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Pantoum, a photo by Melissa Reese Etheridge on Flickr.

Here is another poetry lesson idea. Use this photo (or any photo that suits your fancy) to spark a writing idea. The following poem is by Sasha Steenson; I found this poem on the public web site http://www.poetryfoundation.org/.

Pantoum

Perhaps the universe is an extinguished building

with blue banners strung along

and the forest, more like a commodity

bordering bushes and asphalt.

something else to string our blue banners on.

Never was restoration swifter:

the leafless trees, the asphalt

less splintered and more splendid.

Never was restoration swifter

with its mightier solutions, 

less splintered and more splendid

snipers, dynamiters, and colorful bombs.

We please ourselves with mightier solutions,

picnics under blue spruces

snipers, dynamiters, colorful bombs

the guardians of what we might call "home rights."

At picnics, under blue spruces

we clamor after the news

and its employees, the guardians of "home rights"

"the media" mustering "one mind."

It's news,

the decision to nobly save rather than meanly lose

some pretense of mustering "one mind"

secures its truth.

The decision to nobly save rather than meanly lose 

our flag

secures its truth

as a squirrel secures its nuts by hiding them in the ground.

Our flag--

a souvenir of having been here before

a squirrel's nuts, deep in the ground.

But travel, travail, and The Method's mistakes

all souvenirs of having been here before,

haunt us and taunt us and call us names.

But travail, trave, and Method's mistakes

mark a different season, nuts rotting, bulbs blooming.

Each season haunts us and taunts us and calls us names

until finally the universe is an extinguished building,

a different season, nuts rotting, bulbs blooming

and the forest, a commodity.

The pantoum is a poetic form derived from the pantun, a Malay verse form: specifically from the pantun berkait, a series of interwoven quatrains.

The pantoum is a form of poetry similar to a villanelle in that there are repeating lines throughout the poem. It is composed of a series of quatrains; the second and fourth lines of each stanza are repeated as the first and third lines of the next. This pattern continues for any number of stanzas, except for the final stanza, which differs in the repeating pattern. The first and third lines of the last stanza are the second and fourth of the penultimate; the first line of the poem is the last line of the final stanza, and the third line of the first stanza is the second of the final. Ideally, the meaning of lines shifts when they are repeated although the words remain exactly the same; this can be done by shifting punctuatin, punning, or simply recontextualizing.

The pantoum is derived from the "pantun berkait," a series of interwoven quatrains. Victor Hugo often wrote pantoums. He sort of began a trend when other French writers began writing pantoums. Baudelaire also wrote a variety of pantoums.

Charles Pierre Baudelaire was a French poet born in 1821 and died in 1867. He was a notable essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe.

His most famous work, "The Flowers of Evil," expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the 19th century. Baudelaire's highly original style of prose-poetry influenced a whole generation of poets including Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimboud, and Stephane Mallarme among many others. He is credited with coining the term "modernity" to designate the fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in an urban metropolis, and the responsibility are has to capture that experience.