A while ago I wrote 80 neo-Keatsian odes, and now it’s time for 2 months of neo-Swinburnean “ballads.” I’ll try out the form on a series of themes: (1) moving book amazon seller from carpal syndrome to soul-body health; (2) interviewing poets in their own favorite wordsong forms about their own unconventional lifestyle choices; (3) re-envisioning paintings, dreams, religions, philosophies; (4) fortune-telling with noncompulsory scriptures; (5) moving from Sufi proverbs to immersion in new cultures: pre-Confucian China, Renaissance Italy, Russian symbolist lifescapes; (6) interviewing e.g. Wordsworth, Muhammad, Ruskin, George Eliot, van Gogh, Virginia Woolf, and my daughter Sarah.
Function follows form. What are the unsuspected functions of a melodious wordsong form that attracted you? Write in that vivid form and find out! My commentaries, or “blogatelles,” explore what I found.