CPC POETRY CHALLENGE PREVIEW: The Friday Fling Goes To Hell!
This is a special preview for the CPC Friday Fling poetry challenge.
Poems should be posted there after the challenge opens Thursday evening at 9 PM EDT.
Friday Fling #249 for September 13th 2013
Last week we investigated Heaven.
This week it’s Friday the 13th and so…the other place.
What is your poetic conception or Hell?
Did you ever have an experience which made you think “this is Hell!”?
Or how about Hell as the setting for a story poem
or a reflection on the consequences of certain life actions or situations?
The ballad format might work best for any story or reflections related to Hell.
According to ShadowPoetry.com,
A ballad is a short narrative poem with stanzas of two or four lines and usually a refrain.
The story of a ballad can originate from a wide range of subject matter
but most frequently deals with folk-lore or popular legends.
They are written in straight-forward verse, seldom with detail,
but always with graphic simplicity and force.
Most ballads are suitable for singing and,
while sometimes varied in practice,
are generally written in ballad meter,
i.e., alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter,
with the last words of the second and fourth lines rhyming.
For our purposes, if you have trouble with meter, just do what pleases you.
Here is an example of a ballad (yours need not be this long):
The Ballad of Marian Blacktree
Refrain:
Oh, do you know the mountain road
That leads to yonder peak?
A few will walk that trail alone,
Their dreams they go to seek.
(I)
One such was Marian Blacktree,
A lowly sheperdess,
And courting her was Tom, the swain,
Who loved her nonetheless.
(II)
A thought occurred to Marian
While watching o’er her sheep,
And gazing at the mountain thus
She nodded off to sleep.
(Refrain)
(III)
That night she came to Tom and said
She longed to know the sky.
“I’m weary of this valley, love,
I want to learn to fly!”
(IV)
Poor Thomas did not want to leave,
This valley was all he knew.
So when she turned and left him there
Her heart, it broke in two.
(Refrain)
(V)
Her faithful swain did track her,
All night the trail led on,
And finally at the mountain top
He looked, but she was gone.
(VI)
As morning broke and lit the sky
An eagle he did see:
It circled ’round him thrice and cried.
He knew now she was free.
(Refrain)
Copyright © 2001 Dendrobia
This week the Friday Fling writes Hellish ballads!
Be sure to save time to read and comment warmly
about your fellow Pals’ Beelzebubbian ballads.
Then go turn Friday the 13th and the weekend following it
into something decidedly un-Hell-like!
