[Newspoetry] Dirk's NYE poem constraints

[William Gillespie]

Wm--

(and other Newspoets)--

If I told you that a provisional title for the form was an
"annual"--would that help?

O.k. here's the scoop:

3 major constraints, the fourth was an afterthought:

1. 12 lines (one for each month of the year)

2. Rhyme scheme mirrors the rhyme scheme of the months: so January
rhymes with February; May = half-rhyme with July; September,
November, December = 2 syllable rhymes, with October = a 1 syllable
rhyme with the "ber" of the other three. In the second "stanza" of my
poem, I tried to duplicate the syllable counts better than I did in
the first "stanza" (so: the first couplet = a three syllable rhyme
etc.). Other lines = no rhymes (this caused some difficulty because
some of my original end-words had to be changed because they looked
as if they were supposed to be rhymes or half-rhymes)

So far, nothing too onerous in this form, but then comes constraint

3. each line's letter-count = the number of days in the month. So:
first line = 31 letters, second line 28 letters, etc. Spaces don't
count, punctuation don't count, numbers (as in the '80' of stanza 2)
do count (this not a Joe Futrelle ASCII 12-character poem thing).
This proved to be the real pain-inducing constraint which also
explains the sometimes curious syntax, diction, subject matter, etc.
I'm not sure I would do this form again, but who knows: I did it
twice already. Anyway, I thought it was an appropriate way to end the
poem-a-day  for a year site.

4. Title = 12 letters. Last minute addition, not sure it's that
important.

There you have it: the Annual (or Yearling, or Yearlet)--don't like
any of these proposed names, so if you've got a better one. And
remember that stanza 2 is a much more accurate version of what I was
shooting for. In my first attempt lines 5 & 7 appear to rhyme with
the last four lines and that's bad.