Just a Dint

Spring has dinted winter’s doom – to the delight of wind-blown clouds;
little stirs in snow-stricken woods, save fragile webs.

Rooks in flocks forge homeward, fresh-snapped twigs in beaks,
coal-black and burnished, in branches chattering.

Before March gales come galloping, graceful catkins dance
beneath a pale and partly faded, pink half-hearted sun.

Kim M. Russell, 23rd February 2024

Image by Ganna Aibetova on Unsplash

It’s Thursday and time to meet the bar at the dVerse Poets Pub, with Björn, our barkeep, and a host of wonderful poets. We are revisiting a form dVerse tried more than 10 years ago.

Björn has summarised the form for us, which originates from Germanic (Anglo-Saxon) and Latin, mostly from France and Italy. As he says, the Germanic tradition of poetry was much more suited for storytelling: no syllable counting or worrying about rhyme; more rhythm and alliteration.

The alliterative verse has four stressed syllables per line, whereby the first three syllables alliterate, while the fourth does not. There is also a caesura between the first two stressed syllables and the last two, although, if you want to, you can add a line break or punctuation to make the caesura clear.

Björn has given us an example of his own alliterative verses for inspiration, in which he highlighted the stressed syllables in bold to emphasise the rhythm.

43 thoughts on “Just a Dint”

  1. You had me at the first line, Kim, so perfect the phrasing, “Spring has dinted winter’s doom,” and alliterative rhythm: an announcement that make all our spring-longing hearts to rejoice!

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  7. Lots of lovely alliteration here! To my ear, your lines two and four are perfect. I think we both had the same problem with the number of stressed words, reducing them to four in each line. And I couldn’t prevent the stressed words giving the phrase its rhythm. No idea how to do that.

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  8. Ooooh you’ve conquered the form so well, Kim! I especially love this small detail you’ve added “fresh-snapped twigs in beaks,” – adds sound and visual. The alliteration is beautifully done.

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      1. Thanks!

        A few things that might be of interest to you.

        First, I have a “journal of alliterative verse” that I started releasing this winter, and will be putting out again on the 15th of this month and once every quarter thereafter. That’s in magazine format, as a PDF file. You can read the call for submissions here. You and other dverse people might find that of interesst.

        Second, my site also has an email discussion forum for people interested in alliterative verse. It’s pretty active and supportive. If you’d be interested in something like that, feel free to join. The join link is https://gaggle.email/join/forgotten-ground-regained@gaggle.email

        Finally, Tolkien scholar Dennis W. Wise, recently published Speculative Poetry and the Modern Alliterative Revival:  A Critical Anthology, a book which literally contains more original alliterative verse by more poets than anything published since Gutenberg invented the printing press. Fun stuff!

        Thanks,

        Paul

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