Examples of Different Forms

Here are two poems with the same topic, but different forms, and therefore different meanings. Look them over more and consider the way the differences in forms created differences in meaning. Think about how important good writing is to meaning, and consideration of the importance of form should be if you want to be a good writer.

Antichaos (Sapphic Verse)

The beautiful chaos of river flowing
As time you step out of, into, the living
Unchanging emergence of antichaos
Breaking on mud banks --

Is this the world, bright in the light of sunshine
That brings a remarkable living chaos
And deadly order to the continental
Flow as an earthquake?

The winds are drying and are bringing moisture
To lands the sun parched, and the atmosphere is
Unchanged and changed, bringing a breeze, a gentle
Breath, and then lightning.

The white hurricane on the seas are ordered,
An ocean, atmosphere together, swirling
In chaotic flows on the seas and landing
Hard on the dry land.

And living things, rivers of earth and sea crawl
Across the land, swim in the seas a chaos
That swirls into timeful emergent rivers
Crawling on mud banks.



Antichaos (Alcaics)

Flow river, chaos breaks on the banks, and you,
Time, living order, changing in change itself,
Break chaos up to order merging
Flows of the water with earthly order.

Bright sunshine killing, loving tenderness
Light brings to lands that flow on the liquid flow –
Hot magma moving lands now crashing –
Earthquakes are turning the land to chaos.

Dry winds are parching lands into deserts where
Cacti won’t live. Moisture comes on the winds and there
Rains change the land from death to living
Breath and the lightning will light the dark sky.

White hurricane of sea and air are in
Time flows of swirling chaos and ordering
Matrices breaking land with winds which
Bring to the land and to us the ocean.

Life burst from rivers – earth and the sea are now
One river swirling time. The smooth chaos will
Bring order, life emergent, water
Solid with crystals that make them crawl forth.