Punk Pantoum

You need to know a little bit about the PUNK movement in the 70s. You might want to listen to the following songs, "Anarchy in the UK" by the Sex Pistols; "London Calling" by The Clash; "I Wanna Be Sedated" by the Ramones; "Speak No Evil" by Television. You could also listen to Richard Hell's "Blank Generation" and Lou Reed's "Heroin". These songs could give you a backdrop for the poem. You could also read up on the PUNK movement on the web.

FORM: PANTOUM

A Malayan Form. A pantoum consists of an indefinite number of quatrain stanzas with particular restrictions: lines 2 and 4 are repetons- the become become lines 1 and 3 of the following stanza. The pantoum usually ends with a quatrain whose repetons are lines 1 and 3 of the first stanza in reverse order.

So the pattern might be:

Quatrains 1

1
2
3
4

Quatrain 2

2
5
4
6

Quatrain 3

5
7
6
8


Quatrain 4

7
9
8
10

Quatrain 5

9
11
10
12

Quatrain 6

11
3
12
1

According to poets.org "one exciting aspect of the pantoum is its subtle shifts in meaning that can occur as repeated phrases are revised with different punctuation and thereby given a new context." Also, "an incantation can be created by a pantoum's interlocking pattern of rhyme and repetition; as the lines reverberate between stanzas, they fill the poem with echoes."

When you read the poem play close attention to each image and think about what the image can mean. How does the meaning of the image change with the repetition of the image in the next stanza?