This week: The Dream Song with 18 lines! Edited by: eyestar~*  
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 Yay! I am happy to be a guest editor for this edition! WDC has been celebrating its 18th year Anniversary so as I scoured around to find a theme I found a poem form that uses 18 lines!  Let's have a peek!  Beware for this Dream Song form is not necessarily party- like.
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 The 18 line poem form I discovered is illustrated in John Barryman's works Dream Song.! It is verse with 3 sixains, 18 lines and can use meter, or rhyme. It has a free style feel to it.
 In the metric type, it is Accentual:
Lines 1,2, 4, 5 have 5 stresses,
Lines 3, 6 have 3 stresses
The 4 lines are longer and lines 3 and 6 are shorter so the rhythm is jerky.
 Rhymed: the rhyme varies from stanza to stanza with generally 3 rhymes per stanza. eg. abcabc, abccba, aabccb, abbacc etc.
Here is an example of the abc, bac rhyme in Dream Song by John Barryman:
"My framework is broken, I am coming to an end,
God send it soon. When I had most to say
my tongue clung to the roof
I mean of my mouth. It is my Lady’s birthday
which must be honored, and has been. God send
it soon.
I now must speak to my disciples, west
and east. I say to you, Do not delay
I say, expectation is vain.
I say again, It is my Lady’s birthday
which must be honoured. Bring her to the test
at once.
I say again, It is my Lady’s birthday
which must be honoured, for her high black hair
but not for that alone:
for every word she utters everywhere
shows her good soul, as true as a healed bone,—
being part of what I meant to say." 1
 John Berryman (1914-1972} was a brilliant scholar, professor and influential poet whose innovative writing was crucial in the growth of the Confessional poetry movement of the time. His innovative book 77 Dream Songs in 1964 won him the Pullitzer Prize and established him as an important original American poet.
Before the 1950's it was considered taboo and anti literary to write about individual experiences with mental illness, sensuality and suicide. The Confessional Movement grew because of his famous work.
The 385 dream songs are sonnet like poems in a style he invented for a large range of material and to express personal emotions. It was quite different for the time, with its "fractured syntax, slangy diction, high lyricism and low comedy" 2. He stirred up a lot of controversey with his themes and many works.
He had a wealth of emotional trauma to draw from as well as he never recovered from his father's suicide outside his window, and struggled with alcohol and emotional instability and depression, even while he was a brilliant teacher. He eventually jumped from a bridge to his death in 1972.  In his later songs he wrote much of his struggle to come to terms with his father's suicide:
In "Dream Song #143", he wrote, "That mad drive wiped out my childhood. I put him down
while all the same on forty years I love him".
In "Dream Song #145", he also wrote :
"I cannot read that wretched mind, so strong
& so undone. I've always tried. I–I'm
trying to forgive
whose frantic passage, when he could not live
an instant longer, in the summer dawn
left Henry to live on."
John's influence gave rise to a new wave of expression. His frank style influenced authors like Anne Sexton, Robert Lowell and later Sylvia Plath, among others. A great legacy indeed. Imagine what we might not have been able to write freely about with out these brave forunners? 
Thanks for reading!
Interesting Sources for more details.
quote 1 and 2 from
http://poetscollective.org/poetryforms/tag/18-lines/
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/john-berryman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dream_Songs
https://study.com/academy/lesson/john-berryman-biography-poems-suicide.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Berryman
Thank you for your kind responses! 
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#2163230 by Not Available. |
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Depression warning, read with caution
#2161890 by Beth S |
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A Terzanelle poem about a friend that met demise through an overdose
#2080905 by Warped Sanity  |
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#2146101 by Not Available. |
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Are you up to trying to write a Dream Poem? Or do you have a favourite author who writes of experiences with depression, suicide, etc. that perhaps has inspired or made you feel so not alone? Please share if you like.
Thank you for your kind responses to my last letter "Poetry Newsletter (August 22, 2018)" !
Elizabeth
I am also Canadian, and this is the first I'm hearing of Anne Hebert. Thank you for sharing this! I already added some of her poetry books (English translations, my French is shameful) to my library list.
LOL. Yep. It has been a while since I have read French too.
Monty 
Thanks for the introduction to a poet that I never heard of, I will have to a bit of research. So many favorites it is hard to pick one... Perhaps Thomas Buchanan Read (Sheridan's Ride)
I will have to check it out as I have never heard of him. 
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Poetry: September 19, 2018 Issue [#9121]
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