Calendelle
A Calendelle is a new form by Dirk Stratton.
- A poem with twelve lines corresponding to the twelve months of the year.
- The poem contains 365 letters distributed according to the number of days in each month: line 1 has 31 letters, line 2 has 28 letters (except during a leap year), line 3 has 31 letters, etc.
- Lines corresponding to months of the year whose names rhyme must also rhyme (for example, three of the last four lines, corresponding to September, November, and December, must rhyme).
Source
Dirk Stratton
Examples
Be It Resolved
I opened the year with a plea of "No news,"
but since then it's been one bruise
after another pounded into our tired
brains (or, more recently, on peaceful
bodies in Seattle: for hell has no fury
like a WTO scorned). This year has been
plagued with whimpers that our sorry
civilization will end in a bang of our
own undoing with computers set free
by and from calenders. If so, then truly
a newsless age'll dawn; if not, get thee
hence to a dot com funnery: Newspoetry.
Newspoetry eschews usual news story
rules, relying on its A/Muse Quarry
Procedures (patents pending) instead.
These high-tech hypertext infusion
methods let newspoets inject laughs
into even the most sobering account
of hate, greed, and corruption. Enough's
enough, though, let's begin the new year
with a happy 'quake tale: while prying
off the rubble, "A cat . . . barely breathing"
found (after 80 days!) in Taiwan, crying.
Unknown: "how . . . [it] kept itself from dying . . ."
{Quoted material from "Trapped by quake, cat survives 80 days,"
The Cincinnati Post, Friday December 10, 1999.}
-Dirk Stratton
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