Happy August! Welcome to a new Carrot Ranch double ennead monthly poetry challenge. Every third Monday of the month, I’ll be here at the Saloon with another challenge to help get your poetic juices flowing. Each month, we will explore a different theme or image to inspire our poetry. Take your time, there’s no hurry! You have an entire month to write your poem.

HINT: You can find this post again by typing: double ennead challenge in the search box to the right of the Carrot Ranch banner. That will bring up the most recent challenge post. ❤

Check out the poems from last month HERE

The word Ennead means nine, and a double nine is ninety-nine! Carrot Ranch is famous for 99-word flash fiction. Now, the ranch has its own syllabic poetry form written in 99 syllables!

The Double Ennead comprises five lines with a syllable count of 6/5/11/6/5, (33 SYLLABLES per stanza) 3 STANZAS EACH = 99 SYLLABLES, NO MORE, NO LESS! Punctuation and rhyme schemes are optional and up to the poet.

Poetic Inspiration

Do you search for poetic inspiration? If you do, I’d like to share a discovery with you. I’m obsessed with the Oracle… what is the oracle, you ask?

POETRY ORACLE

The poetry Oracle is magnetic poetry. Click the link above and choose one of the category icons in the lower online version after the first group. A series of words will appear and you can drag and drop the words into the white area to create your poetry. I often use the Oracle when I’m looking for inspiration.

The Oracle works for syllabic poetry as well. On another browser tab, I usually have a syllable counter open as I compose my poem. I type in the words to check my count.

Here are the words I received from the Poet Kit:

Now, I will drag and drop the words until I have the makings of a poem. There is a button to choose more words. I cycle through the word selection and grab words as I compose my poem. I’m conscious of syllable counts, but for now, I’ll just grab words that closely match the count.

Finally, I’ve composed the first stanza of my double ennead poem (6, 5, 11, 6, 5 syllables). I took a screenshot to share with you:

Always check your syllables with a syllable counter when composing and writing syllabic poetry. The pronunciation of words is very important to convey meaning in your poems. You can use sodacoffee.com/syllables/ as a syllable counter. I checked my one stanza below:

I don’t expect you to compose your entire double ennead poem using the Oracle… although the Oracle works well with longer-form freestyle or prose poetry, too. If I’m looking for inspiration when writing syllabic poetry, I enjoy the magic the Oracle sends.

This month, try experimenting with the Oracle. Write only ONE stanza of a double ennead poem and share it on your blog.

My example follows:

"Full Moon Magic"

velvet smiles let joy dance
through vast heart-sky clouds,
remember hot kisses lingering—steamy...
delicious poetry, 
warm perfumed desire

©2021 Colleen M. Chesebro

Experiment with the poetry Oracle. Write only ONE stanza of a double ennead poem (6, 5, 11, 6, 5 syllables) using magnetic poetry. If you’d rather write a double ennead poem, and not try out the magnetic poetry site, write about a theme of your choice.

• Post it on your blog or in the comments if you don’t have a blog.
• Include a link back to this challenge in your post. (copy the https:// address of this post into your post).
• Read and comment on your fellow poet’s work. Feedback from other poets is how we grow our poetry writing craft.
• Like and leave a comment below if you choose to do so.
• I’ll visit, comment, and share your poetry on social media!

Now have fun and write some syllabic poetry!