After July’s longish form, we thought it might be time to take a break in August with a short poetry form called the sevenling. But you’re not off the hook: everything you know about metaphor, connection, and structure is still important. And like July’s poetry slam, we’re going to start by reading a poem by another poet, Anna Akhmatova.
He loved three things alone:
White peacocks, evensong,
Old maps of America.
He hated children crying,
And raspberry jam with his tea,
And womanish hysteria.
… And he married me.
Like Akhmatova, you’ll be writing a poem in seven lines to participate in this month’s slam. The form was named and used as a teaching structure by Roddy Lumsden, and poets like Sherman Alexie have written sevenlings. So let’s break the structure of a sevenling down so that you can write your own!
What’s in a sevenling?
A sevenling doesn’t require you to write in rhyme or meter (although you’re welcome to), but it does have a couple form and content rules for you to follow. Let’s check them out.
Form
A sevenling has – you guessed it – seven lines. These lines are grouped in three stanzas: a 3-line stanza, another 3-line stanza, and a 1-line stanza.
Honestly, that’s it for form. The content rules are what add complexity to the sevenling.
Content
What do sevenlings and David Foster Wallace have in common? They love three-item lists. A properly written sevenling contains two three-item lists and a one-liner that affects how you see those lists. Let’s talk a little about how that works.
The first list is contained in the first three-line stanza of the poem. You could have one item per line, or you could bunch them all together into one line, but a reader should be able to find the items. They don’t have to be tangible. You could write something like:
I know this about you:
your hair smells like sunlight,
your hands are strong wires and your feet, mallets
Or you could set up a completely different poem like this:
Memories, like dreams
chase me; I catch only
deja vu
Notice how in each sample stanza you can find three “things”? Yeah. You’ll be doing that. And then you’ll be doing it again for the second stanza. A good sevenling sets up a contrast between the first and second stanzas, like Akhmatova did with “things he loves” and “things he hates.”
The final, one-line, stanza resolves (or plays up) the difference between your lists. It doesn’t have to explain the poem, but it should give the reader a solid hook to base an interpretation on.
Summary
Ever read the haiku that goes
five syllable line
a seven syllable line
a green blade of grass?
The summary of how to write a sevenling looks pretty similar. So here’s the rules, in short form.
- A three line stanza containing three things
- A three line stanza containing three (contrasting) things
- A one-line stanza that resolves or heightens the contrast
And boom: you’ve got a sevenling. Now add it to the grid!
About the author:
Rowan submitted exactly one piece of microfiction to YeahWrite before being consumed by the editorial darkside. She spent some time working hard as our Submissions Editor before becoming YeahWrite’s Managing Editor in 2016. She was a BlogHer Voice of the Year in 2017 for her work on intersectional feminism, but she suggests you find and follow WOC instead. In real life she’s been at various times an attorney, aerialist, professional knitter, artist, graphic designer (yes, they’re different things), editor, secretary, tailor, and martial artist. It bothers her vaguely that the preceding list isn’t alphabetized, but the Oxford comma makes up for it. She lives in Portlandia with a menagerie which includes at least one other human. She tells lies at textwall and uncomfortable truths at CrossKnit.
