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While re-filing my ridiculously large collection of drafts, correspondence, notes, writings of others, etc., in hopes of finally truly getting mine house in order, I came across a few items worth posting here–or, re-posting if I’ve had them here previously.  One is the following essay:

THE CLASSIFICATION OF POEMS BY SIZE

The approximate size of each kind of poem should be clear, but to pin it down a book-length poem would be the length of any normal or semi-normal book–that is, from 24 to a zillion pages long. A chapter-length poem would be more than a page long but less than 24 pages long. As for a page-length poem, I had in mind a standard book-page, which is about six inches by nine inches. Half that for the half-page poem, and a quarter of it for the quarter-page poem. I’m assuming the kind of page I have in mind would hold around forty lines of conventional solitextual (solely textual) poems. A half-page solitextual poem by that reasoning would be twenty lines or less in length, but I break logic with my definition, making such poems sixteen lines or less in length. The standard example would be the fourteen-line sonnet. In other words, for me, a half-page poem is more or less the size of a sonnet. A quarter-page poem is eight lines of the equivalent, or less, in length.  Each of these kinds of poems has a bottom limit, too: a page-length poem is over sixteen lines or the equivalent in length, a half-page poem over eight lines or the equivalent in length, a quarter-page poem over … twenty-five syllables, or the equivalent, in length–because a minimalist poem is any poem twenty-five syllables or less in length. Such as a
haiku or lyriku.

Because of the importance of kemular poems to me, I split the kemular poem category into three parts: maxikemular poems, microkemular poems and nanokemular poems.  The first are more than three words (which total less than ten syllables) in length, the second three words (which total less than ten syllables), but more than a single word (of no more than three syllables) in length. At this point, the sizes I’ve given for the three minimalist poem divisions are extremefully tentative–pure guesses as to what would be most appropriate–although the smallest division is probably set.

Strictly speaking, a haiku could only be in the maxikemular category. The lyriku could be a minimalist poem of any size. Those who have seldom if ever ventured beyond the world of Modern Haiku will probably question the value of my three divisions–if not the value of my entire scheme. But I think exciting things are going on, in quantity, in all kemular poetry divisions. In any case, if my extra three classifications are cumbersome, there’s no need to use them: the term, “kemular poem,” covers any poem in any of them.

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