One of the “Sleepless in Alliance" overnight poem contests at Ohio Poetry Day introduced me to a poetic form I hadn't previously heard of, the "nested meditation". The nested meditation was invented by an Ohioan,
Kevin Anderson (no, not Kevin J. Anderson the SF writer; Keven Anderson the poet and psychologist working in Toledo), who has 76 of them in his book
Divinity in Disguise, 2003. (The title is from a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote, "Every human being is a divinity in disguise.)
Since then (
thanks, google) it's a form that seems to have been picked up by a number of other poets.
Here's a example from Anderson's book:
Do you have the time?
Do you have the time
of your life?
Do you have the time
of your life
or does someone else perhaps?
Do you have the time
of your life
or does someone else? Perhaps
it's later than you think.
Anderson gives the rules of the form in the appendix to
Divinity in Disguise, and there are a number of versions
elsewhere on the web. In brief, the rules are:
- The first stanza is a single line that, by itself, forms a complete sentence
- Each additional stanza adds repeats the previous one, then adds a single additional line, one which changes the meaning of the piece, so that the stanza, with all the lines read together, still reads as a complete sentence. (Or several complete sentences).
- Punctuation can be changed in a line from one stanza to the next, but not words or word order*
- Repeat for as many lines as desired.
Done well, each stanza mutates the sense of the previous sentence, changing or even reversing the meaning.
The examples I find scrolling around on the web are, indeed, mostly spiritual in nature, some religious, some meditations about the natural world, some elegies, but all of them more or less meditations, following the pattern Anderson had originally set. Here's one by Sharon Rollins (from
Dangerous Love, 2006):
We Can't
We can’t.
We can’t go on living.
We can’t go on living as if nothing has happened.
We can’t go on living as if nothing has happened. War, hunger, despair must be faced.
We can’t go on living as if nothing has happened. War, hunger, despair must be faced with peace, justice, and love.
But the form seems to be one that would be open to other types of content-- a clever poet could, I think, write a quite nice little narrative poem in the form. (Perhaps we'd need a new word for the form when it's not a meditation: one might call it a "nested progression" instead of a "nested meditation" when such works are not meditations)
So, here's my "nested progression" for you, a special for Hallowe'en:
I am.
I am
thirsty.
I am
thirsty
for your love.
I am
thirsty
for your lovely
blood.
I am
thirsty
for your lovely
blood
and you have not barred the door.
Happy Hallowe'en!
--
*In Anderson's rules, he also says that you shouldn't use homophones to mutate the meaning-- changing "there" to "they're" would be a rule-breaker. But then he admits that he sometimes does it himself. So it may be a flaw, but not a fatal flaw.
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