Fourteener

Meter: Iambic heptameter
Rhyme Scheme: That of any other sonnet.
Volta, That of selected sonnet form.


A Fourteener is used by some as an alternate term for sonnet.
However, poets have also used the term to mean a sonnet in iambic heptameter:
 fourteen lines, each with seven iambs (fourteen syllables).
You can use the rhyme scheme of any sonnet form you choose.
The problem with the fourteener is that you could just as easily break each
line into one line of iambic tetrameter (four iambs), followed by a line of iambic trimeter (three iambs). At that point, you're actually writing in common meter, or ballad meter.
No longer is the poem slow and introspective: it becomes a jaunty, sing-song little number.
Once we get beyond the Alexandrine ( Iambic hexamter), the lines tend to crumble into smaller sections under their own weight.
Here are some well known songs in ballad meter.

"Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see."

"There is a house in New Orleans they call the Rising Sun,
it's been the ru[in] of many [a poor] boy, and God I know I'm one."

"I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony,
I'd like to buy the world a Coke and keep it company."

This shouldn't dissuade you from trying your hand at the Fourteener form,
but you should work to justify the length of the lines by filling them with imagery and beautiful figurative language.


Example poem:

Dearborn, Michigan  Circa 1973

Detroit's hey-day. Navy done. Years as a cop and student done.
Before the internet. I was developing time-share code.
This was supposed to be our time- and when work consumed me
She left. We split our rentals, split the kids and then she split.

She followed breasts with teasing cleavage into tavern's dark.
The red and blue of neon beer signs turned the smoke now high
above the green felt table to a bluish Christmas mist.
The betting stopped; each man wanted what I had caressed and kissed.

A humming filled my head, my breathing ceased.  She needed more
she said; Yet now, tonight she is without and trolling bars.
I'd cried myself dry by now, but the want and loneliness
slammed to the surface.  Folding wining cards I scooped my cash.

Adjusting to the dimness she saw me, turned to depart.
I begged her to let me be her night-- then went home and cried.

© Lawrencealot - September, 2012