Tags

, , , , , ,

“New Year met me somewhat sad
Old Year leaves me tired,”
Christina Rossetti – Old & New Year Ditties

Hello Poets, here begins another year of our Critique and Craft of Poetry at the Bar. It is January; part watershed, part cusp, as we’ve said our farewells to 2024 and have moved forward into a new month and new year of the Gregorian calendar. And January defines this moment as the two-faced Roman god of beginnings and transitions, past and future, looking back to the known and forward to the unknown.

The past year is like a death, gone, finished and cremated, in Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem, “Burning the Old Year”

“...So much of any year is flammable, 
lists of vegetables, partial poems. 
Orange swirling flame of days, 
so little is a stone. 

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t, 
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space. 
I begin again with the smallest numbers...”[more]

And what a lively contrast is Elder Olson’s dance poem: “Pavane for the New Year”

“...And souls and bodies tread in time 
Till all the trembling towers fall down. 

And now the stones arise again 
Till all the world is built anew 
And now in one accord like rhyme, 
And we who wound the midnight clock 
Hear the clock of morning chime. “ [more]

And for today’s MTB prompt we are revisiting the Palinode:

The palinode is a poetic mode that emphasizes a writer’s change of perspective … potentially generative of a third space between two conflicting realities. Originating in the Greek meaning “counter song” and similar to the Latin meaning “recantation. ”[Mira Rosenthal]

For example people, things, ideas, once loved, liked, admired are written with a negative or opposite connotation (or vice versa)…

BUT we are modifying the Palinode too, writing it as 2 verses in one poem:

Poetry style:

  • 2 verses (numbered or even subtitled)
  • minimum of 9 lines per verse
  • equal number of lines per verse
  • one verse holds contrary views/feelings/proposals/arguments etc to the other
  • meter and rhyme is optional

Poetry Theme: Choose ONE of these lines as Epigraph to prompt your poem’s view and contrary view:

  1. “The Old Year’s gone away/ To nothingness and night “: John Clare “ The Old Year”
  2. “It needn’t be tinder, this juncture of the year” Conor O’ Callaghan – January Drought
  3. “These sudden ends of time must give us pause” Richard Wilbur – Year’s End.

OR: If you have already written on the theme of past and future at any time, you can revisit it for this Palinode and perhaps use a couple of lines from it with Epigraph (link referenced) as prompt as per the above

References:
The Palinode
[previous palinode prompts]

N.B. The Palindode should not be confused with a Palindrome!

So once you have posted your poem according to the guidelines above, do add it to Mr Linky below then go visiting and reading other contributors as that is half the fun of our dVerse gatherings.

Mr Linky closes Saturday 3 p.m. EST