OK, for anyone who missed (or indeed, anyone unlucky enough to read) the pantoum I've now erased from the post below, here's a sonnet (of a kind) about writing the pantoum. So from a formal poem, I've now moved on to meta-formal:
Muldoon could knock off pantoums with such ease
I thought I’d have a shot. The first line
found truth beneath my neighbour’s tangerine
sofa – a gift to any troubled muse! –
and the first stanza’s making was a breeze.
But by the second stanza, I began
to wish I hadn’t started this insane
form that Muldoon could knock off with such ease.
The repetitions every other line -
I know – are gifts to any troubled muse
when stuck for words. Just write the same again
and again… By the umpteenth stanza I’d begun
to lose the plot of how Muldoon with ease
found truth beneath his neighbour’s tangerine
