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This month the Poetry Sisters wrote Dansas. This form features an opening quintrain (5 lines) is followed by quatrains (4 lines), with a quintrain rhyme scheme of AbbaA and the quatrain bbaA.
My first drafts were odes to Autumn. Somewhere along the line, my repeating line showed up and the rest just…flowed. Our planet just keeps doing what it’s tilted to do, and all of the changes we’ve made in its/our climate are irreversible. There’s no going back. A hard truth to swallow as we (hopefully, with votes galore) work to put on the brakes and do less damage moving forward.
Here’s what the rest of the Poetry Sisters came up with this month:
Tricia @ The Miss Rumphius Effect
Tanita @ {fiction, instead of lies}
Sara @ Read Write Believe
Laura @ Laura Purdie Salas
Liz @ Liz Garton Scanlon
Kelly @ Kelly Ramsdell
Andi @ A Wrung Sponge
Jone has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup.
If you’re inclined to join us, next month we’re creating recipe poems! Your choice of form, length, meter, or topic, but each poem will be an assemblage of elements, using recipe text/cooking instructions to create …something. From a recipe for disaster, to your favorite aperitif, you have a month to craft your creation and serve it forth on November 25th.
A(nother) Year of Reading 
Mary Lee, the dansa poem seemed so intricate to me but I keep writing and revising until I got it right. Your poem on climate change is well-written with a great ending stanza. Thanks for the call to action that I truly believe in.
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Another great danza mentor poem! Yes, Mary Lee, may the abundance of votes (fingers and toes crossed) allow us to do less damage moving forward.
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The vocaublary in this is astounding. I started writing environmental poems, but they were all so depressing (as they should be, I suppose). I love the juxtaposition of what must happen and what can be changed.
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This is so logical and yet so emotional both at once (despite your statement about emotion!) The repetition of the refrain adds to the finality of your argument, pounding it home. Well crafted!
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Well done! But I do hold out hope that perhaps climate change can be slowed or reversed – but so much depends on that.
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I love how you do science poetry – clarity and logic juxtaposed with a refrain that evokes movement. This really worked, and it brings to mind the kind of work/dance that people do when there’s a big, big job – lift and shift, everyone reaching in with choreographed movements, doing their part, and turning the labor into a dance. The irreversible is already past; the job before us to change the steps of the next dance all together.
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It’s so interesting this week to see the different Dansa poems. I like “Seasonal change is our planet’s imperative” and all the rhyming you accomplished with such different and complicated words. That didn’t look easy.
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Wow! Great poem with an important message!
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Yep! Well written, time to shout it out.
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Wow, what a sad commemorative we have, sure hope we can put on the breaks–thanks for your powerful-truth filled poem.
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oooooh! A recipe poem–I think I can do that. I LOVE Marilyn Singer’s book of recipe poems, ‘Follow the Recipe.’ And, what I love about this dansa is that it packs and emotional punch with a rally cry for action. It makes me wonder what I can do right now. Thank you, Mary Lee.
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I love the way you clarify the difference between seasonal changes and the global changes that humans are causing–and you use so many delectable words to slam that message home!
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This form is amazing — In some of your other sisters’ poems, there is a light joy. Yet the form lends itself so well to the insistent tone of your poem. And of course, I love the content. People! Wake up! Thank you Mary Lee!
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I need more hours in the day! I wanted to do the dansa and here it is end of month. This is a powerful poem and you need to submit it to an ecology magazine.
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A somber dance with such a vital message, Mary Lee.
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