{"id":137990656,"date":"2025-12-08T11:37:06","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T17:37:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/?p=137990656"},"modified":"2025-12-08T11:37:06","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T17:37:06","slug":"scala-decima-inversa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/scala-decima-inversa\/","title":{"rendered":"Scala Decima Inversa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In May, I invented a new form I called the <a href=\"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/new-poetry-form-the-scala-decima\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Scala Decima<\/a>. Yesterday, I thought it might be fun to introduce its mirror twin, the <strong>Scala Decima Inversa<\/strong>. The rules are simple: Go down the staircase backwards.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>10 lines;<\/li>\n<li>10 syllables per line (iambic pentameter if you can manage it);<\/li>\n<li>rhyme on syllable that corresponds to the last line number (i.e., the tenth syllable of the first line sets the rhyme; ninth syllable of second line, eighth syllable of third line, seventh syllable of fourth line, and so on continue it);<\/li>\n<li>the rhyming syllable can occur anywhere within a word and need not be the whole word.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>City Noise<\/h2>\n<p><em>An example of the <strong>Scala Decima Inversa<\/strong> poetry form. This was harder than I expected it to be, and not a pleasure to write. But I would never want to ask or suggest you try a thing I wasn&#8217;t willing to do, myself. Good luck with this.<\/em><\/p>\n<pre class=\"poem\">\r\nWarm, gentle rain that muffles city <strong>streets<\/strong>\r\nbelow - incessant hustle, noise. <strong>E-t<\/strong>rain's\r\non time. A whoosh, a thousand <strong>feet <\/strong>rush in,\r\nsoles clattering on <strong>concrete<\/strong>, rising din\r\na contrapuntal <strong>beat <\/strong>reverberates\r\non iron tracks. <strong>Heat <\/strong>rises, industry\r\ngoes on, re<strong>plete<\/strong> with tired workers, faceless,\r\nlike Ma<strong>gritte's<\/strong> \"The Son of Man,\" they dare not take\r\na <strong>beat<\/strong> to rest, for families like theirs \r\n<strong>eat<\/strong> food to live, while factories live to eat.<\/pre>\n<hr \/>\n<p>E-train&#8217;s a bit of a cheat, here, but it fit the theme. That&#8217;s the thing &#8211; knowing when to intentionally sacrifice a &#8220;rule&#8221; to make the thing work at all.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Factories&#8221; is technically one syllable too long, but do we say &#8220;fac-to-ries&#8221; or &#8220;fact-ries&#8221;? Elision is a time-honored (some would say time-worn) poetic device; if I were living in the 18th or 19th century, I might&#8217;ve written &#8220;fact&#8217;ries&#8221; but James Matthew Wilson suggests modern poets avoid marking elision and trust the reader to read the line as intended. So I am trusting you, dear Reader, to read it as &#8220;fact&#8217;ries.&#8221;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>As an experiment, I fed the rules to ChatGPT to see if AI is a serious threat to human poets, yet. I&#8217;ll let you be the judge. I&#8217;ll give it this &#8211; it followed the rules.<\/p>\n<pre class=\"poem\">The hush of evening gathers growing LIGHT\r\nWe drift along by night to find LIGHT there\r\nSoft whispers rise as hopes now LIGHTen souls\r\nIn dusk we stand and breathe LIGHT near night\u2019s end\r\nUnder summer soft LIGHT we walk at peace\r\nWe move through dark LIGHT and trust the still air\r\nThe stars grow LIGHT as shadows slip beyond\r\nAt dawn LIGHT pours gently over the hills\r\nIn LIGHT we trust the waning night to fade\r\nLIGHT we rise to greet the calm renewed day<\/pre>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>Your Turn!<\/h2>\n<p>Try your hand at writing a poem in the Scala Decima Inversa form. Can you write one that&#8217;s better than ChatGPT&#8217;s? (C&#8217;mon, you know you can!) Feel free to post it in the comments or leave a comment with a link to where we can find your poem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s harder to go down the up staircase! Almost harder than writing a double-acrostic, and probably for similar reasons. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":137990663,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_has_post_settings":[],"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2750,11],"tags":[2755,2725,2726,2740,2754],"hashtags":[],"class_list":["post-137990656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-invented-forms","category-poetry","tag-ai-poetry-battle","tag-poetry","tag-poetry-forms","tag-scala-decima","tag-scala-decima-inversa"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-07 18:33:54","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137990656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137990656"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137990656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":137990666,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137990656\/revisions\/137990666"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137990663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137990656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137990656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137990656"},{"taxonomy":"hashtags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtags?post=137990656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}