Joe

John Beach's fourth collection of poetry. This time around, the 20 terzanelle poems included are works of sequential fiction, which revolve around the life of a young boy. After Joe's mother moves half way around the world without him, Joe is transplanted into new surroundings and culture. There, he befriends a pig, and, within an old photograph, discovers what he believes to be a great mystery

The terzanelle is a French/Italian adaptation of the terza rima to the villanelle form. Each terzanelle is meant to be 19 lines long (ten syllables each), composed of five triplets with a concluding quatrain, and are written in iambic pentamater. I don't pay much attention to where my metrical feet are stepping, but I enjoy the puzzle-like nature of this form and the subtlety of the repeating lines, the variations in meaning. I also enjoy breaking the lines and changing punctuation.