POETRY

Filling in the Blanks

Searching for rhyme and meter

Medium format film image by author (this is not my desk)

A sonnet gives you a whole lot of room
To expound and talk about your subject
But blank verse offers even more since you
Don’t have to rhyme words if you don’t want to
I think blank and I think an empty space
Something that needs to be filled in, informed,
A multiple choice, or an endless choice
Too much choice? Or can there be too much voice?
Blank means all noise but no delivery
All powder and no bullet : bravado
Fired in the bright flash of a moment
All this space can take a poem out of line
And lead it into the realm of essay
Where it rattles around, astray and lost
If it weren’t for the rhythm it sustains
Verse ventures into theatre’s playbook
Where famous bards help make it immortal
A brilliant perspective, an open form,
A creative soul that can never die
How do we love thee? Maybe not at all
If we can’t work with restrictions that call
Upon us to compose within a frame
Whose blanks get filled once we writers are tamed