This week’s poem challenge is going to take just a peek at form. We’ll be generous and let you choose your own to play around with (within certain boundaries), but before you begin, take a look at this short video featuring Professor Roger Bowley as he demonstrates the relationship between Shakespeare and the Number 14, or Why Poetry and Mathematics Belong Together:
So, do you believe “the numbers add a strait-jacket to constrain the poet, or are the numbers helping the poet to add beauty”?
Here’s your Reason 2 Rhyme for the week:
Choose a poetry form that involves some kind of number requirement (a 5-7-5 syllable haiku, a Shakespearean sonnet with 14 lines/10 syllables per line, a couplet form with rhymed endings, a quatrain, or any other form where you must take numbers into account). Write on any topic of your choice, but be sure to pause and appreciate – or denigrate – the use of numbers in a poem!
My attempt is below (but keep in mind how terrible at Mathematics I was in school!)…
Shredded Wheat
The grass is but an
Unlit fuse beneath my feet
The crunch is the same as all dead things
Summer will not fly unless
Rain will give her wings
Thunder calls(This poem is a septet…a seven-line poem with a syllable requirement for each line: 3,5,7,9,7,5,3.)
Add your poem below in the comments, or link to your site and visit other writers by clicking the happy frog below!
Be a regular in the Reason 2 Rhyme Poetry Ring (here’s how that works…)
- Monday Poetry Prompt – check this site for the week’s inspiration
- Share your poem in the comment section, or link to the site where you have it posted
- Visit other circle members and comment, like, or share their post
- Friday Feature – one participant will be randomly drawn from the circle to be featured on this site
That’s it! Haiku, Cinquain, Sonnet, Villanelle, Blank Verse, Free Form, Limerick… it’s all welcome!
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Karen B. Nelson 
Pingback: Poetry Prompt Reason2Rhyme – “2+2=Poem”: A Mathematics’ Sonnet is a Treat | The Writer's Village
I liked your septet. I felt the wheat beneath my feet, and the readiness of summer about to explode…..
Randy
Here is my entry for this week. I chose a sonnet; and chose to write a sonnet about how to write a sonnet accentuating the “numbers” aspect of it and oddly enough closely akin to the video that you provided. Randy
http://thewritersvillage.wordpress.com/2012/07/09/poetry-prompt-reason2rhyme-22poem-a-mathematics-sonnet-is-a-treat/
Randy, it was amazing! Sonnets have always gotten my brain completely twisted, but I enjoy reading them, and yours was very cleverly crafted. Thanks!
My thanks to you for your “amazing” word
but “2+2” was what that which had me spurred
😉 Randy
Slight error in not deleting the word “what” in the second line of the couplet. It should have read:
My thanks to you for your “amazing” word
but “2+2″ was that which had me spurred.
Great sonnet; it has left me hungry for more. Pun intended. 😉
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http://boomiebol.wordpress.com/2012/07/09/lost-hope-poetry-prompt-reason2rhyme/
this requires some thought… this one won’t write itself
Lovely! And crunchy, lol. Here’s my answer to the challenge this week. Hope you like it! http://singmylife.com/2012/07/09/touch
And trust Randy to write a reply as a couplet. Wow!
Don’t you love people who even THINK in verse!?
Liked your Haiku. Have always liked Japanese poetry and babies: great pairing.
Pingback: Reason 2 Rhyme poetry prompt July 9 « Oldentimes's Blog
Great description of this summer weather. Here is my attempt at a septet http://oldentimes.wordpress.com/2012/07/09/reason-2-rhyme-poetry-prompt-july-9/
Way to go on the septet! I thought it was a fun (and relatively easy) form…kind of like a haiku on steroids. Thanks for joining in!
Pingback: tangent – poem, reason 2 rhyme « bwthoughts
http://bwthoughts.wordpress.com/2012/07/09/tangent-poem-reason-2-rhyme/
it follows the hines-57 pattern of syllables.
Well worth the wait, Bill. I forgot I was reading about numbers, and got swept up in the image. Thanks!
The legalistic me would say that the complement is a number which when added to another angle is “right” or 90 degrees, and the tangent is a number expressed by the opposite / adjancent angled, but It has been some time since I was a school boy
Shredded wheat, unlit fires; many facets, soul’s desires. Like it Karen. Can’t wait till you post the next challenge!
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