My Poetry: Piazza Santa Croce: Gen

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Title: Piazza Santa Croce
Poetic Form: Xenolith
Rating: Gen
Length: 95
Notes: Inspired by this photograph of the Piazza Santa Croce, Florence, Italy [the church is reflected in pooled rainwater]

The old piazza’s paved with slabs of dark grey stones
in gaps, in cracks, the mirrored shards
which bleed abandoned rain from jagged veins, from bones
torn scraps of ten-a-rack postcards
the traffic, natural, pedestrian, which hones
facades to be avoided, shunned
except as art. The priested, nunned
variety to smooth, eroding knowns, unknowns
and pilgrimed, secular, devout
in after-storm and puddle-grout.
The shallow dips collect, reflect the startled moans
collect, reflect the beauty fleet,
lamenting once-dry-socked feet; the old square disowns
ephemeral and indiscreet,
its faults. It stands, and lies, as water pools, atones.

Comments

[lunabee34]

I love all the d and s sounds in this. The sonic quality is really nice.

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Thank you for reading! I'm glad you liked it!

[smallhobbit]

What a beautiful description; such a well put together xenolith.

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Thank you! I thought of a xenolith when I saw the image, the pavement being the plain A part of the poem and the bits of church reflected in the puddles being the B part.

[ancientreader]

You know, I just wrote in a letter to orchid314 that I am often wary of form in poetry, because many or most poets reach for obvious rhymes that flatten the sense, or, say, close a sonnet with a couplet that reduces the poem to an inspirational poster, but you! You are a whole other animal. (An okapi: rare, and hardly ever seen.) It seems as if work in arcane forms just presses you to greater creativity and fresh perception. "... the old square disowns / ephemeral and indiscreet, / its faults. It stands, and lies, as water pools, atones." Amazing.

ETA: what even are the rules of a xenolith, as a poetic form?

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Thank you very much. Those are very kind words. I like metrical verse. I like rhyme. I like form. Of course, you don't want to box yourself in to a rhyme that won't be as flexible as you need it to be so that does sort of put you into the obvious category of choices.

Xenolith is modern. Meaning someone still alive invented it just for funsies. But even so, I really like it. The trick is that it is 2 poems put together like teeth of 2 combs or gears. You can separate the 2 poems and they stand alone. Together, they make something new. Iambic. So the A poem is a mono-rhyme [in the above case, it's about the grey pavement]and six feet of iamb. The not A poem [in the above case, about the reflection of the church in the puddles and some negative commentary on organized religion and the Church We Are Both No Longer Attending throw in] has its own rhyme scheme of couplets, some separated, some not, and is 4 feet of iamb. 15 lines total and it goes:

A
B
A
B
A
C
C
A
D
D
A
E
A
E
A

[ancientreader]

See, now my mind is even more boggled than previously. I can barely keep the rules of the form in mind, so much less could I compose in accordance with them.

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

I do have to keep a cheat sheet with the pattern at hand but for some reason, this form clicked with me about a year ago and now it's a fave. I like the challenge of making it make sense both ways (as 2 individual poems and 1 combined poem).

[debriswoman]

Brilliant, my friend:-)
Separates out smoothly, and reads aloud beautifully.

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Wonderful! I am so glad that someone took it apart! The two poems aren't as unrelated as my earlier ones, but still I tried to make the stand alone works as well as a combined one.

Also, brilliant to know it reads well. That makes a poet happy, yes?