consisting of five syllables followed by two lines seven syllables each. I took some other liberties as well in terms of theme and content. Traditional haiku center around nature. These poems, however, are about terror, madness, pain and sorrow, though I did try to center many of them in natural settings.
In addition to haiku this collection contains a form of Japanese poetry called a choka which consists of alternating lines of five and seven syllables ending with two final lines each with seven syllables. This type of poetry is the only classical Japanese form that is open in length, sometimes containing as many as 50 to 100 lines. Its shorter form, the tanka, is five lines of verse arranged five syllables followed by seven syllables followed by five syllables followed by two lines each with seven syllables just like a choka. Not His Mother , Consumption, and Alpha and Omega are examples of the tanka.
There is one other form you will find in this collection that is not Japanese at all but Korean in origin. It is called a sijo. Rich Ristow introduced me to this form thinking it would make a nice addition to the collection . Though the structure of a sijo is not quite as rigid as a haiku or a tanka, it does have a very definite and precise almost lyrical meter. In fact, sijo were written to be sung, though I wouldn’t recommend trying to sing This Old House of Pain and Woe or Hunter’s Moon. A sijo is three lines of verse between fifteen and seventeen syllables each. Each line can be further broken down into four lines of three to five syllables. This collection contains my first and only attempts at this form though they will not likely be my last. My thanks to Rich for bringing sijo to my attention.
So why tackle such challenging forms when free verse is by far easier and more popular? That would be like asking me why I fight instead of playing basketball, or run marathons instead of riding a couch with a video controller in one hand a beer in the other, or why I write horror when it would be easier to write romance or to get a nine to five. I do it precisely because it is not easy, because it is a challenge that not every swinging dick can meet and because I love it. Every word, every syllable, was a labor of love. I hope you will love it too.
Wrath James White
* * * *
A Note on Poetic White Space
You cannot vomit words onto a page and call it poetry. There’s a popular misconception that poetry is an art of “anything goes,” irrespective of cultural traditions. Even post-modernism and the current avant garde has its antecedents going back more than a century. Yet, no matter the tradition, or the form poetry takes, there’s a certain aesthetic overriding. A sense of the line, and how the line functions, is vastly important. Some more formal prosodies work off of metrical or syllabic counts—the line is fixed to a certain amount of sounds. More open prosodies, like free verse, leave systematic considerations open to the poet, but it largely comes down to how the poet structures their line, and how the line breaks. This is why, as Ezra Pound once famously noted, that you can’t take good prose and hack it into lines. Consider:
There was an eyeball floating in my beer.
Gruesome—nothing remotely “poetic” about it. However, consider:
There
Was
An
Eyeball
Floating
In
My
Beer.
It’s still not a “poem.” Broken lines do not change its nature as a sentence. Besides there being a one word per line, there’s no logic to its organization. And, there’s an unseen force at work here, one making this fail as a poem.
That force is called “poetic white space.” It’s a concept that is highly important to the book you’re holding. First, allow me to explain it, before I explain how it relates to Vicious Romantic.
Prose runs from margin to margin, filling out the page. Lineated poetry doesn’t. Depending on how it’s formatted, there’s a lot more open page. It acts like a
In addition to haiku this collection contains a form of Japanese poetry called a choka which consists of alternating lines of five and seven syllables ending with two final lines each with seven syllables. This type of poetry is the only classical Japanese form that is open in length, sometimes containing as many as 50 to 100 lines. Its shorter form, the tanka, is five lines of verse arranged five syllables followed by seven syllables followed by five syllables followed by two lines each with seven syllables just like a choka. Not His Mother , Consumption, and Alpha and Omega are examples of the tanka.
There is one other form you will find in this collection that is not Japanese at all but Korean in origin. It is called a sijo. Rich Ristow introduced me to this form thinking it would make a nice addition to the collection . Though the structure of a sijo is not quite as rigid as a haiku or a tanka, it does have a very definite and precise almost lyrical meter. In fact, sijo were written to be sung, though I wouldn’t recommend trying to sing This Old House of Pain and Woe or Hunter’s Moon. A sijo is three lines of verse between fifteen and seventeen syllables each. Each line can be further broken down into four lines of three to five syllables. This collection contains my first and only attempts at this form though they will not likely be my last. My thanks to Rich for bringing sijo to my attention.
So why tackle such challenging forms when free verse is by far easier and more popular? That would be like asking me why I fight instead of playing basketball, or run marathons instead of riding a couch with a video controller in one hand a beer in the other, or why I write horror when it would be easier to write romance or to get a nine to five. I do it precisely because it is not easy, because it is a challenge that not every swinging dick can meet and because I love it. Every word, every syllable, was a labor of love. I hope you will love it too.
Wrath James White
* * * *
A Note on Poetic White Space
You cannot vomit words onto a page and call it poetry. There’s a popular misconception that poetry is an art of “anything goes,” irrespective of cultural traditions. Even post-modernism and the current avant garde has its antecedents going back more than a century. Yet, no matter the tradition, or the form poetry takes, there’s a certain aesthetic overriding. A sense of the line, and how the line functions, is vastly important. Some more formal prosodies work off of metrical or syllabic counts—the line is fixed to a certain amount of sounds. More open prosodies, like free verse, leave systematic considerations open to the poet, but it largely comes down to how the poet structures their line, and how the line breaks. This is why, as Ezra Pound once famously noted, that you can’t take good prose and hack it into lines. Consider:
There was an eyeball floating in my beer.
Gruesome—nothing remotely “poetic” about it. However, consider:
There
Was
An
Eyeball
Floating
In
My
Beer.
It’s still not a “poem.” Broken lines do not change its nature as a sentence. Besides there being a one word per line, there’s no logic to its organization. And, there’s an unseen force at work here, one making this fail as a poem.
That force is called “poetic white space.” It’s a concept that is highly important to the book you’re holding. First, allow me to explain it, before I explain how it relates to Vicious Romantic.
Prose runs from margin to margin, filling out the page. Lineated poetry doesn’t. Depending on how it’s formatted, there’s a lot more open page. It acts like a
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