Title: dance beat into shape
Rating: General
Length: 100
Author notes: Ovid's Amores 1.1 moved into my head in high school Latin and still ain't left.
Summary: The limits of the art form are the art form.


I told people, before,
who didn't understand why I like sonnets
or drabbles,
that constraints inherent to the art form
help to shape the work.
The poem, unlimited,
approaches infinity.
Where Ovid's hexameter marches
and his elegaic couplets,
like Hephaistos Jewelrysmith, limp,
where blank verse dances,
free verse soars.
Choosing words for rhyme
and rhythm
narrows the poem
to one mazed—amazing?—thread.
Choosing one hundred words exactly
to say three things at once
guides its flight:
not too near the sea or sun.

This poem is not a sonnet.
I had fewer limits then.

But it is a drabble.