This form was created by John Berryman and used in his fifty-seven verse poem, Homage to Mistress Bradstreet, which he wrote as a tribute to his life long study of the poetry of W.B. Yeats.
The stanza is an octave (eight lines), and was never particularly popular. It has a rhyme scheme of a-b-c-b-d-d-b-a, and a syllable count of 10-10-6-8-10-10-6-12. Other than the rhyme and syllable count, there are no other rules to this form. You can write about whatever you want and have as few or as many verses as you like.
Schematic
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I have to admit, I didn’t take a close look at this form when I picked it as my form of the week, I chose it because it looked short – only eight lines. But between the rhyme scheme and the shifting syllable count, this form turned out to be a little tricky.
When I was at a stitchery guild meeting, one of the other ladies and I were talking about how crazy we all were, and I’m not exactly sure how the subject of poetry came up, but I jokingly said I should write a poem about this. And so I did, for my example. :-)
Needlework
The needle slides in and out of the cloth,
one exquisite stitch after another.
The emerging pattern
is never like any other –
each image, once caught on fabric by silk
is unique, with no others of its ilk,
a gift for another
foredoomed to become a meal for a moth.
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