A Life: An Autobiography in Shaped Verse

I dabbled with writing poetry in various forms for many years. I was not at first drawn to any particular poetic form, but I most typically wrote free verse. In about 1991, I began to experiment with writing shaped verse utilizing the lozenge form. I quickly developed a self-imposed set of rules that required, among other things, that each poem have forty-nine words arranged in a diamond shape. In each lozenge, I was equally concerned with the sound of the verse when read aloud, the creation of a vivid mental image through the words used, and the actual appearance of the lozenge on the printed page. Several of my early lozenges concerned my childhood days, and my goal then became to write an autobiography in lozenges. I have now composed over a thousand of these poems. I have sometimes made other than biographical use of the lozenge form, including combining two or more of them into narratives, plays, and multi-lozenge poems. Examples of my various uses of the lozenge form, including my creation over time of a poetic autobiography, are contained in this book.

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