Weekend Mini-Challenge: Etheree(al)

© Diana Matisz, All Rights Reserved. Used with permission.

Happy weekend, and welcome Toads and followers; hedgewitch here with a striking photo generously contributed by the gifted Diana Matisz,  and another obscure form to lay on your plates today. 

During the course of my time with the Imaginary Garden, many of our resourceful members and contributors, especially Kerry O'Connor, have introduced me to a wide variety of forms, mostly short, all challenging and almost all equally rewarding. I've been racking my brain for this mini-challenge, as the sheer abundance already presented here is (literally) formidable.

Kerry kindly supplied me with her compendium of forms from past articles, and it was daunting, but very helpful in eliminating multiple possibilities, leaving me pretty much back where I started, pulling out what few strands of hair I have left.

Then, while browsing through some of my older stuff, I found a form that I think has so far not been featured.  It's called the etheree, and is named after an Arkansas poet  about whom I could find almost zero information, Etheree Taylor Armstrong (1918-1994.)

The etheree is an unrhymed syllable counting form, relentlessly rational, and seemingly childishly simple. You begin with a first line of one syllable, and continue for ten lines increasing the syllable count by one each line. Diagramming in syllables, this is what you get,  line by line: 1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9/10.

That's it. (If you'd like to skip to the chase, just scroll down to the bolded blue section below for the nuts and bolts of the challenge.)

Sounds ridiculously easy, doesn’t it? No rhyme, no meter, no tricky iambs and such, just a few consecutive lines that are usually used to unfold a single thought or image. The etheree is often compared to a flower gradually opening. All I can say is, writing a serious one will give you new respect for the mechanics of flowers.  

The fun of this form is snapping words and syllables together like Legos, so play around and build something, and if ten lines aren't enough there are variants to explore, like repeating the pattern for multiple stanzas, even reversing it in a mirror image style (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, /10,9,8,7,,6,5,4,3,2,1.)

Here is an example of my first etheree, which some of you may remember:

Melancholy

Brown

twisting

liquid knots

ashen sorrel

all tied with shadow

melting in the mind wrap

rolling up the bruise of stones

the soft erasure, tumbled cells,

skull's last tears, falling where earth swallows

the small rain that runs off a concrete heart.

 ~April 2013

© joyannjones

The Challenge: Write an etheree as described above (a ten line poem with a focused theme, beginning with one syllable and adding a syllable per line till line ten is reached) or any variant of one. I know you can all count to ten, but for those to whom such syllable counting forms are unfriendly, I offer the option of writing to the word ethereal, and ask that you follow the spirit of the etheree by making your free verse example revolve around a single image or thought, not exceeding twenty lines.

The very talented photographer and poet Diana Matisz,(on flick'r as Avatress) of the blog Life Through Blue Eyes, has graciously given us permission to use her photo at the top of this page for illustrating the challenge. (Diana's work is also available for purchase in many forms at her Redbubble store.) Thanks so much, Diana!

If you decide to use this image, please include proper attribution and credit, as we always do for all our contributors here at IGWRT.  

Have at it, Toads! As always, the only caveats whether form or free verse, are that your submission be a new one written specifically for this challenge, and that you include a link back to the Garden.