10-line Poem Challenge #14: Brady’s Touch

This past week two people have tried their own hand at writing a Trianglet. Do stop by their blogs and take a look….

• Love: A Trianglet by revivedwriter
• Aristotle and Joe by Word Florilegium

When you have finished reading the poems linked above, be sure to come back here to learn about a new decastich, Brady’s Touch.

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Brady’s Touch is a decastich (10-line poem) created by Maryann Merryweather-Travis on November 2006, in honor of Allen Brady.

• It is made of 2 quintets (5-line stanzas) with a specific rhyme and syllabic count.
• Line length: Each stanza follows the same pattern of 9-9-8-8-2 syllables.
• Rhyme scheme: abxcd abxcd
• Thus the second stanza is an exact replica of the first stanza in terms of line length and rhyme. The poem really has a nice sound, with the rhyming sounds being so far apart from each other.

Samples

Below are two samples for you. There is nothing extraordinary about either sample, but the second one is a riddle of sorts. See if you can figure out which snack I am describing….

Sitting Outside

Sitting outside all alone I am,
But the world is not quiet at all.
Listening, I hear wind in chimes,
A bubbling fountain, dogs, and boys,
A bird…

Sirens and horns from a traffic jam,
Rustling leaves in the trees standing tall,
But the laughter from two houses
Down from me is the sweetest noise
I’ve heard.

Copyright © 2018 Abigail Gronway – All Rights Reserved

No Finer Snack

Ebony wafers, all round and thin,
Stamped with the four letters of their name,
Perfect match for a glass of milk,
There’s no finer snack. You can’t beat
The crunch.

Mated together, white cream within,
This is a sandwich of great acclaim.
Have them with lunch or bed-time snack—
They’re practically bite-sized, so eat
A bunch!

Copyright © 2018 Abigail Gronway – All Rights Reserved

It’s Your Turn!

Now it’s time for you to write a Brady’s Touch. Here are a few suggestions to get you started:

1. Begin by writing your thoughts out in prose or free verse. Feel free to go long at this stage. This is your free-thought stage.
2. On a separate sheet of paper (or page, if you write on your computer), rewrite the prose or free verse in the form of a Brady’s Touch.
3. Be silly, sad, sappy, or serious, your choice. There is no restriction on theme or mood.
4. And of course, when you are finished, please share it with us.

Don’t know how? Follow these simple steps…

1. Write your blog post.
2. Include the tag Decastich Challenge or 10LPC
3. Include a pingback/link to this post in your post so I can find you.
4. Publish your post.

Dig Deeper

To find more samples and to learn from those who taught me, check out these sites. All links open in a separate tab so you can easily find your way back here.

Poet’s Collective ~ The forms on this website are not organized in alphabetical order, but he does have at least one sample poem for each form, he even has tags for rhyme scheme. He also has a visual template for every form so you can see the rhyme scheme and stress patterns, as applicable. That is extremely helpful.

Sol Magazine ~ This resource covers much more than just 10-line poems.

“Metric Forms from Pathways for the Poet” ~ This is an outline of information from Pathways for the Poet by Viola Berg (1977), a book for and by educators. This resource also includes more than just 10-line poems, but it helped to fill in the gaps where my other sources were a bit scanty with their information.

Shadow Poetry ~ This is my favorite resource for learning about poetic forms (and not just the decastich), but I have discovered that there is ever so much more to learn than what I can find here. This is, however, a very good place to start.