I participated in a very informal poll about favorite poetic forms, and I mentioned my love of dizains. I do love them. I love their mirrored qualities, their length and, frankly, I think I love their scarcity. How many dizains have you ever read? I’ve read less than a hundred. Perhaps less than fifty. Perhaps even fewer. I’ve written about a dozen.

Their scarcity means that there is something very fresh and alive about a dizain. I haven’t seen it all. Yes, I know that I haven’t seen it all when it comes to sonnets, but in my cynical phases (at least once a day) I feel that I have. And then I get cranky. And then I eat lunch and feel better, so it’s probably just hunger pangs.

Why the sonnet? Why not the dizain? Why does one form explode in popularity and then maintain that ascendancy, while another one has to be explained because the reader has never heard of one? Even in a group of well-read metrical poetry fans, the dizain needed defining. It’s a rare form, and it’s not getting any less rare.

Thoughts on dizains, and links to them, most appreciated.

Thoughts on why certain forms never catch on also appreciated.

Ten thousand dollars in small unmarked bills most appreciated.