Selected Ballads, Villanelles, Couplets, Tanka Sequences, Cinquains & Triplets
A Collection of Wayne's Best
Ballads, Villanelles, Couplets, Tanka Sequences, Cinquains and Triplets.
“Selected Ballads, Villanelles, Couplets, Tanka Sequences, Cinquains & Triplets” is a selection of the best of each of these poetic styles from the author’s previous 8 books of poetry. These older forms of poetry have been there for centuries. But, fewer and fewer poets are writing in these constricted styles. However, in reality, each of these forms carries their own strength and weakness. It is a challenge to leverage each style (that applies to free verse also), to explore and maximize the power of poetic thoughts. The selections here are the result of this effort.
Selected Sonnets
A Collection of Wayne's
Best Sonnets.
“Selected Sonnets.” Historically, the author wrote 341 sonnets, and only 136 were chosen to be included in the previous 8 poetry books. Out of these 136, only 84 are selected in this book. After finalizing the poem "Tortoise," a Shakespearean sonnet, the author began to ponder, "Is he a Christian, Muslim or a Buddhist? Maybe he is a preacher, imam, rabbi, or a monk. What would be your guess?" As written in T.S. Eliot’s “Journey of the Magi”: “Were we led all that way for Birth or Death? / I had seen birth and death. But had thought they were different: this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. We returned to our places.”
Heart's Thread
Heart’s Thread is a 1,162 line poem consisting of 166 rhyme royal stanzas, a rhyming stanza form introduced to English poetry by Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400). Chaucer is commonly known as the “Father of English Literature.” He
invented this 7 line ababbcc rhyme royal stanza which he used to write parts of “The Canterbury Tales” in the 14th
century. This ancient rhyme royal scheme forms the back drop for the tale of “Heart’s Thread.”
Every life is distinct, every journey is unique. This one is no different. Through ups and downs, illnesses and recoveries,
defeats and triumphs; unfold before you in the style of an autobiographical book-length poem.
One life, the never-ending journey of one soul, a fulfillment of a childhood dream:
finding his mother, like the baby elephant, Dumbo.
Selected Villanelles
A Collection of Wayne's
Best Villanelles.
For those who love villanelles.
New and Selected Ballads
“The loss of these tastes [for poetry and music] is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to…” (a partial quote by Charles Darwin). A ballad is a poetic form that is musical. In this book, the author tried to rekindle these tastes. In addition to the selected previous ballad poems, there are four old stories from “Ovid’s Metamorphoses” that the author recaptured and rewrote in ballad form and wove a “bridge” to reconnect them to the books, plays and movies in our recent memory; such as “Arachne” and “Charlotte‘s Web” (by E. B. White); “Pyramus and Thisbe”, the original “Romeo and Juliet”; “Pygmalion” to “My Fair Lady”; and more in “Orpheus.” These four newly written ballads were nominated for the Pushcart prize contest.