Considered a line of six iambic feet or a line of twelve syllables. It is usually the last line too. Spenser was known for using this line style in his poetry. The Alexandrine was used prior to Shakespeare and Marlowe. It was a common line style in German literature and French poetry.

Punctuation is at the heart of my poetry; it seeks to represent a psychological, physical, or emotional upset. A thwarting of sorts. Thwarting in poetry serves to impede or shift the poem from one line of thought into another—it can complicate the image, scene, or emotional tone of the poem. The dash doesn’t always thwart—sometimes it adds to the previous statement, or provides emphasis (which is grammatically sound).

For me, a dash, whether internally or at the end of line offers the flexibility to make a poetic jump that requires space, or halting. I don’t have a problem finding a place to insert a dash and it is something that I consider my strong point. My work is held up through the functions of a dash. My “problem” with the dash is writing the line or words that follow it. I am constantly asking myself how to proceed from there…what I should write next. Should I begin a new line of thinking? Should I complicate the previous image? It isn’t about the position of the dash, rather what is to follow the dash. To understand the function of dashes and the subsequent lines and words, I am looking at a variety of poets that have mastered the use of a dash. The poets that I have looked at are:

·         Emily Dickinson, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson
·         William Carlos Williams, Spring and All
·         EE Cummings, a selection of poems
·         Kimberly Burnick, Good Night Brother

Annotations for William Carlos Williams’ Spring and All
“Or rather, the whole world is between: Yesterday, tomorrow, Europe, Asia, Africa, – all things removed and impossible, the tower of the church at Seville, the Parthenon.”

Williams uses the dash to add motion to the prose. Moreover, it would seem that the dash serves to impede his series because it is a never-ending series. The list highlights how the eye cannot see any of these things in full—it his first mention of the use of the imagination versus reality. He cannot go on forever so he dashes off; he uses the punctuation instead of saying, etc… Another interesting facet of this section is Williams’ use of a comma in conjunction with the dash, almost as though he is preparing his readers for a quiet upset. When I reach the comma, I take a breath because I can feel his choice to create a distance between what I have just read and what is about to come…which relates to the phrase, “the whole world is between.” Furthermore, his dash does something that I myself want to do. He follows the dash with a statement that complicates the statement prior to the dash. Before the dash and the statement, the list was just a list, but the insertion of the statement completely changes the way the reader “reads” the list. It redefines what contemporaries of his time “see” the imagination.

This is different from my poetry because I use dashes to thwart an image or idea. I tend to dash off when I see the poem coming to a point that has nowhere to go or needs me to frustrate it into a new image or complicated idea, but I have a hard time creating a line after the dash that further complicates the previous lines and/or images. I lack the confidence to complicate the situation. After reading this bit of prose, I wanted to try it for myself with a previously written poem. I took a set of lines from “Lineage" that contains a dash and complicated it in the same way that WCW did:

Original Version:
“The concrete crushes the street heavy
after the sun sets    little chirps turn off everywhere,
the world black
           and the sky very gray
vultures circle in sync with the cyclone air—”
Adapted Version:
“The concrete crushes the street heavy
after the sun sets    little chirps turn off everywhere,
the world black
           and the sky very gray--
vultures circle readying to pluck out my eyes.”

The image in the first set of lines ended with a dash and nothing followed it. The image hung there and didn’t leave the reader with anything. I don’t want that to become a habit in my work. To just end it. I rearranged the position of the dash to come before the last line in an effort to complicate the entire image and result in a blinding of the reader after so much seeing was presented in the previous sections.

“…we alone live there is but a single force— the imagination.”
This is different from his other uses of the dash. He treats it with the same meaning as an equal sign. He gives the line equal weight on both sides of the dash and makes both clauses invaluable to the meaning of the poem.

Poem V, Page 23.
“enter black hearts. Barred from
seclusion in lilys they strike
to destroy—“
                       “Beastly humanity…”

The dash definitely thwarts the cultivated image and introduces a new idea and image. The image following the dash does resonate back to the other image…he maintains fluidity from one side of the dash to the other.

Poem VII, Page32:
“the Milky Way
without contact – lifting
from it – neither hanging
nor pushing—"

The series of dashes complicates and elaborates on a single idea.

Annotation Notes on Good Night Brother by Kimberly Burwick

From “Weakening the Spring Currents” 
The poem starts out with a “How” question, ending in a dash:
                       "How could I have known that you
                       would sever the strict shimmering of all
                       green birds on snow--
                       each facing south-southwest"

Here is a classic example of a dash elaborating on the previous line, but in this case, the dash is vital to the entire poem. I think that without it, this poem would fail. As the reader, we are left wondering on the actual snow? On a snowplow? On a snow drift? Burwick leaves me wondering where we are other than the cold. Where is the speaker? Is this her imagination, a memory, or physical? Merely a metaphor? The line following the dash does it again…placing the to the south-southwest…looking? All facing one direction? To migration? To summer? She leaves me with so many questions, yet not misunderstood question since they all leave me in the same direction as the poem. Direction, metaphorically, literally, and spatially, it is directive. I took to her idea, and wrote something with a similar idea:

Each drake works her and when the offense is over--
they fly far, far away.
I wanted to give the lines that ambiguity that Burwick uses to create an open-ended tone and image.

Annotations on EE Cummings, a selection of poems
Pg 42, the wind is a lady
“moves) at sunset
And who—touches—the
hills without any reason”

While this seems like the perfect interruptive notion of a dash, Cummings alters it slightly by treating the word that completes the statement like a secret. The word touches becomes sensual. Since many of my poems hit a sensual thread, I really liked the way he repositions the words within the punctuation to create a mood. By segregating the word touches, he sets up the entire poem for tactile exploration. The other reason that I am attracted to this set of lines is because I do not tend to use two dashes this close together to segregate a word, phrase, or idea, and that is something that I am learning to include in my work to enhance the reading of my poetry. Like before, I went ahead and attempted the Cummings-style dash:

“Her mouth lies to me,
—lips moistened--
smirking her crooked lips stained blue”

Cummings does something else with the dash that I haven’t seen very often and that is to put it at the beginning of a stanza. The “front” dash adds an interiority to his poetry that deepens the meaning. For example, in “here is ocean, this is the moonlight” on page 94, Cummings writes about the ocean and the moon, of course talking about love, but sticks hard to the metaphor until he reaches the dash.

See here:
“forgets the entire and perpetual sea
—but if yourself consider wonderful
That your (how luminous) life toward twilight will…”
He stops for a moment and in the stanza that starts with the dash, he inserts himself into the poem. He connects the lovers.
​
Annotated Notes on Emily Dickinson
I read a dozen of Emily Dickinson’s poems searching for answers about the dash. I found her work difficult to discuss because she uses it formally with a comma that precedes the dash. Moreover, I found that Dickinson used the dash as a substitution for most other punctuation, i.e. periods, colons, semicolons, etc. Her poems relied on the dash, but not in a way that complicated her lyrics. Since I don’t share the same style, I didn’t find her work useful for the thread that I am working on with respect to dashes. I did note that it was interesting that Dickinson’s poems survived through dashes and I intend to try my hand at writing a poem that only uses dashes as punctuation. For that, I am glad that I reevaluated her work with dashes in my head.

​DEFINITION: A ballad tells a story, using rhyme to establish a regular cadence.  The plot-driven poem has characters and rich imagery to show the narrative.ORIGIN: Began in European folk tradition. Originally orally shared until much later in the 15th-17th centuries when they were written down. Ballads often spoke of love, crime, social issues, and tragedy.

LINES: No establish number of lines.

RHYME PATTERN: Tends to be alternating line rhymes, but it is common to see AABB within the rhyme pattern.

STANZAS: Quatrains

OTHER NOTES: Lines may contain only a handful of stresses.

EXAMPLES:
Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” begins:

It is an ancient mariner
And he stoppeth one of three.
—“By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stoppest thou me?
The bridegroom’s doors are opened wide,
And I am next of kin;
The guests are met, the feast is set:
Mayst hear the merry din.”
He holds him with his skinny hand,
“There was a ship,“ quoth he.
“Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!”
Eftsoons his hand dropped he.

INTRODUCTION
Constraint-based writing involves a series of rules that imposes a pattern on the writing. With our conversations starting with Oulipo, the French experimental constraint-based writing group, it seemed fitting to explore potential influences on that group. Considering Oulipo’s French history, I wondered which historical writing forms not only influenced the birth of Oulipo-inspired writing, but which ones may still be a living component of the compendium.

After all, Oulipo is designed to inspire writing through compulsory rules, i.e. constraints.

What better way to do so than to look at a long-standing French poetic form, the villanelle. The villanelle, a fixed poetic form sheds light on the adherence to patterns, rhyme, meter, and style of French constraint-based writing, as a starting point for the development of constraint-based writing. Does it? Maybe, maybe not, but it is worth exploring.

Is a villanelle a form of potential literature? Does the strict form free the content? Does it create spontaneous self-discovery of writing that would otherwise go unwritten? How can we discuss the historical poetic forms as the potential birth of contemporary experimental writing? I don’t have the answers to these questions, but in my exploration of the villanelle, I seek to find woven strands.

HISTORY
The villanelle originates from the French and bears a rich historical development. Originally, the villanelle stood as a ballad to imitate the songs of French oral tradition. The fixed poetic form became standard during the 17th century upon the publication of Jean Passerat’s poem “Villanelle” published in 1606. And while the villanelle has its origin in French literature, a majority of villanelles have been written by English-writing poets. Poets such as Oscar Wilde, Andrew Lang, Dylan Thomas, and Elizabeth Bishop are known for using the villanelle. The original form was often used to write pastoral poems, but contemporary poets such as Sylvia Plath and Seamus Heaney have used the villanelle to write outside of the original usage.

“Villanelle” by Jean Passerat
J’AI perdu ma tourterelle;
Est-ce point celle que j’oy?
Je veux aller après elle.
Tu regrettes ta femelle,
Hélas! aussi fais-je moy.
J’ai perdu ma tourterelle.
Si ton amour est fidelle,
Aussi est ferme ma foy;
Je veux aller après elle.
Ta plainte se renouvelle,
Toujours plaindre je me doy;
J’ai perdu ma tourterelle.
En ne voyant plus la belle,
Plus rien de beau je ne voy;
Je veux aller après elle.
Mort, que tant de fois j’appelle,
Prends ce qui se donne à toy!
J’ai perdu ma tourterelle;
Je veux aller après elle.

FORM
The villanelle consists nineteen lines outlined as five tercets followed by a final quatrain. The rhyme structure holds the form in place. Two repeating rhymes and two refrains exist throughout the poem. The first line of the first stanza acts as the last line of the second and fourth stanzas. The third line of the first stanza is positioned as the last lines of the third and fifth stanzas. The rhyme scheme is noted on the layout below as the lowercase letters:

Tercet 1:
Line 1 – refrain 1 (rhyme a)
Line 2 (rhyme b)
Line 3 – refrain 2 (rhyme a)

Tercet 2:
Line 4 (rhyme a)
Line 5 (rhyme b)
Line 6 – refrain 1

Tercet 3:
Line 7 (rhyme a)
Line 8 (rhyme b)
Line 9 – refrain 2

Tercet 4:
Line 10 (rhyme a)
Line 11 (rhyme b)
Line 12 – refrain 1

Tercet 5:
Line 13 (rhyme a)
Line 14 (rhyme b)
Line 15 – refrain 2

Quatrain:
Line 16 (rhyme a)
Line 17 (rhyme b)
Line 18 – refrain 1
Line 19 – refrain 2

No established meter exists in the villanelle. However, many 19th century villanelles used trimeter or tetrameter. Gary Kent Spain posted On the Plains, a trimeter villanelle to All Poetry. The poet deviates from the original form, an explains the reasoning as a rebellion against the way a villanelle ends. The clinamen permits a small freedom from an otherwise stringent adherence to form.

On the other hand, 20th century, poets used pentameter. Giorgio Venetopoulos wrote a villanelle in iambic pentamete to exhibit the strictness that can be applied to the form. The content discusses the process of writing, and more importantly, the villanelle. Since the villanelle has no set meter, I see this as the writer further constraining oneself … although, poets such as Elizabeth Bishop took took many liberties in her villanelle, which allows the individual aesthetics to come through, as a shadow.

FORM AND CONTENT
The rigid form of the villanelle evokes a sense of obsession and compulsion as the refrains interact with the remaining lines. The form give way to a feeling of dislocation within the content. Moreover, the strict form requires the writer to focus on the form, thus freeing the content within the form.

The sense of obsessions and compulsions, even mental dislocation is apparent in Sylvia Plath’s “Mad Girl’s Love Song” :::

Mad Girl’s Love Song
“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)”

As I see it here, the constraints of the villanelle allow for generative distraction. In order to liberate a poem of pure intellectual thought and marry together both feeling and thought, one must force the mind into distraction. In this case, the distractions are the required rhymes and refrains. This notion falls in line with the mission statement of the Oulipio Compendium. By applying rules to the writing, the content takes its own shape, its own misgivings, its own liberties to become literature.

T.S. Eliot called this the theory of dissociation of sensibility. Spontaneity.  The villanelle requires labor on the form, but in doing so, it allows the writer to release the anxiety of creating a “good” poem, thus allowing the poem self-discovery.

Thus, established poetry forms such as the villanelle, the sestina, and the sonnet act as the framework for the birth of true poems. By true poems, I refer to a poem’s content that is freed from the external stresses that come with writing non-structured, free form poetry. The content delivers without the worry of line count, rhythm, etc… poems pressured into a form are afforded creative liberties that may not come about without the constraints.
​
I view poetic forms as a starting point for the current status of experimental and conceptual writing outlined via Oulipo and our contemporary view of constraint-based writing.

​DEFINITION: A love poem that esteems or dirges the rising of the sun. The poem can also be about lovers or love during the morning time.ORIGIN: French. The first usage was around 1678.

LINES: Varies.
​
RHYME PATTERN: Iambic pentameter, but of course, not always. Metrical variation is important.

STANZAS: Varies.

Busy old fool, unruly sun,
               Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?
               Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
               Late school boys and sour prentices,
         Go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride,
         Call country ants to harvest offices,
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

               Thy beams, so reverend and strong
               Why shouldst thou think?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long;
               If her eyes have not blinded thine,
               Look, and tomorrow late, tell me,
         Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine
         Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear, All here in one bed lay.

               She's all states, and all princes, I,
               Nothing else is.
Princes do but play us; compared to this,
All honor's mimic, all wealth alchemy.
               Thou, sun, art half as happy as we,
               In that the world's contracted thus.
         Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
         To warm the world, that's done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere.

DEFINITION: A poem guided by the alphabet. Each line or stanza begins with the first letter of the alphabet followed by each letter following, until the last letter is reached. Variations of the form occur.
 
ORIGIN: An ancient poetic form that was commonly used to compose letters, prayers, and hymns. The modern literary world relies on this form for children's books, mnemonic devices and lullabies (think Edward Gorey and Dr. Seuss).
 
LINES: Varies.
 
RHYME PATTERN: Varies. Contemporary abecedarian poetry doesn't rhyme, but there are clear metrical relationships. Children's versions often rhyme and are very sing-songy.
 
STANZAS: Varies.
 
OTHER NOTES:
 
EXAMPLES: John Disch's Abecedary, Carolyn Forché's Blue Hour, Edward Gorey, Dr. Seuss, and Mary Jo Bang's The Bride of E

• A poem that is an address, or a letter to another. It can be to a person or a thing.
• The poem can take a serious note, be intimate, free or incredibly measured.
• Dates back to the Roman Empire.
• Examples, Elizabeth Bishop, Ovid, Langston Hughes, Bernadette Mayers….etc…

​
Contemporary Example:
Dear David by Matt Burgess
This morning I looked
for your book online
and almost bought it
from the evil giant
but balked. Instead
I wrote a poem in bed
about a faux-leopard
jacket while drinking
coffee from a Bette
Midler mug. Marcel
says when he catches
himself self-censoring
he knows to add it
anyway. Anyway
I scrambled eggs
before rearranging
my book shelves,
extracting the ones
I can live without.
Those I put in a box
for prisoners (who
want dictionaries
and classic fiction,
the website says)
and later the buyer 
in Red Hook took
a towering stack
for a seventeen buck
credit. I skimmed
the spines and there
you were! Like new!
On the cover in blue
pants, a violet plaid
shirt, surrounded by
bright particulars! 

Song of Andoumboulou: 40
 
                        Asked his name, he said,
    "Stra, short for Stranger."
      Sang it. Semisaid, semisung.
"Stronjer?" I asked, semisang,
    half in jest. "Stronger,"
                                         he
      whatsaid back. Knotted
    highness, loquat highness,
      rope turned inward, tugged.
    Told he'd someday ascend,
he ascended, weather known as
      Whatsaid Rung... Climb was
        all anyone was, he went
                                                on,
    want rode our limbs like
        soul, he insisted, Nut's
      unremitting lift...
                                    Pocketed
rock's millenarian pillow...                    
           
 
Ideas on Mackey's Work:
"Mackey writing of a ‘we’ who floated ‘boatlike, / birdlike’ (p.21), and on the third line the words ‘Semisaid, semisung’ give thematic prominence to this idea of a hybrid art."
 
Notes on the poem:
-paratactic lines  (lines that are shorter without subordination)
- alliteration is important
-his work is in liminal space between music and poetry
- sonic enjambment
-manipulates lines by using homonyms…
-many words seem to function as musical notes….
-motivated rhythms…Mackey chooses words and sounds to propel the poetry without necessarily considering the word itself…you could scan the work, but the prosody of his poetry is reliant on sonics—on musical beats— the words continue to trace back to other words within the poem.

Doha, sort of sounds like a doughnut or something, but it’s actually a form. Let’s look at it. I dare you to write one!

Origin: Hindi
​
What’s it all about?

• The doha is a self-contained rhyming couplet. Lines are 24 syllables divided into unequal parts of thirteen (6,4,3). and eleven (6,4,1).
• Conveys an image or idea.