Spite

“Roll out that chicken wire, Frank.” Science would never have thought of the chicken wire.John Beach's sixth collection of poetry. The 35 terzanelle poems in this collection are about memory, what information we choose to store about the present (soon to become the past), and how we alter it each time that we think about it in the present. We do this consciously and subconsciously. It helps us to learn and to make better choices… or we can get completely lost in it.The terzanelle is a French/Italian adaptation of the terza rima to the villanelle form. Each terzanelle is meant to be 19 lines long (ten syllables each), composed of five triplets with a concluding quatrain, and are written in iambic pentamater. I don't pay much attention to where my metrical feet are stepping, but I enjoy the puzzle-like nature of this form and the subtlety of the repeating lines, the variations in meaning. I also enjoy breaking the lines and changing punctuation.