The Practise of Pantoums

I love a good pantoum.

When I started university I was dead set against structure because it scared me and I'd just watched 'Kill Your Darlings', so naturally I assumed my academic career would be spent scrawling free verse on my walls with my coked up writer friends. Instead, most of my free time was spent eating microwave mac and cheese and crying about writer's block. Then along came the pantoum which quickly became my go-to writing exercise when I have nothing but a basic concept.

Essentially, it's a series of quatrains, traditionally four but you could go on for as long as you like which most people do. Each quatrain incorporates two lines from the previous one with the first line repeated at the end for extra flavour. Typically, it looks like this:

A

B

C

D

E

B

F

D

G

E

H

F

I

G

J

H

A

What I love about this form is that you can begin with ten statements that don't necessarily 'go together'. My first pantoum was 'Forever Like a Shawl'*, it began as a explanation for how at peace I felt swimming in the sea, after a very embarrassing failed attempt to talk about my love of water in a poetry class without sounding like a waifish Tumblr girl. The first two stanzas began as:

There is nothing safer than being covered and small
The sea is the largest thing I can pull over my head
Let me be a pin drop in the pacific 

Like a second falling into a century.

The sea is the largest thing I can pull over my head
Lungs collapse and hearts fail but water is always water
Like a second falling into a century
I will float in a small roaming universe. 

It's OK, I know it's terrible. I wasn't trying to be good, I just wanted to get something on the page. Editing can be hell but with a specific structure like this, it coaxes you into rearranging lines to create a continuous message. The first two lines are clumsy, the second and third lines of quatrain two don't make any sense, so I experimented with enjambment. I ended up quite enjoying myself. The second draft looked like this:

There is nothing safer than being small, being covered and
The sea is the strongest thing I can pull over myself
Let me be a pin drop in the ocean
Like a second falling into a century.

The sea is the strongest thing I can pull over myself
Lungs collapse, hearts fail, but water is always it is
Like a second falling into a century
I will float in a slow roaming universe. 

Lungs collapse, hearts fail but water is always it is

Speaking something older than truth, than earth.

I will float in a slow, roaming universe 

When I wear it's forever like a shawl. 

Speaking something older than truth, than earth,

I know no sleep like its deep rumbling silence

When I wear it's forever like a shawl 

Please wash away my face, my name. 

I know no sleep like its deep rumbling silence.

I’ll let the blood freeze in my veins 

Just please wash away my face, my name.

I know in reality I will drown but 

There is nothing safer than being small, being covered and

I have a feeling that this poem will be under construction for a few years to come but I like this incarnation a lot. I like that it can be read as "lungs collapse, hearts fail but water is always it is/ like a second falling into a century" or "like a second falling into a century/I will float in a slow roaming universe", I like that I can build on that idea with "I will float in a slow roaming universe/ when I wear its forever like a shawl." It surprised me that I was able to elaborate on my vague initial concept through repetition without coming off as monotonous. Now, whenever I come up with a line that refuses to grow into a poem I put it behind my ear for later. All I need is ten statements on strips of paper that I can jostle around, modifying the words until they fit together like a jigsaw, some times it stays as a pantoum but it can also morph into a different form entirely. I recommend it to anyone who's stuck in a rut. I should probably take the advice of Allen Ginsberg's professor and kill this particular darling but its so insistently useful, I might just let it stick around. 

*'Forever Like A Shawl' was recently featured in the January edition of Snake Skin along with two other poems. It feels so good to be able to shamelessly plug something I've written. Please go check it out!

 Reading List

Pantoum by John Ashbery

Pantoum of the Great Depression by Donald Justice

Parent's Pantoum by Carolyn Kizer