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Hi everyone!  Today’s poetry form is timely, don’t you think?   Not because of the recent time change (I could complain about that), but also I think that there are lot of issues happening in the world right now.   Just as it was then, poetry gives us an opportunity to express and capture this sorrow and bitterness.

Complaint, is a poem that laments or protests unrequited love or tells of personal misfortune, misery, or injustice.

A complaint may also be a satiric attack on social injustice and immorality; in “The Lie,” Sir Walter Raleigh bitterly rails against institutional hypocrisy and human vanity (“Tell men of high condition, / That manage the estate, / Their purpose is ambition, / Their practice only hate.”).

The Lie
By Sir Walter Raleigh (1554 – 1618)

Go, soul, the body’s guest,
Upon a thankless errand;
Fear not to touch the best;
The truth shall be thy warrant.
Go, since I needs must die,
And give the world the lie.

Say to the court, it glows
And shines like rotten wood;
Say to the church, it shows
What’s good, and doth no good.
If church and court reply,
Then give them both the lie.

Continue reading here: Poetry Foundation.

Complaint, sometimes called Jeremiad is a genre of poetry that carries a theme of bitter sorrow. The rhetoric is “rails against cruel fate” . By the Middle Ages there were loosely 3 types of Complaint:

  • satirical poems exposing evil in the world.
  • dididactic verse focusing on the decline of someone “great” and
  • verse lamenting over unrequited love.

Although there is not always a specific structure identified with this genre, an interpretation of the Complaint made popular by Scot poet, William Dunbar’s (1460-1520) Lament for Makers , is framed:

  • stanzaic, written in any number of quatrains.
  • metered, often iambic or trochaic tetrameter.
  • rhymed, rhyme scheme:   aabB ccbB ddbB etc. B being a refrain

Lament For The Makers

By William Dunbar (1460-1520)

I that in heill wes and gladnes,
Am trublit now with gret seiknes,
And feblit with infermite;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

Our plesance heir is all vane glory,
This fals warld is bot transitory,
The flesche is brukle, the Fend is sle;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

The stait of man dois change and vary,
Now sound, now seik, now blith, now sary,
Now dansand mery, now like to dee;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

Please continue reading here: Poetry Foundation

Note: Every fourth line repeats the Latin refrain timor mortis conturbat me (fear of death troubles me), a litanic phrase from the Office of the Dead.

Writing challenge: Write a complaint using the poetry form made popular by William Dunbar, Lament for the Makers. Your theme is your own, be it unrequited love or a satirical poem on the injustice of the world.

Sources: Poetry Magnum Opus           Poetry Foundation

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See you at the poetry trail!