Oscillation – A Defining Feature of Suzette Swan Arc Poetry

Poetry, as diverse as the bronze inscriptions of early Chinese civilisation and the hymns of the Rigveda, has long embraced oscillation—whether through rhythmic refrains, thematic dualities, or structural fluidity. These early forms mirror the ebb and flow of existence itself.

Oscillation, in its broadest sense, is woven into the fabric of existence—cycles of nature, the rhythms of human emotion, and even the push-and-pull of philosophical inquiry. It speaks to continuity and change, stability and flux, and the eternal motion of opposing forces seeking balance. It is the troughs between gentle waves, but never a tsunami.

Suzette Swan Arc—a fluid verse—is a new poetic form since April 2025. As the name suggests, it does not follow a straightforward narrative arc, but cycles through experiences in thematic waves, much like an arc—both in its mathematical and narrative sense. It resists linearity; instead, it bends back on itself, allowing motifs, emotions, and themes to resurface in altered forms; echoes, indispersed within silence, may merely whisper or reverberate, deepening rather than resolving. This oscillation of elements is one of the defining features of Suzette Swan Arc with its emphasis on fluidity and boundlessness—where movement doesn't necessarily lead to closure but rather to continuance and intuitive engagement.

Poetry isn’t just about crafting beautiful lines; it’s about shifting how we think. Suzette Swan Arc poetry does not merely encourage poets to step outside of the box, but to recognise that the box itself was never truly fixed in place. In my newly coined word ‘indispersed’ (see above) the intent of the word becomes clear through the lines of the poem—never telling or explaining like a lexicon, but by showing.

Indispersed Echoes (poetrysoup.com)

No poetic form mirrors Suzette Swan Arc—its essence is singular, celebrating the poet and defying AI imitation. A challenge to those who skim instead of soar.

Oscillation

Oscillation is experiential, not descriptive—requiring poets to embody the shifts emotionally and perceptually rather than merely cataloguing opposites. Instead of categorising the varying facets found in, for example, the duality of fatherhood, the poets immerses them in the lived moment of transition, letting the rhythm of the poem breathe through its paradoxes. Suzette Swan Arc leans more into spatial rhythm and sensory engagement. For instance, oscillation can manifest in:

• Form: Poetic structures that shift between opposing ideas, tones, or perspectives, creating a rhythmic back-and-forth effect.
• Imagery: Evoking movement, repetition, or cyclical patterns in nature, emotions, or thought processes.
• Tone: Alternating between contrasting moods—hope and despair, tension and release—to create dynamic engagement.

Oscillation thrives in poetic devices that bridge meaning through movement. Metaphor collapses distance, merging two seemingly unrelated elements into one—the river is time, flowing ceaselessly. Simile, by contrast, preserves a sliver of separation—the river moves like time, a parallel echo rather than an outright fusion. Symbolism deepens oscillation further, carrying meaning beyond its immediate surface—water signifies renewal, erosion, or even cyclical loss. Oscillation becomes the undercurrent—the act of shifting between metaphor’s collapse, simile’s parallel, and symbolism’s layered resonance.

Tone refers to the attitude or emotional resonance that a piece of writing conveys—whether solemn, whimsical, ironic, melancholic, ecstatic, or anything in between. It shapes how the reader feels while engaging with the work. In poetry, tone is influenced by word choice, rhythm, syntax, and imagery, often shifting throughout a piece to create layers of meaning. Suzette Swan Arc resists resolution and embraces oscillation—tone functions as a fluid mechanism, rather than a fixed emotional state.

Ambiguity

Oscillation thrives on ambiguity, allowing meaning to shift rather than settle. Suzette Swan Arc embraces ambiguity as both a structural and conceptual lens, challenging the reader’s perceptions while inviting infinite interpretations, especially with relation to the content of the poem. In my poem, Suzette’s Swan, I incorporated the phrase ‘…might have suggested a running leap’—referencing the swan’s awkward method to gain speed before takeoff, but also the unspoken social brusqueness of ‘taking a running leap’. It acts as a pause—a rest—before the subjective culmination of the open-ended finale of the poem.

Suzette' s Swan (poetrysoup.com)

Be mindful of being overenthusiastic in your endeavour to include ambiguities, or your readers  might be bopping their heads like confused chickens throughout—much like Adriana Ferrarese del Bene did during the performance of the aria in Così fan tutte with its constant harmonic leaps that Mozart had specifically composed with this soprano in mind. Suzette Swan Arc is about subtlety, tracing the incongruous planes of the Klein bottle.

Bear in mind that without participation by the reader, poetry is nothing.

Left Unspoken

We normally think of words as a tool for describing the world around us. But by leaving some things unsaid, a poem gains resonance, inviting the reader to engage actively and fill in those spaces with their imagination. It's also tied to concepts like translucence and elegance in poetry, where what's unspoken can be as powerful as what's written. Does the silence function as a pause, a breath, or an invitation for the reader to step into the poem’s fluidity? In Suzette Swan Arc, silence forms an integral part of both its structural and conceptual design.

Silence, line breaks incorporating enjambment, and fragmented syntax enhance the sinuous flow of Suzette Swan Arc. The pauses shaped by caesura—whether through negative space, punctuation such as ellipses and dashes, or irregular line breaks—work in tandem with intuitive fragmentation to emphasise and complement the poem’s rhythm as a whole. The intuitive fragmentation of the lines—especially in the poem’s finale—reinforces this fluidity, resisting rigid finality in favour of dynamic movement. Fairytales thrive on ambiguity as children are innately attuned to narrative nuances—more so than adults, who often tend to be literal.

Too Linear

A poem that moves predictably in its progression or even where sections are over elaborated upon rather than allowing readers to engage intuitively with the poem's essence, is considered to be too linear. This is the antithesis of ambiguity and the remedy for too linear work is the oscillation of various elements within the poem—oscillation as an organic phenomenon; one that a poet must feel rather than merely construct. This may include rhythmic devices that embrace oscillation such as alliteration, consonance, assonance, and enjambment—evident throughout the poem.

Oscillation is not ruled out where a poem’s design calls for a linear approach in its progression, for example, Suzette Prime—it may be incorporated to lend depth to the poem, as I did in my poem, Verismo.

Verismo (poetrysoup.com)

Recurrence in Echoes

The rhetorical devices in Suzette Swan Arc—such as repetition—aren’t merely incidental but are structural necessities, reinforcing oscillation and paradox.

The recurring echoes are intuitive rather than formulaic, distinguishing them from structured repetition found in Echo verse, Chain verse, or Refrain (including the pretend, chorus, and burden), Repetition such as anaphora and epistrophe which falls at the beginning and end of sentences respectively, and symploce (which is a combination of these two devices). The echoes are more organic such as to be found in the rhetorical devices antistasis, antanaclasis (a kind of pun), and Epizeuxis (opposed to internal rhyme). This approach ensures that recurrence remains fluid, reinforcing the poem’s oscillatory nature without imposing rigid symmetry.

Show, don’t Tell

 ‘Show, don't tell’ relies on sensory details, imagery, and metaphor to evoke emotions and meaning without direct exposition. Instead of stating an idea outright, the poet allows the reader to experience it through movement, contrast, and implication. This aligns well with oscillation, which thrives on fluidity, paradox, and shifting perspectives.

The 6 types of imagery: auditory, gustatory, kinetic, olfactory, tactile & visual. In poetry, imagery is a vivid and vibrant form of description that appeals to readers’ senses and imagination, and is often left open to interpretation.

A related technique to the above is to let the light in between the lines. ‘Letting the light in between the lines’ is a poetic metaphor often used to describe the art of creating space for interpretation, emotion, and subtlety within a poem. It means allowing the reader to discover their own meanings, impressions, and connections in the gaps between explicit statements. Instead of spelling everything out, the poet might use suggestive language, imagery, or rhythm to evoke feelings and ideas indirectly.

Oscillation vs Juxtaposition

Older poetic traditions frequently rely on juxtaposition, where stark opposites—light/dark, joy/grief, presence/absence—are set side by side to create tension. Oscillation, by contrast, asks for movement between states, not static opposition.

Oscillation in poetry refers to a fluid, dynamic interplay between opposing elements, creating movement and emotional resonance through continuous transitions. It differs from juxtaposition, which places contrasting elements side by side for stark comparison without the inherent ebb and flow of oscillation.

Juxtaposition:

A poem presenting the contrast between a cracked desert and an overflowing river; emphasising their stark difference without the movement or interaction between the two.

• Juxtaposition Approach (Contrast): ‘A mother sings to her child, soft as the rustling neem leaves. Outside, the storm howls—a wild thing separate from her hush.’

Here, the storm and the lullaby exist in contrast—two independent forces. The boundary between them is fixed.

Oscillation:

A poem where water shifts between gentle rain and fierce waves, never settling in one state, mirroring emotional turmoil—grief swelling, then receding, yet never fully resolved.

• Oscillation Approach (Fluid Transition): ‘A mother sings to her child, soft as the rustling neem leaves. The storm hums in reply, threading its breath into hers. She inhales its restless rhythm, exhales the melody, weaving hush into howl.’

Pivot

Poetry thrives in movement—words swaying between ideas like a pendulum in perpetual motion. The pivot, as employed by Edmund Spenser in the 16th century, defied the rigid turn of the Petrarchan volta (turn). Instead of a stark shift from dilemma to resolution, Spenser’s pivot wove continuity, allowing thought to breathe and evolve.

Where the volta demands an abrupt transformation, the pivot whispers change in gradients. This oscillation—fluid, intuitive—creates space for paradox to linger, for a thought to refract rather than resolve. In Suzette Swan Arc, this principle unfurls across poetic form, embracing the natural ebb and flow of understanding. Poets no longer bind themselves to predetermined resolution; rather, they navigate tension, allowing meaning to oscillate, much like the unfixed geometry of a Klein bottle—boundaryless, recursive, infinite.

The Finale

Closure seems to be hardwired into our expectations, making it difficult to shake off—from movies and novels, to fairytales, etc.  This ingrained notion that stories—and by extension, poetry—should conclude neatly rather than exist in perpetual motion, is an artificial construct as it does not mirror real life experience. However, Suzette Swan Arc resists a singular trajectory, allowing the reader to move cyclically or expand outward rather than toward a fixed conclusion.

The finale of a Suzette Swan Arc poem is not left to chance, nor is it an incidental unresolved argument. Instead, it operates as a dynamic hinge—offering hints rather than conclusions, possibilities rather than fixed meanings. The poem itself suggests directions the reader might explore, shaping an interplay between certainty and fluidity without imposing a singular resolution.

A false crescendo—a moment that feels likes an ending signalling a pivot or even before the finale is achieved, but refuses to fully resolve. It would function like an open loop, sending the reader outward instead of grounding them in finality.

• Echo without closure: The last line mirrors a previous line but twists slightly—like a refrain that loops but never quite settles.
• A tonal contradiction: The poem builds in intensity, then suddenly undercuts itself—for example, an awe-inspiring metaphor followed by an unexpected, mundane detail.
• Rhythmic propulsion: A phrase that accelerates rather than lands—like a rising scale that never quite hits the final note.
• Deliberate fragmentation: The last phrase cuts off just before completion, forcing the reader to mentally ‘finish’ the thought.

In my poem, Suzette’s Swan, mentioned earlier, I could include the following last line after a pause (double space): ‘Farewell’ dissipates in the swan’s strident honking. It’s an auditory interruption, a refusal to let the poem settle into quiet resolution. Instead of closure, it introduces contrast and unpredictability, echoing the way meaning resists containment in Suzette Swan Arc poetry—reinforcing the core principle of oscillation.

Presentation & Line Counts

Poets can guide the desired effect through structural choices: fragmented line breaks, thematic echoes, or spatial rhythm. Even though the poem leans into isometrical (varying line lengths) compositions, the absence of syllabic constraints ensures the poet maintains control over how the poem modulates its final impression.

These diverse presentations necessitated the unique method for calculating line counts for contest purposes, namely, not only do the characters, words, phrases, etc, count towards the line count stipulated in a contest, but also the negative spaces—the pauses—between the lines utilised, for example, a double space between a stanza counts as a line. The reason for this is to place a limit on the actual length of the poem for contest submission—as a sponsor, life is too short to go hunting for words on a page. See the depiction above.

In the very first contest (May/June 2025) featuring Suzette Swan Arc, the poets were invited to write on the theme of Elements of Nature—water, fire, air, and earth: An emotional echo in nature—swing (oscillate, and not juxtapose) between objective and subjective perception throughout the poem. The link to the winning poem, [TBA], is in the footnotes.

Conclusion

Oscillation isn’t traditionally classified as a poetic device like metaphor or alliteration, but it can absolutely function as one when deliberately employed in poetry. In physics and energy discussions, oscillation refers to rhythmic movement between states—waves, frequencies, or vibrations. In poetry, this concept can be harnessed structurally, thematically, and emotionally.

Oscillation in poetic form does not equate to randomness. Rather, it reflects a carefully structured ambiguity, where meaning shifts without dissolving, allowing light to filter between the lines. The final movement is less about closure and more about resonance—a continuation rather than an end, inviting engagement beyond the poem’s surface.

If oscillation in poetry creates space for engagement, perhaps fairytales do the same—fuelling intelligence not through answers, but through open-ended possibility. The next time you share a story with your child, leave the last page unwritten. Let them step into the storyteller’s shoes, weaving their own conclusion—shaped by curiosity, intuition, and the silent rhythms of life. Let Little Red Riding Hood take the twin wolf pups home with her, if that if that is her desire …

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THE ELEMENTS OF NATURE CONTEST WINNER (May/June 2025):

 [TBA]

Related articles by the author:

• Klein's Vase Verse - A New Poetic Form | PoetrySoup.com
• Common Poetic Devices Favoured by Suzette Swan Arc Poetry | PoetrySoup.com

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Copyright © Suzette Swan Arc, by Suzette Richards (2025)