The Ballad Was Never Polite
A ballad was never a love song. From Scottish murder ballads to Lead Belly to Gwendolyn Brooks, it has always been a reckoning.
poetry structures series
The Ode Is a Political Form (You Just Forgot)
Praise is a political act. The ode never stopped being a weapon. It just got shelved where the comfortable people put things they stopped knowing how to use.
How to Write an Elegy Without Lying
The consolation is where most elegies lie. The Irish caoineadh tradition knew something the Western canon keeps forgetting.
How to Write a Tanka: Five Lines That Hold an Entire World
The tanka gives you five lines to hold a landscape and the feeling of standing inside it. Older than haiku, and just as alive.
How to Write a Rondeau: The Refrain That Won’t Let Go
The rondeau brings its first line back twice. Each time, the words are the same. Each time, they mean something different. That is the whole argument.
How to Write an Ekphrastic Poem: When Poetry Looks at Art
Ekphrastic poetry stands in front of the art and writes down what shifts. Not what you see, but what changes after you look long enough.
How to Write a Haibun: Prose, Poetry, and the Space Between
The haibun pairs prose with haiku, letting you describe a moment and distill it on the same page. Here’s how to write one that leaps.
How to Write a Limerick: The Sharpest Joke in Five Lines
The limerick started in Irish pubs, survived three centuries of being called lowbrow, and still has sharper teeth than most sonnets. Here’s how to write one.