Urgent Call for Cretics—Meter of the Dark Goddess
Seeking poems in the mysterious meter that flies deepest under the radar...
Auden once wrote, “Every poet has his [sic] dream reader: mine keeps a look out for curious prosodic fauna like bacchics and choriambs.” For the next ten days, my dream Substack reader will keep an eye out for a prosodic entity even more (yes!) rare than these: good poems in cretic meter, written anywhere, anytime, by anyone.
And we only have a week or so to find them.
The deep, mysterious cretic meter is the newest, and I think likely the last, addition to the Metrical Compass. It’s so new I have not yet added its image to the graphic. When added, the cretic shares the Center direction with the amphibrach ( u / u) and looks like the inverse of it: a wand surrounded by two cups instead of the other way around (/ u /):
I have come to find cretics the meter of the Dark Goddess. I will save discussion of all these witchier, goddess-thealogical aspects for a future post, because the situation is time-sensitive and I want to get this post out. What’s the urgency?
Meter Magic Spiral, my meter-learning commuity within Poetry Witchery Community, focuses on reading, discussing, scanning, and writing a different meter each month for five months, with the sixth month devoted to what we call a “stretch meter.” This month, at the suggestion of the brilliant poet Autumn Newman who was acting as a mentor to members of the Spiral, we committed to cetics as the stretch meter. Only problem: when I hastily agreed to this idea months ago in the middle of many other things, I assumed Autumn knew of a cache of poems in cretics.
And guess what, she must have assumed that I knew of such a cache also . . .
In fact, I knew of only one poem in the world in cretics, “Lammas Chant,” which I wrote decades ago as part of my Wheel of the Year series, and later included as the lone example of the meter in Measure for Measure. The only reason I had tackled it in the first place was that I committed myself to using a different meter for each poem in the Wheel of the Year series, and the witches among us will know that meant I needed eight. So I wrote my Lammas poem in cretics (and now I’m so glad I did, because it’s a glorious, compelling, deep meter that seems to pull me down into a whole new aspect of Spirit!)
Twenty years later, because I had agreed to Autumn’s suggestion to use cretics as our meter for the month of March in Meter Magic Spiral and then she took a personal break from her mentoring duties in mid-February, I found myself stuck with only my one example. I wote to ask Autumn to send me the cretic poems she had in mind, and she said “Lammas Chant” had inspired her to write a (kickass, I might add) poem in cretics of her own — the only other cretic poem she knew.
Whoops! So we only had two poems in cretics for the Seed Poems that form the backbone and inspiration for each month’s beautiful meter adventure in the Spiral. Then another meter expert in the Spiral, poet Diane Lee Moomey, told me about a couple of other classic examples. Amazing! But still not enough!
So here is a call for cretics! I am reaching out to my network, and you are part of it. Please be my guest to help build the cretic canon! Any poem that any of you finds, or writes, in metrically fluent cretics (regular meter, with few or no metrical substitutions) will be considered for inclusion among our Seed Poems.
Worried about the publication aspect? If you write something new, this is a class handout in a private community and will not constitute publication. But if you send something that is accepted and you DO want it shared, I will include it in a special post here sharing the publicly available poems from this month’s Seed Poems so other readers of this Substack can see what we come up with!.
So please have at it, meter lovers!
Check out the cretics we have already (in addition to Autumn Newman’s which is still unpublished): Blake , Shakespeare (first four lines only), and Finch. Then please comb English-language poetry for other poems in cretics (n.b. we need an entire poem, not just a line or two; we only make an exception for Shakespeare’s four lines because it is a passage from a play, not from a longer poem). Obviously, only very strong and moving poems will be included in the Seed Poems—but feel free to send along anything you find that fits the meter—better safe than sorry!
Post your cretics in the comments below (this will be a free post with the comments open to free as well as paid subscribers). If you prefer not to post, you may email them to me through my website, anniefinch dot com.
Deadline is midnight on the last day of February.
Thank you!
Yours in love, meter, and magic,
Tell Me
Love my words, hate my words.
Tell me what resonates
in your mind, in your gut,
anywhere -- just do not
let me drown, ignorant.
Tell me what moment brushed
nerve or bone? heart of stone?
heard my voice? felt my touch?
anytime -- just do not
silence truth when she calls.
Here’s one I just wrote. Hopefully it’s not to far off.
Cry the tears cry aloud cry again
Daily dose just a tad cry alone
In the end wash the eyes, cleanse the soul
Sit at ease make a room full of joy