Writing Pleiades Poetry
A Quick Guide to Poetic Form
Katherine Arcand, Yahoo! Contributor Network
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Seven Words
What do you think of when you hear the word "Pleiades"? Does a bright celestial image pop into your head? Does the Greek story of the seven sisters come to mind?
The Pleiades is a cluster of seven stars visible in the night time sky. The Greeks saw this cluster and named the stars after the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione. According to myth, Orion the hunter was in love with the sisters and chased after them until the gods took them to safety, transforming them first into swans, and then into stars.
The root of this form of poetry comes from the number seven. The Pleiades is a seven line poem with few restrictions as to content, but strong imagery makes for an enthralling poem with this form.
Exercise: Pick an item that is sitting in front of you right now. Write down seven words about the item that describe it or that are related to it that all begin with the same letter as the first letter of the item you have chosen. For example,If I picked a pencil, my list may have things on it such as pointy, pine, poke.
In a Pleiades, the title's first letter defines the rest of the poem, and the title may be only one word. In the following seven lines, each line starts with the first letter of the poem's title. For example:
Wine
White, red, and blush
Wander gently over taste buds.
Waves of flavor
Wash away
Worries that have
Woven their
Way into my day.
Katherine Arcand
The example above has a single word title followed by seven lines of poetry, each starting with the letter "W", as is the first letter of the poem's title, "Wine".
The Pleiades form was created by Craig Tigerman, lead editor of Sol Magazine, in 1999. Since it is a fairly new form of poetry, few poets have taken up the challenge and exercise of writing in this form.
A Pleiades without strong images will sound flat and dull, leaving your reader yawning and thumbing past the page it is printed on. When writing a Pleiades, be bold in your use of senses and emotion to set a solid ground in seven lines for this wonderful creation you are about to pen.
Practice: Write a Pleiades poem using a favorite food as inspiration.
