I did not create a new form of poetry.

I was going through organizing the poems I've written this year (current count: more than I thought!) and I had an idea for a form based on one of my favorite numbers. 

Okay, this may be important information because you will see me make mistakes with numbers. If not now, it will happen eventually. It does happen in me talking about what I was doing with this. I have dyscalculia. It is a learning disability often called "the mathematical dyslexia" because it's similar enough, in some ways, that people who have never heard of it don't have to sit through a long explanation when that isn't the focus of the conversation. I make mistakes with numbers that people don't usually expect from someone who has made it through first or second grade. It's not because I don't understand basic math. It's because a learning disability makes it hard for me to add without counting on my fingers, read maps, remember which coin has which value, and a list of other things that made it really hard to grow up as a "nerd who can't do math". 

What does that have to do with forms of poetry? My plan was to write poems that had three syllables per line, three lines per stanza, and nine stanzas. That would give me twenty-seven syllables!

You see the problem? I saw the problem, thankfully, before I had finished the poem. I was in the fourth stanza, so I just needed to back up and change a few things. What I actually wanted was three syllables per line, three lines per stanza, and three stanzas.

27

I want to

make a new

poem form.

Only three

syllables 

to each line.

Three stanzas, 

three lines each. 

A word cube. 

I was going to call it cubic poetry, but then I thought maybe I should look that up and see if something else already has that name. I didn't dig far enough to be certain that it's not a thing, but I don't think it easy. The reason I didn't keep digging is because I very quickly found out I did not create a new form of poetry. Phillip Larrea already did that, and the form is called tricube.

I'm not disappointed. Quite the opposite! I wasn't looking to become recognized for creating a new form of poetry. I just want to write poems in this three-by-three way. Finding out someone already established this as a valid form and gave it a name means I don't have to feel nervous about explaining to people why I made this up. Because, believe me, as much as I hate the look I get when people see me counting on my fingers to add single digit numbers, the look I get when I excitedly explain why I love some number pattern is even worse.

I've only written two tricubes so far. I'm keeping the first one because it's still a valid poem, even if I wasn't creating what I thought I was. The second is about my cat, so I'll close things with sharing it.

My cat trills. 

She does not

say "meow". 

She speaks in

the cat tongue. 

We listen. 

We learn and

respond. She

rewards us.