The Unsung Blade

an exercise in alliteration

Photo by Rob Griffin on Unsplash

The unsung blade broke on stone
as sparks spilled and spun away
igniting the dry and dusty daylight
flecked with flagrant flying flashes
disappearing in a sun-dazed dance
of distant caterwauls of noonday sun
ascending awhile artfully uprisen.

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Note: I’ve been working my way through The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics by Lewis Turco (Fifth Edition, University of New Mexico Press, 2020). The above is my take on his take on the “six ways in which the stich of Anglo-Saxon prosody may alliterate.”

Each line of the poem (or two lines in the case of lines 5-6) illustrates one of the six ways enumerated by Turco.

Here’s a table showing how the Turco Categories and the Potter Poem line up:

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