Xenic Verse

I mentioned in my post about the Poetic Alphabet[link] that I was having some difficulty covering some of the letters and might have to work out some of my own forms. The first of those, which I’d created on the spot because it amused me in 2010 but only formalized a couple of years later, I’d chosen to call the Pleiadic Poem and I spent a post[link] talking about that one. Having that in my back pocket, I didn’t even look for a form that started with P for the alphabet experiment.

Today though, I’m going to talk about a form I sat down to deliberately work out to make a letter happen. After significant internet searching, a form to represent X did not present itself. The closest I found was the idea of a Xenia epigram commemorating hospitality. An epigram can take the form of a poem, and that’s where things started in ancient Greece, but is more often a “witty, sarcastic, or satirical” statement, and if it is a poem, there doesn’t seem to be a definite form.

After abandoning the search, I worked out the idea of Xenic Verse.

Background notes:

Xenon is the fifth noble gas if we count helium
Noble gases have a complete electron set, generally in eights (with the exception of Helium),
Xeno = Alien, foreign, other, strange, different
Xenic has, as one of its meanings, the definition of “strange or foreign in some way”

Rules

Five-line stanzas [quintains]
8-syllable lines
Rhyme scheme: left to the mood of the poet, but should be internally consistent
At least one, but no more than 7 stanzas [there are, currently, 7 noble gases, and the seventh is synthetic]
Subject matter should be the desire or longing for, or idealization of, a place the poet has never been, an experience they’ve never had, or even a person they’ve never met. Any degree of longing or idealization is acceptable, from a simple wondering “what if” to a desperation for the experience.

A simple example:

To walk the Inca trail in spring

Following steps of history

Signs of the past that might still cling

Under the humid canopy

Soft echoes, the distant peaks may sing

(22 February 2026)

This could be taken further as a theme:

The long hike up Yoshida trail

Surrounded by flowers in bloom

The morning mist heavy veil

Sunset drawing, gathering gloom

Uncounted steps, the newest tale

Not truly visible from space

An endless walk through autumn’s leaves

Across the greatest human trace

Above the countryside, it weaves

A mindful, measured walking pace

The rocky, barren, windswept shores

Where Highlands meet the frothing sea

And far above a shadow soars

Not tied to any destiny

Or desperately keeping scores

(Completed on 06 March 2026)

Where the author (me) has expressed a gentle (I think) longing to walk or hike in four particular places in four different seasons: the Inca Trail in spring, Mount Fuji in summer (the Yoshida trail is potentially the easiest route), the Great Wall in autumn, and the John O’ Groats trail in northeast Scotland. Only one of the four is named directly (the Inca Trail), although you can look up the Yoshida Route and discover it’s a path up Mount Fuji. I’ve left the rest for the reader to work out or dream of on their own. My likelihood of ever getting to more than one of those places is slim, but they’re all on the dreams list.

Xenic verse is less about reality and more about the meaning and feeling of a reality that may not ever have existed and probably won’t for the poet. Romanticizing can be taken in any sense of the word.

A different view, this time on skydiving, which I’ve never done and may never get to.

Adrenaline surging wildly

As the wind of falling rips past

Then terminal velocity

The ground below approaching fast

And still so many things to see

(completed on 10 March 2026)

Or watching a star coalesce over many millennia out of a molecular cloud (the area of Physics I work in):

Across a million years and more

If gravity is keeping score

Condensing from a cold dark cloud

Just one among a swirling crowd

No light yet piercing through the shroud

(13 March 2026)

And so there’s the second poetic form I’ve created: Xenic verse. Note that in neither case (Pleiadic or Xenic) am I going to assert that I’m the first one to come up with the form. And in the case of Pleiadic, I shouldn’t because someone else had a very similar idea a decade before I did[link].

But for Xenic verse, a variety of search terms hasn’t come up with anything, so I feel like I can claim this one, even if I can’t guarantee it.

Be well, everyone.