Tag: Triolet

Triolet: The British Baking Show

Welcome to Poetry Friday, this week hosted by Marcie’s blog, Here. Thank you for hosting. Make sure to stop by to check out what she has for us this week.

Each morning, after I hear what is going on in the world, I try not to dwell on the news, for obvious reasons, and just try to be a good citizen.

I’ve been reading novels lately. ( I just read FAMILY LIFE, a 2014 novel by Akhil Sharma which was fabulous, about a young boy in an immigrant family from India and their life in the U.S. It’s a sad story but a page turner, the writing poetic.) I linked the New York Times Review.

So what can I share this week, poetry wise?

Sometimes in the evening I watch the British Baking Show, hosted by Paul Hollywood, of course. I imagine being a contestant. I am sure I would be sent home by the judges the first day of the ten day competition.

I wrote a triolet last week and described the form. So this week, for fun, I honed my craft further with another one. 

BRITISH BAKING DREAMS

Today I watched the Baking Show--
the judges mostly kind.
Who knew that salt makes yeast grow slow!
Today I watched the Baking Show.
What is it like to scorch the dough
stand and feel maligned?
I watched the British Baking Show,
the judges mostly kind.

© Janice Scully

Have a great weekend!

TRIOLET: Morning Walk

Welcome to Poetry Friday, this week hosted by Susan, on her blog Chicken Spaghetti. Thank you, Susan, for hosting!

What is Poetry Friday? Find out here. It’s a great way to get to know other poets and others who love poetry.

Yesterday I was walking and saw this very common winter sight:

A barren forsythia in winter.

A bare tree. But since it is January, I began to think about spring and how everything will change in a few months. It’s not too early to start to think ahead. After all, days are slowly getting longer and there is no going back.

So since yesterday I tried to capture this bare shrub in a poem, and chose a French form known as the triolet. Some examples can be found here, including examples by poets Laura Purdie Salas and Amy Ludwig Vanderwater. If you are not familiar with this eight line form, it’s described nicely here, at a Masterclass site.

Below are the characteristics of each line. The first two lines are repeated in the last two lines. 

Writing a Triolet:

1. The first line (A)
2. The second line (B)
3. The third line rhymes with the first (a)
4. Repeat the first line (A)
5. The fifth line rhymes with the first (a)
6. The sixth line rhymes with the second line (b)
7. Repeat the first line (A)
8. Repeat the second line (B)

After a few tries, and several hours, after discarding “tree” and “bush” for for “shrub,” which seemed more interesting, I came up with this:

Morning Walk

By the road a flowering shrub,
branches cold and bare,
in wintertime, ignored and snubbed,
by the road a flowering shrub.
Like a member of a dormant club
that seems without a care,
by the road a flowering shrub
branches cold and bare. 

© Janice Scully (draft)

Here’s a picture of the direction we are headed. You get the idea. I don’t know what kind of flower this is. Does anyone know? I don’t believe it is forsythia.

Happy Winter to you all from cloudy Upstate New York!