Prose from Poetry Magazine

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.

Here’s a diagram for a conventional setup:
[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

Editor's Note:

“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.”

Originally Published: October 2nd, 2023

Kimiko Hahn is the author of 10 books of poetry, including Foreign Bodies (W. W. Norton, 2020); Brain Fever (Norton, 2014); Toxic Flora (Norton, 2010); The Narrow Road to the Interior (Norton, 2006), a collection that takes its title from Bashô’s famous poetic journal; The Unbearable Heart (Kaya, 1996), winner...

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Writing Prompt: Glosa

Poetry and Form

Appeared in Poetry Magazine Medieval-Style Sampling: The Glosa

Medieval-Style Sampling: The Glosa