Monday, August 22, 2011

Cleave Poetry

Have you ever heard of Cleave poetry?  Check it out: http://cleavepoetry.wordpress.com/

Cleave : is a contranym, a word with 2 opposite meanings:

verb 1) split or sever along a natural grain or line. 2) divide; split.

verb 1) stick fast to. 2) become strongly involved with or emotionally attached to.

In its most basic form it is three poems:

two parallel ‘vertical’ poems (left and right)

a third ‘horizontal’ poem being the fusion of the vertical poems read together.  



Click on the poem to make it big enough to read.  



This poem contributed to
dVersePoets Open Link Night #6

7 comments:

Scarlet said...

My first time to read about it.. what an interesting form. It is like there are 3 stories to read in your two vertical verses.

Thanks for sharing this (and link too) ~

Brian Miller said...

nice...have done 2 cleave poems in my time...they are tricky but you navigate it well...and you pull it off beautifully

Pat Hatt said...

Wow that was very interesting indeed, may have to give it a go one day at my feed..haha

Looked a bit tough but you pulled it off great. Very well written, great job!

Elle said...

This is my first time reading about this type of form, let me just say it looks a bit difficult to write so I congratulate you on accomplishing such a feat! Love the cadence of the words! Thank you!

Claudia said...

yep - heard about it, never tried one myself though...i like a lot what you done with this...seems not that easy

Rosemary Nissen-Wade said...

Ha ha, I thought I invented this form decades ago, but I didn't have a name for it and never used it much because, although it's not all that hard to do, I found it quite difficult to make meaningful. You've done it very well.

Anonymous said...

Have to confess I'd never heard of this form before, but I like what you've written here. :) // Peter.