Ottava Rima for the Eighth

Hello, everyone. We’re more than a week into NaPoWriMo. Whether you’ve been here since April 1, or have joined us more recently, I hope you’re enjoying it!

Today’s featured poetry link is PennSound, which hosts a vast archive of recordings of poetry readings. It’s very cool stuff — you can search by poet, by reading series, and they even have an internet radio station, for all-day poetry listening.

Our featured participant’s blog for the day is The Dukkha Files. The internal rhymes in the poem for Day 6 are really effective, and the language is very fresh.

And now, the prompt (again — the prompt is optional!). Because it’s the 8th, I thought we might try writing in ottava rima — an Italian form that, in English, usually takes the form of an eight-line stanza of iambic pentameter, with a rhyme scheme of a-b-a-b-a-b-c-c. The most famous poem in English that uses the ottava rima form is probably Byron’s Don Juan. If you haven’t read it, it’s wickedly funny! It’s really amazing how contemporary Byron’s language is — it’s like he’s your mean-girl friend just gossiping at you in verse. But unlike Byron, you don’t have to write an entire epic in ottava rima! Just eight lines will do for now. Happy writing!