pantoum

PROMPT: PANTOUM

Today the group explored the poetic form known as Pantoum.

Although it originated in Malaysia in the fifteenth-century as a short folk poem, the modern pantoum is a poem of any length, composed of four-line stanzas in which the second and fourth lines of each stanza serve as the first and third lines of the next stanza. The last line of a pantoum is often the same as the first.

The exercise is to create a pantoum of 3 stanzas:

  • Write six fairly short lines on the same subject (numbered 1-6).
  • To make the first stanza, copy the first 4 lines from your list of 6.
    • line 1
    • line 2
    • line 3
    • line 4
  • The second stanza has the following formula:
    • line 2
    • line 5
    • line 4
    • line 6
  • The third stanza has the following formula:
    • line 5
    • line 3
    • line 6
    • line 1

 

The suggested subject for the exercise was Father’s Day, but you can choose any subject you like.

Have fun and see what you get!

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Dancing in Water

The following was written by Writers in the Grove member, Lorelle VanFossen, inspired from the Prompt: Palindrome Meets Pantoum.

Giggles and grins
Droplets tinkle and fall
Sun flashes gold
Hands windmill
Droplets tinkle and fall
Splashing diamonds
Hands windmill
Dancing in water
Sun flashes gold
Dancing in water
Giggles and grins

Prompt: Palindrome Meets Pantoum

This week’s prompt is a palindrome, a word, phrase, number of other sequence that reads the same way backward or forward. Our prompt challenge limited us to 6 short lines, written forward then reversed, in the style of a pantoum, to complicate things.

Here are the specific instructions:

  1. Write six very short lines describing something, a thing, an event, a moment.
  2. Number each line 1-6.
  3. Rewrite them in the following order: 1, 2, 3, 4, 2, 5, 4, 6, 5, 3, 6, 1.
  4. See what happens.

As an example, and to push this even further, we took a line from several member’s attempt at this prompt and put it together into a single poem using the same line structure:

It is a misty moisty morning
In the merciful shade of a big elm,
Freezing cold, freezing snow,
the trees lost their zest.

Life is fits and starts of growth.
No mud flaps on my coffin.

In the merciful shade of a big elm
Life is fits and starts of growth.
The trees lost their zest.
No mud flaps on my coffin.

Life is fits and starts of growth,
Freezing cold, freezing snow.
No mud flaps on my coffin.
It is a misty moisty morning.