Chant Poetry: Mindful Poetry's form-of-the-month for February, 2013

 

Chanting occurs in many instances. Doubtless, there was chanting going on last Sunday, February 3^rd at the Super Bowl. And once a victor was declared, facebook lit up with the chant: winner, winner, chicken dinner!

I learned about chant poetry from Writer’s Digest poetry columnist, Robert Lee Brewer. It was a pretty slick and easy method of creating a poem.  Here's an example that I wrote last year for Poetic Asides, Brewer's column on poetry.

However, as I investigated further, I didn’t find much information that was uniform and explicit in providing direction for this form. Until I happened upon a French offering, the Chant Royal. It’s a formidable poetic structure, which I’ll detail in a couple paragraphs.

I decided to use this lengthy format—it’s 60 lines long—because last month’s form, glossa, turned out to be much more arduous than I first implied in January’s column, but not to be daunted, many Mindful Poetry members took on the longer version and wrote some memorable glossas. In other words, you rose to the challenge.

I think you’ll shine with this form, too. Because many of you don’t have the time or inclination, we are also accepting and encouraging chant poetry in its abbreviated state, too. Here are the two forms elaborated; you chose which one you’d like to try first.

Chant Poetry

• Any number of stanzas
• Any number of lines in each stanza, but consistent throughout poem
• Each stanza contains the same repeating line in the same position throughout poem

Chant Royal from Patterns of Poetry An Encyclopedia of Forms by Miller Williams

• Sixty lines long
• Divided into five stanzas of eleven lines each
• Plus a five-line envoy
• Lines are of any (but equal) length
• And accentual
• Rhyme pattern for longer stanzas: a-b-c-b-e-c-d-d-e-d-E
• Rhyme pattern for envoy: d-d-e-d-E
• No rhyme-word may be repeated as a rhyme-word throughout the poem
• The last line of every stanza is identical

Our glossas of last month surprised me. If you read the column early in the month, you might not be aware of an addition I made on January 15th. One of the commenters rightly pointed out that I did not provide guidelines for glossa poetry as it was originally created.

So I researched with more depth, found the prototype for glossas, and amended January’s column to reflect my deeper understanding of that wonderful form.

Many tried the form both as I’d first described and as it’s also described online. Many also steadied themselves and tried the lengthier version which left me in happy awe at their results.

A special announcement: Mindful Poetry member, Irina Demitric wrote a Fibonacci poem and submitted it to a regional online magazine. They accepted it and published it! Please take a minute to read her patriotic piece.

Go forth and write your Chant poetry! Tag with “chant” and any other tags you’d like. Tagging with the form always helps me out as I accept or decline submissions.

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