I’ve been doing practice exercises from Mary Kinzie’s The Poet’s Guide to Poetry, a big, thick book full of good information about the effects of rhyme, rhythm, stanzas and repetition.  It has a short set of suggested exercises in the back which are particularly good for someone like me who has resisted rhyme (end rhymes, that is) and meter in my own work.

One of her exercises, however, is called “Linked Form Using Lines by Another.”  By “linked forms” she intends any of those forms which use repeated lines, such as the pantoum, triolet or villanelle.  I may have overdone things by creating a triolet using lines from two others.  You will probably recognize the two different sources:

Thank you god for most this amazing day.
It gathers to a greatness like the ooze of oil
in a Greek press.  Grey dawn filtered each ray
with thin clouds that thickened slow.  I say
thank you, God―for most this amazing day
has filled to spilling our wells, our spirits, our soil.
Thank you god for most this amazing day.
It gathers to a greatness like the ooze of oil.

It seems to me that this device is rather like a musician doing variations on a theme by one of his or her predecessors.  It is a sign of appreciation of the other’s work.  It doesn’t happen as much in writing.juniper

We had a day today that showed signs of spilling out rain for our wells and our soil, but there was barely enough to settle the dust for a bit.  Summer is when we get our good rains.  And in this sunny desert, those are the days that have a greatness to them.

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