on The Girl Who Missed Him

This is a poem I wrote a couple of years ago. I only thought of it again recently because of my reading on poetry form. I was reading the write-up form the pantoum form, and I thought, I've done that!

Now, in English we've been doing unfamiliar texts, which means analysing poems. We had to do a particularly poor poem by a New Zealand author, from a book he wrote on poetry. We then proceeded to study a poem by Robert Frost the aforementioned poet had included on his book. He commented on the form of the poem, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. Now, I'd noticed the form of the poem straight away - it goes 'AAEA, BBEB, CCEC, DDDD', and I recognised it as a rubai, although I could not remember the name of the form at the time. But the write-up on the poem did not acknowledge this - it seemed to think Frost had created an entirely new form, and was pondering whether it was formed accidentally, or had been predecided. And I was sitting there wondering how the writer could be so ignorant.

In saying this though, I am not saying that Frost did not come up with the poem's form on his own. Because I wrote The Girl Who Missed Him before I'd ever heard of a pantoum. I came up with the form on my own - it just so happened other people had also done so. I don't know what Robert Frost did, but I found it appaulling that someone whose opinion on poetry is being taught was not acquainted with a poetry form I recognised instantly.