Pantoum # 1 : My Heart is Shaped As A Quill

As I had hinted to earlier this month, this month of October marks one year anniversary since Echoes of the Hills first echoed. Over the past one year, the echoes have been mostly in Free Verse. Pilgrims to the hills have had very few choices as you can tell. 

Last month, Echoes of the Hills echoed haiku in the Heights of Haiku Challenge (This is one of the mountains where the hills can replenish their echoes). Yesterday, Echoes of the Hills (perhaps in one of the unprecedented moves in the whole of ‘hilldom’) echoed the first etheree. And there is more from the caves where that came from.

In the spirit of growing from a first year old to a second year old, Echoes of the Hills intends to explore various forms of poetry as never witnessed before. There will be a break to the Free Verse to explore such diverse poetry forms such as pantoums, sestina, limerick,  epigram, ghazal and so on. The list will be as random as the hills will choose to.

The hills ( And O, that is not a personification, the hills can do some of these things) have been studying various forms of poetry and you can only sit by and wait to listen to the secrets of the hills.

As a start, let us try a pantoum. This poetic form from Malaysia, one can tell, has the following structure:

1 2 3 4- Lines in first quatrain

2 5 4 6- Lines in second quatrain

5 7 6 8- Lines in third quatrain

7 9 8 10- Lines in fourth quatrain

9 3 10 1- Lines in fifth and final quatrain

However, there are complex structures which combine a rhyme scheme and repetition. For example,

Assuming the following poem below is a quatrain, then it will appear as follows:

 First stanza                            1                  

2

3

4

Second stanza                        2

                                                5

                                                4

                                                6

Third stanza                           5

                                                7

                                                6

                                                8

Fourth stanza                         7

                                                3

                                                8

                                                1

Please note that the numbers above designate the lines and not the syllables. You will note that it is not like the normal pantoum which has the second stanza and subsequent ones have the second line starting out in the subsequent stanza. In addition to that, the second form of pantoum has the last line of the first stanza being repeated in the third line of the quatrain.

This is what The Echoes of the Hills can discern so far of the quatrain. Still learning about its intricacies.

So, here we go.

Pantoum: My Heart is Shaped As A Quill

Link

My heart is shaped as a quill (1)

A smudged ink of what events write (2)

Like a hermit, keen to listen to the hill (3)

We are such, blotted characters in fright (4)

A smudged ink of what events write (2)

Forming the rich tapestry of life (5)

We are such, blotted characters in fright (4)

Oft times, we tone anger when things are rife (6)

Forming the rich tapestry of life (5)

We worry not of mankind’s cold gaze(7)

Oft times, we tone anger when things are rife (6)

On mankind’s conscience, we run the maze (8)

We worry not of mankind’s cold gaze (7)

We write what we feel, we feel what we write (8)

On mankind’s conscience, we run the maze (8)

My heart is shaped as a quill. (1)