What style of poetry is this?

[omen]

I got this new book called Life's Game the other day and its a great read. It's all written in poems that line up to 31 spaces each line and they rhyme. its amazing! there is a sample of this form of poetry at the book's website

http://www.lifesgame31.com

Ive been trying to figure out what style these poems are written in and can't find anything on the web that comes close. Is this a new form of poetry?

 

[moog]

dude what. on the page you link it shows another link the style. you even BASICALLY TOLD US what the style was!

http://www.lifesgame31.com/what-are-lines-of-31

in case you didnt see it

i wont lock, so lets change the discussion to the Styles of Poetry unless someone wants to elaborate on the discussion of line 31.

 

[Venetia]

well no moog, that page just tells you why it's called lines of 31 ...

... there are 31 slots for characters on each line.

but thats not the STYLE of poetry.


warning: venetia is a dork


it's mostly an [abcb] simple 4-line rhyme scheme but there is no specific syllabic meter.

it's not any classical style--because it only works with a fixed-pitch font. Put it in a variable-width font (like verdana), and it loses its shape, and becomes simply a rather amateurish set of quatrains.

poetry styles are usu. categorized by numbers of syllables, not letters. because though "weight" and "pardon" both have 6 letters, "weight" has 1 syllable and "pardon" has 2--which means the lines:
"whats your weight" (17 characters, 3 syllables)
and
"I beg your pardon" (17 characters, 5 syllables)
will not mesh together lyrically.
They sound awkward when paired.


So like:

TO MINDFUL CHILDREN OF TOMORROW
THAT ARE HERE IN LIFE NOW TODAY
BORN WITH THE POTENTIAL ABILITY
TO UTILIZE WHAT THESE POEMS SAY

sounds like:

da dum da dum da dum da dum dum
da da dum da dum da dum dum
dum da da dum dum da da dum da dum
da dum da dum da da dum da dum

(which is not very lyrical obv.)
(also it reaches ... "now today" is redundant. rhyming "say" and "today" is ... fairly amatuerish. etc.)



some styles it SHARES characteristics with ...

shape poetry
in this the lines of the poem and the words/spacing form shapes (like of a bee or a sun).
typically, however, the poem is also themed around the shape (so for example, the poem would have bee metaphors or be an ode to the sun).
the theme of every stanza involves ... life, nature, spirituality.
idk what that has to do with rectangles.


jueju (chinese) or onji (japanese)
this kind of poem was dev'd in the east, where they use single characters for each syllable, and each line has an equal number of syllables and 4 lines each stanza, meaning it would all line up in a uniform rectangle.
to look like (where the #'s are characters):
# # # #
# # # #
# # # #
# # # #
this style does not translate to english however b/c we spell out syllables.


sator square
a shape-based poem -- that is not actually a poem. it's an acrostic palindrome which reads the same (backwards and/or forward) all around in a clockwise fashion. but is shaped like a square. (these "31" poems do not follow that dynamic other than the rigid shape).
S A T O R
A R E P O
T E N E T
O P E R A
R O T A S


but in the end you can only really categorize it as:

free verse
poetry that has no meter but follows a form of some variety.
this is a "contemporary" style but is often frowned upon because it feels rather lazy.

 

[Venetia]

oh lord it makes me feel shitty for even writing all that :specs:


tbf english was always my best subject, even if science was my favorite

but I can't write poetry for shit