The pairing of PHANTOMS and GHOSTS is doing something I really love ā one moves forward through the alphabet (AāZ), the other retreats backward (ZāA). It mirrors how we experience hauntings: the gradual approach, then the fading away.
And structurally, both poems feel like incantations. The abecedarian form has this ritual quality to it, like you're invoking something letter by letter. The constraint becomes the spell.
Also: "xenogenesis" in PHANTOMS is such a perfect word for that position in the alphabet. Ghosts as alien birth ā something emerging from nothing familiar.
The X graveyard is real. Most abecedarians just reach for 'x-ray' and move on. Xenogenesis actually *works* there, thematically. That's the difference between enduring a constraint and exploiting one.
That first one is my favourite of yours. In general though, these are making me wonder about my own work and what structural tendencies I employ in poetry, even unintentionally.
Thanks so much for sharing these, Anthony - the abecedarians in particular are a lot of fun, and I'd never really thought about that as a form before ... I wanted also to thank you for your memoir/account of your writing process last week. I found that so interesting. Much of it chimed with me, particularly the idea of formal constraint as liberating. Personally I wouldn't write at all, if not for the discipline of following a form (and sometimes deliberately breaking it)!
Thank you, Catherine! I donāt have many abecedarians (in fact these might be the only two!), because itās not a particularly versatile constraint, but Iād recommend giving them a go at least once. Theyāre good fun.
Thanks for reading my essay! It was very satisfying finally getting those ideas down.
Your offerings are steadily intelligently readable, therefore gratisfying, while the tracks your mental locomotive favors keeps perilously narrowing. Hope I'm not being rude, but then again I'm American.
Sorry. I was talking about your poetryās enterprise, its successfully compelling eloquence and/or despite the intensity of its exotic, constricting forms, which so remarkably engages, often delights. It struck me that it might be rude to presume from this a persona, which the enterprise might or must implicitly disdain--but this also presumes, thus intrudes. Sorry.
I like these, thank you š I hadn't heard of an abecedarian before š
The pairing of PHANTOMS and GHOSTS is doing something I really love ā one moves forward through the alphabet (AāZ), the other retreats backward (ZāA). It mirrors how we experience hauntings: the gradual approach, then the fading away.
And structurally, both poems feel like incantations. The abecedarian form has this ritual quality to it, like you're invoking something letter by letter. The constraint becomes the spell.
Also: "xenogenesis" in PHANTOMS is such a perfect word for that position in the alphabet. Ghosts as alien birth ā something emerging from nothing familiar.
Thanks! Yes, I was pleased with xenogenesis, X being a particularly nasty letter in this constraint!
The X graveyard is real. Most abecedarians just reach for 'x-ray' and move on. Xenogenesis actually *works* there, thematically. That's the difference between enduring a constraint and exploiting one.
That first one is my favourite of yours. In general though, these are making me wonder about my own work and what structural tendencies I employ in poetry, even unintentionally.
Thanks so much for sharing these, Anthony - the abecedarians in particular are a lot of fun, and I'd never really thought about that as a form before ... I wanted also to thank you for your memoir/account of your writing process last week. I found that so interesting. Much of it chimed with me, particularly the idea of formal constraint as liberating. Personally I wouldn't write at all, if not for the discipline of following a form (and sometimes deliberately breaking it)!
Thank you, Catherine! I donāt have many abecedarians (in fact these might be the only two!), because itās not a particularly versatile constraint, but Iād recommend giving them a go at least once. Theyāre good fun.
Thanks for reading my essay! It was very satisfying finally getting those ideas down.
Really clever and genuinely poetic.
Thank you!
No need to apologise! Thanks for clarifying.
Your offerings are steadily intelligently readable, therefore gratisfying, while the tracks your mental locomotive favors keeps perilously narrowing. Hope I'm not being rude, but then again I'm American.
I don't know if you're being rude because I have no idea what you're talking about. What do you mean?
Sorry. I was talking about your poetryās enterprise, its successfully compelling eloquence and/or despite the intensity of its exotic, constricting forms, which so remarkably engages, often delights. It struck me that it might be rude to presume from this a persona, which the enterprise might or must implicitly disdain--but this also presumes, thus intrudes. Sorry.
No need to apologise! Thanks for clarifying.