Hi, friends.
I'm thinking about the different types of poetry I write. I have never thought that because there is free verse, we never write traditional verse, or because I write sonnets, I never write something that is almost a sonnet. In recent years, I have been having fun with nonce forms and bent forms. When I had lost my poetry files and typed them back in, there was quite a bit of work I had done since 2001 when I published my book, and I put them into categories by form.

So now I have big folders called Classic, Blank and Free, Ballad Type, and Syllabics.


Here's a sample from the Classic folder.

Bringing The Baby

Coming here day after day when she was out,
We more or less forgot she had ever been here.
Even the due date had become unclear,
And the whole thing engendered a kind of doubt.
Now she has brought him in, and carries about
Amid the computers and the phones in a blanket
The sleeping face that opens and starts to fret,
The tiny fingers and precocious snout.

A few more months she will enjoy that world
Beyond the walls, where we are born and die
And marry, win and lose and lullabye,
And what is left of life can be unfurled,
Until her leave is over, and she leaves
In someone's hands the little one, who grieves.


On similar themes, one from blank and free:

Farewell at Three

No one recalls exactly when he came
A quiet lawyer with a wet triangular mouth
For whom the teasers have no funny story
Sitting around him in the conference room
While the obligatory cake is cut
And soda served in waxy flowered cups.

There is no mention of a better job
Or illness of a relative, only
A move to the Southwest, some months away,
And preference for a different sort of practice.

A certain glow they all have seen before
On those who, even for a little while,
Have found release, lights up his dogged face -
And underlines the mysteries beyond
This frenzied hive, wherein his windowless
Abode awaits the new associate.
Him, no tradition bids us celebrate.

And one of my husband's favorites from Ballad Type. Clearly, he used to play with toy soldiers.

Lead Soldiers

Someone has to be to blame -
John has sucked upon the head
Of a soldier in his game
And was injured by the lead.

Punish then the older boys
And the store where toys are bought;
Punish all the future toys.
Thus the blame is neatly caught.

Never more allow the fun
Of uniforms and strategy,
Learning battles lost and won,
Learning life in effigy.

Boys will punish when they lose
And curse the dirt for being dirt,
Knowing that they cannot choose,
Nor by accident be hurt.

And from Syllabics, a poem about a modern piece on the radio, by which I was awakened.

Modern Strings

Great Spirit come to us
We have lost the way home
We have lost the way home
Our chords are sick, our tunes
Are mournful, yet no tears
Relieve us. Our dead hearts
Drop through living bodies
Our frozen feet stick to
Our boots, our food is snow.
For us dawn brings no hope
And darkness no relief.
Gaze and touch are useless;
Words fail us; colors scream.

Great Spirit come to us
We have lost the way home
We have lost the way home

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Love, Barbara