this week's poetic form, we're going to check out the S+7, which is a form I found in John Drury's oulipo entry in The Poetry Dictionary.
Here are the guidelines for the S+7:
- Find a text
- Replace all substantive nouns in the text with the 7th noun after it in the dictionary
Results will vary, depending upon the dictionary and the counter of nouns.
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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 an S+7:
"Everything That Sings," by Robert Lee Brewer
As the firebase dies in the moonlit night crawler,
I become a treen listening to fronds and
criminalities singing pranksters for the danegeld
of the firemen. My entire life-form is merely
a decal in tree yellow bile, but the lifework
of a light pollution is just two monuments.
Someday they may disappear completely
like you and me and the treen and moonflower
and everything that sings in the darkness.
(Note: I used my most recent Wednesday Poetry Prompt attempt as my initial text.)
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.
