This, my second week in Denmark visiting my daughter and her family, I continued with my idea of writing more poetry in form. I flipped through the book my younger grandson, who had used it in third grade, had given me, A Kick in the Head: An Everyday Guide to Poetic Forms, and stopped on page 23, where I found the roundel form.The roundel, explains this book I adore for its accessibility and energetic illustrations, is an 11-line poem made of three stanzas of four lines, then three lines, then four lines respectively. And there’s a rhyme scheme:  abab bab abab. Finally, line four must be repeated as line 11.

Sitting at table where my grandsons were playing a game called Munchkin Apocalypse (after we ate our lunch purchased at Lagkagehuset, which translates to Spongecake House though there is much, much more on the shelves there–over a dozen or more kinds of breads and rolls and delicious looking pastries as well as very filling “protein” salads), I wrote down the pattern I’d be using to write a roundel:

XXXXXXa
XXXXXXb
XXXXXXa
XXXXXXb

XXXXXXb
XXXXXXa
XXXXXXb

XXXXXXa
XXXXXXb
XXXXXXa
XXXXXXb (is a repeat of line 4)

Satisfied from a delicious lunch and listening to the two boys play their game as I mapped out the form, I remembered that even in foreign countries with so much new to see and do, kids need time to be themselves and play the way they are used to playing. Thinking about this, I filled in words line by line describing the round of Munchkin Apocalypse that I had played with them the evening before. Really, what else would I have written about? Their voices and narration of their plays this afternoon in Denmark would have distracted me from anything else I might have thought to write about:

Here are my three stanzas:

I’m playing the game Munchkin Apocalypse
with my two strategic grandsons.
I scratch my head and purse my lips;
I’m not like them; this game’s complications are no fun.

The cards, especially the treasure ones, make them laugh:
Collapsible Toothbrush, Dehydrated Water, Arm-y surplus.
Apparently, if you are allowed three hands how lucky you’ve become.

There are social circles, too: Kid, Blogger, Militia and Scientist, power cards with tips
plus levels with scores and bonuses, and monsters to battle and out run.
Cards in play at all times called Seals that send you on unpleasant trips.
I’m not like these boys. This game’s complications are no fun!

****

You can see I’ve sometimes used half-rhymes rather than try for full rhymes. The game is full of words and I had lots of choices.

The boys went on to play a second round. My older grandson Toby exclaimed that he had pulled two treasure cards with words that according to him, I had to use in my poem:  “Solar-Powered Radio with Flashlight and Duck Call” and “15-Year Supply of Beer and Toilet Paper.”

Would either work as a title? I opted for “It Feels Like I Need a 15-Year Supply of Beer and Toilet Paper.”

It Feels Like I Need a 15-Year Supply of Beer and Toilet Paper

                                    With thanks to Toby and Rafe and the words from their game

I’m playing the game Munchkin Apocalypse
with my two strategic grandsons.
I scratch my head and purse my lips;
I’m not like them; this game’s complications are no fun.

The cards, especially the treasure ones, make them laugh:
Collapsible Toothbrush, Dehydrated Water, Arm-y surplus.
Apparently, if you are allowed three hands how lucky you’ve become.

There are social circles, too: Kid, Blogger, Militia and Scientist, power cards with tips
plus levels with scores and bonuses, and monsters to battle and out run.
Cards in play at all times called Seals that send you on unpleasant trips.
I’m not like these boys. This game’s complications are no fun!

***

More on the Roundel
The roundel is an English version of the French rondel, which is poetry in the tradition of  medieval French troubadour songs. The repeated refrain lines in a rondel create a circular motion in the poem so that it wraps back around itself. Chaucer had a version of the rondel in English and in the 19th century British poet Algernon Charles Swinburne invented his own variation, which he named the roundel. This is a shorter poem composed, as we know it, of a quatrain, a triplet and a quatrain, 11 lines using only two rhymes with the last line of the first stanza used again as the poem’s last line.

Here is one of Swinburne’s poems that is made up of three roundels:

Étude Réaliste
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

 I

A baby’s feet, like sea-shells pink,
   Might tempt, should heaven see meet,
An angel’s lips to kiss, we think,
   A baby’s feet.

Like rose-hued sea-flowers toward the heat
   They stretch and spread and wink
Their ten soft buds that part and meet.

No flower-bells that expand and shrink
   Gleam half so heavenly sweet
As shine on life’s untrodden brink
   A Baby’s feet.

   II

A baby’s hands, like rosebuds furled
   Whence yet no leaf expands,
Ope if you touch, though close upcurled,
   A baby’s hands.

Then, fast as warriors grip their brands
   When battle’s bolt is hurled,
They close, clenched hard like tightening bands.

No rosebuds yet by dawn impearled
   Match, even in loveliest lands,
The sweetest flowers in all the world—
   A baby’s hands.

   III

A baby’s eyes, ere speech begin,
   Ere lips learn words or sighs,
Bless all things bright enough to win
   A baby’s eyes.

Love, while the sweet thing laughs and lies,
   And sleep flows out and in,
Sees perfect in them Paradise.

Their glance might cast out pain and sin,
   Their speech make dumb the wise,
By mute glad godhead felt within
   A baby’s eyes.

Are you interested in trying this form? It seems to me to lead to joy and various kinds of merriment.

Give it a try and post your results, if you’d like, in the comment boxes here.