... the Bop. The invention of poet Afaa Michael Weaver, the Bop is a kind of combination sonnet + song. Like a Shakespearan sonnet, it introduces, discusses, and then solves (or fails to solve) a problem. Like a song, it relies on refrains and repetition. In the basic Bop poem, a six-line stanza introduces the problem, and is followed by a one-line refrain. The next, eight-line stanza discusses and develops the problem, and is again followed by the one-line refrain. Then, another six-line stanza resolves or concludes the problem, and is again followed by the refrain. Here’s an example of a Bop poem written by Weaver, and here’s another by the poet Ravi Shankar.*
Bop With a Refrain Taken From W. B. Yeats and a Line from The National
The blues snuffle around my innocent head,
breaking into paltry meditations, dogging
my dragging heels as I circle the block,
digging paws in by the rotting trunks
where shadows spill from the maple's maw
and creep across sodden grass. Oh I am
weary-hearted as that hollow moon.
"Sorrow found me when I was young,"
the song sings in my head, and it did --
rooted me out of my warm bed and bumped me
downstairs, into a sulfur sooty Pittsburgh street,
where I waited for a friend to appear
from the apartments across, for sun to shine,
for a smiling father to put his hand on my
head. He didn't, it didn't, and he was dead,
as weary-hearted as that hollow moon.
Perhaps depression is my best friend,
nosing behind me room to room.
No pill will ever keep it completely away.
You are happy, you are safe, you are peaceful,
you are well: these words can't stop its pacing.
I lie down; it licks my face. Oh, lord,
I'm weary-hearted as that hollow moon.
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