My Poetry Year: Entry #14

In which Your Humble Blogger answers a question that has undoubtedly been plaguing everyone's thoughts: What is tetractys?

"A Euclidian Birthday (An Experiment with Tetractys)"

Ten
was when
I received
my first gift card
and cried, realizing I had grown up.

* * *

Sometimes, I get the feeling that writing poetry is a lot like playing sudoku: Basically, you're trying to fit the pieces you're allotted to work with into a certain form. Out of curiosity, I was browsing the Interwebs one night in search of a different type of poetry to play with; most writers, if they want to work in a form, seem to go with well-known ones, like sonnets. I went to one of my favorite reference sites and clicked on the type of poetry that appeared to have the most unusual-looking name in the list: tetractys.

If you're not one for clicking on links, tetractys is all about the number of syllables in each line: one, then two, then three, then four, and finally ten. Kinda fun, since one, two, three, and four (everyone start singing with Feist now!) all together add up to ten. That numerical sequence and the number ten were apparently of great interest to the mathematician Euclid, hence the title of the poem.

Since that poem is so short, here's another throwaway pseudo-haiku that doesn't merit its own post but is a little bit of fun anyway:

"God as an Embarrassed Parent (or, Why Eve Was Created):

I gift him with speech,
and what name does his mouth shape?
Blue-footed Booby.