Radius, an online literary journal, says of itself:
Welcome to “Radius,” an online literary journal in blog format dedicated to poetry: How poetry works, how one poem or body of poems connects to another, how poetry exists in the world. We’re big believers around here that poetry doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and that it has a role to play in life, politics and culture.
Radius publishes, among other things, invented forms. They recently published my poem, “Extractions“, a play on the Paradelle, an absurd form invented by Billy Collins as a spoof on complex French forms. Here is an interesting example, “A Paradelle for Donald Rumsfeld“, written in 2007 by Ronald Wallace as a political comment. If you feel so inclined, create your own Paradelle or invent your own form and publish it in the comments. I’d love to hear from you.
© 2010-2012 Grace Curtis
The absurd paradelle has been taken seriously by other poets since Collins wrote his villanelle parody. I used it on the Poets Online site as a prompt http://poetsonline.org/archive/archparadelle.html in 1999 and two of those poems were included in The Paradelle anthology published by Red Hen.
Paradelle also became my weekend place of retreat online http://paradelle.wordpress.com
Ken, Thanks for your comment. I found your site recently and started following it. Hopefully, other readers of this site will too.
The paradelle is fun and absurd. I will look up your installments! Grace