How Do I Love Thee? Patterns

There are many patterns in poetry.  Poems by nature are based on patterns.  Poems can contain couplets, triplets, quatrains, quintains, sestets, or octets.  They can be written as haiku, sonnets, tanka, acrostic, diamonte, or open verse.  It has been said that even in open verse patterns are difficult to avoid.  Patterns can be found in word order, sentence structure, sound, meter, rhythm, stress, intonation, and even the way the poem is printed on the page.  

I always preferred the more structured poems when asked to write in school.  Poetry has never come naturally to me, so when I was asked to write a poem I always looked for a framework with which to build it.  Given an assignment to write about nature I would usually feel overwhelmed.  Writing a Haiku about nature, however, seemed more manageable.

Perhaps I could have played with poetry and challenged myself by changing the pattern of a poem.  For this assignment I decided to see what else changes about a poem when the pattern is changed.

I started with the poem Dreams by Langston Hughes. 

Dreams

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die

Life is a broken-winged bird

That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams

For when dreams go

Life is a barren field

Frozen with snow.

This is what it looks like when I changed the pattern to a Haiku:

Hold fast to your dreams.

Without them you cannot fly.

Life is frozen and barren.  

And an Acrostic

                                                           Do not let them go

                                                           Recession of hope

                                                           Emptiness and injury

                                                           Afraid to fly

                                                           Miles of barren field

                                                           Snow and frozen ground

And finally a Cinquain:

Dreams

Hold fast

Or don’t fly

Broken, frozen

Gone