Writing Prompt: Glosa
BY Kimiko Hahn
You can use Ossip’s set-up for your own glosa or, of course, choose a quatrain from a favorite writer. Like what? I suggest a quatrain where the lines are relatively short. This makes for greater movement and greater sonic excitement. The conventional stanza contains ten lines. As you can see from my own glosas, I decided on shorter stanzas. If you’d like to have your cabeza selected for you, here are two. The first is from Robert Frost’s “Fire and Ice”:
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
The second is from Toi Derricotte’s “Speculations about ‘I’”:
A transmission through space?
A dismemberment of the spirit?
More like opening the chest &
throwing the heart out with the gizzards.
[cabeza quatrain]
A
B
C
D
1
2
3
4
5
6 rhyme with line ten
7
8
9 rhyme with line ten
10 line A from cabeza
1
2
3
4
5
6 rhyme with line ten
7
8
9 rhyme with line ten
10 line B from cabeza
1
2
3
4
5
6 rhyme with line ten
7
8
9 rhyme with line ten
10 line C from cabeza
1
2
3
4
5
6 rhyme with line ten
7
8
9 rhyme with line ten
10 line D from cabeza
“Not Too Hard to Master” is a series of poets writing on form and sharing a prompt. Read Kimiko Hahn’s “Medieval-Style Sampling: The Glosa,” “Elizabeth’s Cabeza,” and “‘if’ is a conjunction.”
Kimiko Hahn (she/her) was born in Mount Kisco, New York. Her mother, Maude Miyako Hamai, was a Japanese American from Maui, Hawaii. Her father, Walter Hahn, was a German American from Wisconsin. Both of her parents were artists who met while studying in Chicago. Hahn grew up in Pleasantville, New York.
Hahn earned a BA from the University of Iowa, where she studied with Marvin Bell, Louise Glück, ...