Former poet laureate Billy Collins invented the paradelle as a joke. Intended as a satire on poetic forms, poets have begun writing them in all seriousness, starving for new forms to try. I am no different. I too feel that hunger. So I came up with one of my own, the sympoe. Now, just because someone thought up something does not mean it was never thought of before. Even Darwin’s idea of the origin of species was thought of originally by a farmer just trying to pass the days in the field by using a few brain cells. Darwin even acknowledged that he wasn’t the first when he heard of the farmer. Of course, I’m no Darwin. Don’t do a “You’re no Jack Kennedy” line on me. But what I am saying is this: the sympoe seems so, well, sim-ple, that it HAS to have been thought of before. But I can’t find it anywhere.

From Greek sym (together) + poiein (to create), the sympoe is a linked poem using two metrically linked stanzas of unlimited but equal length. It rhymes A1bbccdd…A2A1 in the first verse and A2xxyyzz…A1A2 in the second, where A1 and A2 are full repeating lines and link to its sister stanza.

With regards to subject matter, both stanzas must describe two distinct events but with similar qualities. For this purpose it is a narrative poem, and from what I can best tell, it is a dramatic poem, though I believe satire must also work even if it hasn’t worked for me yet.

“Loss” is the first sympoe to achieve publication. It is written in iambic tetrameter. Both stanzas are about an estranged family member of two separate families. In the first stanza the character is not the estranged; in the second it is.

Loss
Pralaton, January 2007, p. 15

And who is he I used to know,
Before partition broke his back?
His world had ripped and began to ache;
He liked the life he lived before
And left to try his luck once more.
We stood confused, the tired, unwell,
Too old to work, too young to school.
The call was quick; its distance kills.
Another world, high in the hills.
A name on stone, a stone in snow.
And who is he I used to know?

A name on stone, a stone in snow.
Three letters born from family’s past.
I’m not the first; I named the last.
I left my son in his mother’s steer
For springtime days in life’s full year.
My mother’s hand holds all her might;
My sisters both pray to the right.
I flew back west when Father died
And claimed the scraps of childhood pride.
And who is he? I used to know.
A name on stone, a stone in snow.

Although the stanza can be of any length, the poet needs to think carefully. If the stanzas of a sympoe are too long, the poet risks losing the beauty of the linking lines; if the stanzas are too short, the poet risks a stanza that is abrupt and choppy. Eleven or thirteen line sympoe stanzas seem to work best, keeping in mind that one couplet (or three lines) cannot serve as a progression of narrative but as its conclusion. Finally, in the ones that I have written, it always seems to work best to write the repeating lines, then choose which couplet goes in which stanza, and then write the rest of the poem.

I also published a sympoe in trochaic tetrameter. York River was host two two battles: the American Civil War and the American Revolution each had their Battle of Yorktown. Distinct, but similar.

York River, Witness to War
The Sligo Journal, Issue No 1, Spring 2011, p.45

(1781)
South of town and towards the bay
Peaceful York meanders onward;
Washington keeps moving inward.
Battles won are now forgotten –
Ripe Cornwallis feels so rotten;
Naval forces stop his movements.
Heavy storms increase York’s currents.
Food is scarce, the rations nothing;
Starving soldiers everywhere dying.
Reinforcements led by Clinton
Have no trail to march or tread in.
Winding river milks the day
South of town and towards the bay.

(1862)
Winding river milks the day;
Scattered lines, Magruder’s prattle
Fools the union into battle.
Johnston strengthens his defenses
While McClellan digs his trenches.
Slaves who talk of wagons riding
Must have seen the soldiers hiding.
Stoneman quickly chases after
Johnston’s men so full of laughter.
Franklin sails straight up the shoreline,
Weary of the roughened sunshine.
South of town and towards the bay,
Winding river milks the day.