Yay! Success! Success!

I have completed my rondeau, and quite a run-around the exercise gave me! To remind those kind of enough to read this blog, a rondeau is a French form of poetry which was set to music long ago. It is 15 lines consisting of this specific structure:

a
a
b
b
a

a
a
b
R

a
a
b
b
a
R

The 'R' stands for refrain which is taken from the first half of the first line of the poem. Each line, excepting for the refrain or half line, is eight syllables long; the refrain/half line is only four. When it came to rhyming I used both blatant, internal and/or off-rhymes.

A few things I will admit upfront: the needle of my creative juices is quivering near to nil; I do not write enough and so do not exercise the necessary muscles for poetry and creative writing. That's my own fault. My solution to a case of writer's, or rather, poet's block has always been to read my old poems and commence an editing frenzy. Inevitably this activity stirred my writing brain to produce something even if no more than a phrase. In this instance, I tweaked my customary writing prod and reworked an old poem into the rondeau's construction. The creative prod within this tweak is not all in the original may remain, in fact, the original's driving point may need to be forgotten all together in order to satisfy the rondeau's demands. While the original subject of my poem remains, the overall thrust is different and not simply due to the rhymes and beat count.

The original poem is named 'Ave Maria' and centers wholly on myself and my experience in the Catholic church, how Mary (and the song titled 'Ave Maria') moved my soul. It is a (clumsy) interpretation of my past feelings. This new poem still has the church as a theme but it specifies no one aspect nor focuses on 'I', instead it concentrates on a collective 'we' and how this body is the essence and the light of said church. Or at least that is what my latest clumsy attempt is about.