Informal forms

C.K. Williams developed and, I think, beat into the ground a pretty interesting 8 line form that, when matched with his long line and wacked diction, did more than a few neat things. My go-to example of this technique is "The Modern" from Flesh & Blood.

Its skin tough and impliable as scar, the pulp out of focus, weak, granular, powdery, blank,
this tomato I’m eating—wolfing, stuffing down: I’m so hungry—is horrible and delicious.
Don’t tell me, I know all about it, this travesty-sham; I know it was plucked green and unripe,
then was locked in a chamber and gassed so it wouldn’t rot till I bought it but I don’t care:
I was so famished before, I was sucking sweat from my arm and now my tomato is glowing inside me.
I muscle the juice through my teeth and the seeds to the roof of my mouth and the hard,
scaly scab of where fruit met innocent stem and was torn free I hold on my tongue and savor,
a coin, a dot, the end of a sentence, the end of the long improbable utterance of the holy and human.

Lines 6 & 7 tilt the whole shebangabang toward its conclusion. It's deceptively complex in terms of the syntactic suspension it creates. I've tried to replicate this effect more than a few times and ended up with short poems built from long sentences with nary the sharp syntax-matched-to-epiphanic-moment effect Chuck here pulls off. Serves one right for imitating / flattering another's form.

Tonight's question then I guess is whether you have a form you love to love, to hate, or to shamelessly practice in the privacy of your own desk-space. Mirror poems, endwords that finish one line as they begin another, the dreaded double abecdarian - hmm, I wonder if the Double Abecedarians would be a good band name? - and plus where does voice couple with this notion of new / adapted forms? They seem distinct to me, although I'm not sure how much.

Time to settle into bed with I think three Oreos, milk, and Ashley VanDoorn's manuscript "Wonderlust." The Oreos are to help me understand the poems, like bud and fireworks.