Pope John Paul II inspired poem

Giovanni Battista Montini came from Concesio, Brescia, Italy. He was born on September 27, 1897. In 1963 he became Pope Paul VI. He held office for fifteen years, two months. He died in 1978.

Albino Luciani was borned on October 1, 1912. He was from Forni di Canale, Bellunco, Italy. He became the Pope John Paul I. He died in office on September 29 , 1978 having only served for 33 days. According to the conspiracy theories in David Yallop's book, "An Investigation into the Murder of Pope John Paul I" he was assassinated by poisoning during the night of 28th to 29th September 1978. Could this be a "perfect crime" since we don't know for sure how he died? We do know how his successor died. The conflicting reports on his death surfaced immediately on how he died and this may have given rise to the conspiracy theory about his death. However, the story surrounding his short reign may be due to the fact that Pope John Paul I, the first pope to have a doubled-barreled titled had planned to carry out reforms he perceived the church needed. Listed among his reforms were a complete shake-up of the Vatican Power Structure; an absolute ban on contraceptives and fertility treatments. His life and death provides a compelling story.

Karol Jozef Wojtyla succeeded him as the 264th Pope. The title he carried was Pope John Paul II. He was from Wadowice, Poland and was borned on May 18, 1920. He shepherded his Catholic following of one billion, a little over two and a half decades. He was a very influential Pope. He was my favourite Pope even though I'm not a Catholic. I watched him on Kiwi television when he made his last appearance on this planet at his Vatican Window at St. Peter's Square on Easter Sunday 2005. He could only give a silent blessing as he waved his hand to the large crowd that had gathered knowing full well that his time to leave this earth was close at hand. I could not keep back the tears that flooded my face. Pope John Paul II died on April 2, 2005 at the age of 82 years. The death of Pope John Paul II inspired me to write this poem, "Easter" in Blank Form with Septet Stanzas.

Blank Form poetry is also known as Blank Verse. It is used extensively in narrative and dramatic poetry. In lyric poetry, it is adaptable to lengthy descriptive and meditative poems. In Blank Form poetry, there are end-stops but no end-rhymes. It retains a metrical pattern, usually iambic pentameter, a line containing five iambic feet in English Verse. It can also be any unrhymed verse. So , you will find that in the poem, "Easter" I have shaped it with Septet verses that contain iambs mixed with some anapaest, trochees, spondees, dactyls and pyrrhics. So, no, they cannot be classified as the standard iambic pentameter verses nor non-standard iambic pentameter verses. Now, I'll tell you why.

The Standard Iambic Pentameter contains five (5) iambs which measure five feet. An iamb is made up of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. I used these marks to show an unstressed syllable V and the stressed syllable with a stroke like this /. Look at this example in the word attack. The first syllable is at and it is an unstressed syllable, the second syllable is tack and it is a stressed syllable. So the word, attack is scanned like this V/ and has one iambic foot.

The Non-Standard Iambic Pentameter contains five (5) feet made up of iambs and other types of metrical feet. This is to counteract the metronomic effect by substituting for an iamb another type of foot whose stress is different. So it is not unusual to see any of these: trochee, spondee, dactyl, anapaest or pyrrhic, and so on. The second foot is almost always an iamb. The first foot is the one most likely to change by the use of this inversion technique. Another feature of the Non-Standard Iambic Pentameter is the addition of a final unstressed syllable. This therefore, creates a feminine ending or what is referred to as a weak ending. Any verse whose last word has an unstressed final syllable is said to have a feminine ending. Verse 1 of Stanza 7 from the poem, "The Barrow that Built a Nation" gives an example of a feminine ending.

Barrow used good tools for nation building (feminine ending)

In Septet poems, all stanzas have seven verses.