Tuesday, May 9, 2023

A Double Nonet in a Concrete Form

Yesterday I published a post about the frustrating and agonizing waiting game when querying agents and the little respect we get as writers. At the end of the post, I shared a poem, but I fear it got overshadowed by the post itself. So, I am publishing it again. It's a double nonet in a concrete form.

A nonet starts with a nine syllable line, then each line that follows is one syllable less than the one before. So, the first line is nine syllables, the next line is eight, then seven, then six, and so on. I decided to make a double nonet, to show the irreversibility of time. Notice, the poem reads the same way forward as it does backward. I also put it in the concrete shape of an hour glass. That means, not only does the first line have one more syllable than the second, but it has to be visually longer than the second without cheating on the spacing.

For example, the word "I" is one syllable and is spelled with one thin letter. The word "through" is also one syllable, but it's spelled with seven mostly rounded letters, taking up much more space on the line. Therefore, I had to carefully choose my words to not only make the poem work auditorily, but also visually. And it had to be true to the theme.

Anyway, here it is. I suggest you read this forward, then in reverse from the bottom up to get the full impact of the poem. I hope you enjoy it.

TIME

because there’s no way to reverse time

we make mistakes and live with them

can’t slingshot back to fix things

brush the dust off and learn

then make more mistakes

and learn some more

make mistakes

and learn

live