Category Archives: didactic

Tho Tam Chu

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The following description is reposted with permission from Poetry Magnum Opus, with thanks to Judi Van Gorder for years of work on that fine resource.

Tho Tam Chu or Eight Word Poetry [Vietnamese] appears to be more flexible in stanza length as well as tonal and end rhyme. The rhyme schemes are patterns I found in actual poems. It appears to me that as long as there is rhyme, it probably doesn’t matter what the pattern is.  The elements of the Tho Tam Chu are:

  1. stanzaic, written in any number of either tercets, quatrains or septets.
  2. measured by the number of words in the line, 8 words per line.
  3. rhymed,
  4. tonal rhyme is flexible except, if the end word is sharp then the 3rd word is also sharp and words 5 and 6 are flat. Conversely, if the end word is flat then the 3rd word is also flat and the 5th and 6th words are sharp.
  5. end rhyme
  6. when written in tercets
    w w w w w w w a
    w w w w w w a b
    w w w w b w w b
  7. when written in quatrains is:
    w w w w w w w w     or    w w w w w w w w
    w w w w w w w a             w w w w w w w a
    w w w w w w w w            w w w w w w w a
    w w w w w w w a             w w w w w w w w
  8. when written as a septet
    w w w w w w w a
    w w w w w w w a
    w w w w w w w a
    w w w w w w w a
    w w w w w w w b
    w w w w w w w b
    w w w w w w w w

Note: Whereas with the Bay Chu, I copped out because I had no notion of the tonal requirement, I was emboldened here by Judi’s observation that tonal rhyme was flexible. I therefore took the liberty to equate the Vietnamese flat and sharp sounds to the English long and short sounds, and have treated the words in positions 3,5,6 and 8 accordingly.

From Wikipedia

English vowels are sometimes split into “long” and “short” vowels along lines different from the linguistic differentiation. Traditionally, the vowels /eɪ iː aɪ oʊ juː/ (as in bait beat bite boat bute) are said to be the “long” counterparts of the vowels /æ ɛ ɪ ɒ ʌ/ (as in bat bet bit bot but) which are said to be “short”. This terminology reflects their pronunciation before the Great Vowel Shift.

Traditional English phonics teaching, at the preschool to first grade level, often used the term “long vowel” for any pronunciation that might result from the addition of a silent E(e.g., like) or other vowel letter as follows:

Letter “Short” “Long” Example
A a /æ/ /eɪ/ mat / mate
E e /ɛ/ /iː/ pet / Pete
I i /ɪ/ /aɪ/ twin / twine
O o /ɒ/ /oʊ/ not / note
U u /ʌ/ /juː/ cub / cube
A mnemonic was that each vowel’s long sound was its name.
In Middle English, the long vowels /iː, eː, ɛː, aː, ɔː, oː, uː/ were generally written i..e, e..e, ea, a..e, o..e, oo, u..e. With the Great Vowel Shift, they came to be pronounced /aɪ, iː, iː, eɪ, oʊ, uː, aʊ/. Because ea and oo are digraphs, they are not called long vowels today. Under French influence, the letter u was replaced with ou (or final ow), so it is no longer considered a long vowel either. Thus the so-called “long vowels” of Modern English are those vowels written with the help of a silent e.

Wikipedia: Traditional long and short vowels in English orthography

My Example

Form: Tho Tam Chu

Vietnam Poetry Didactic

If word three is long, expect to find
the words five and six not so aligned.
By word three, eight’s sound is now defined.
One must keep these rules within one’s mind.
That being done, then each line is fun,
a challenge yet, here I write this one.
An unrhymed line must still conform like so.

© Lawrencealot – January 31, 2015

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Kloon

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Thai Poetry

• The Kloon or Klon (meaning simple verse) is sometimes known as the “true Thai poetic form”. It is the basic and most common Thai verse written with simple subjects and simple words.

The Kloon is:
○ stanzaic, written in any number of quatrains
○ syllabic, 4 to 8 syllables per line.
○ composed with each line made up of 2 to 3 phrases.
○ rhymed with an intricate rhyme pattern. The internal rhyme can be optional or reduced. The tone is looser than most Thai forms but it the end syllable of each line is usually rising which is in sync with most Western verse of iambic meter.

x x a x a x a b
x x b x b x x c
x x x x x x x c
x x c x c x x d
x x d x d x a e
x x e x e x x f
x x x x x x x f
x x f x f x x g

Pasted from Poetry Magnum Opus, with thanks to Judi Van Gorder for years of work on this fine PMO resource.

Cross rhyme: When the end word rhymes with a word in the middle of the next line.
Internal rhyme: Rhyming within a line.
Interlaced rhyme: A word in the middle of one line rhymes with a word in the middle of another.

My Example

Form: Kloon

Three Types of Rhyme

If I’m to rhyme inside and out
I’ll scout about before I start
for rhymes to fit into my art.
Apart from smartness, I’ll need wit.

Omit unfit words which outrage
as staged on page for rhyme alone.
When you are done you can’t disown
what’s shown by tone and rhythm here.

© Lawrencealot – January 27, 2015

Visual Template

Since one can exercise options with the internal rhyme in this poem, I moved the rhyming columns to fit iambic meter. One could just as well use the designated
columns with trochaic.

Fib Diamond

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Fib Diamond: Two fibs* joined with 13 syllable line. Bottom reversed fib.
1-1-2-3-5-8-13-8-5-3-2-1-1 syllables.

Self-Assessment
I
had
to be
a poet.
For inspiration
I have my sister and father
paternal grandmother and Swedish great, great, uncle.
After long and deep reflection,
with all due respect
I must say
I am
the
best.
Bob Varsell

http://www.rainbowcommunications.org/velvet/forms/
My Thanks to Linda Varsell Smith for her contributions above.

*Fibonacci sequence 
The sequence of numbers, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, … , 
in which each successive number is equal to the sum of the two preceding numbers.

Related Poetry Forms: Fib Diamond, Fib Series, Fibonacci Spiral, Fiboquattro, Haven Fire

My example

Fib Diamond Didactic

To
write
A Fib
Diamond
one must simply count.
a Fibonacci sequence up
and then back down, with thirteen syllables the longest
Fibonacci number used, but
never repeated.
Doing that,
you’re
done.

© Lawrencealot – December 24, 2014

Englyn proest gadwynog

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Englyn proest gadwynog én-glin proyst ga-doy-nóg cadwyn or (chain of half-rhyme), the 8th codified Official Welsh Meter, an Englyn, is verse that employs both alternating full rhyme which half rhymes with the alternating full rhymes. To complicate things further no half rhyme may occur within the lines.

The englyn proest gadwynog is:
• stanzaic, written in a chain of quatrains.
• syllabic, 7 syllable lines.
• rhymed, each line half rhymes with the next line and fully rhymes with the next. L1 and L3 fully rhyme with each other, L2 and L4 half rhyme with the rhyme of L1 and L3 and should fully rhyme with each other. The full rhymes of L1 and L3 half rhyme with the full rhyme of L1 and L3.
• chained, the last word of the stanza begins the next stanza.
x x x x x x A
x x x x x x a
x x x x x x A
x x x x x x a 

a x x x x x B
x x x x x x b
x x x x x x B
x x x x x x b

Kael or war koler euraid 
Karw Edwart mewn kaer ydwyd
Kael o ebolion lonaid
Kann ystabl yt, kwnstabl wyd.
— Dafydd Nanmor

Warrior Woman by Judi Van Gorder

Desired by all who’ve seen
the royal fighting woman,
Gweneviere the Warrior Queen,
behold, King Arthur’s chosen.

Chosen from the very best
appearing out from the mist
stand beside him in his quest
join Camolot’s wedding feast.

Feast of victory and peace
lady takes her rightful place
in time see injustice cease
royals joined in married bliss.

The Desert Palm by Stephen Arndt

Like an upright spine, your trunk 
Grows as straight as any plank 
And, with roots so deeply sunk, 
Towers upwards, lean and lank. 

Lank as well, your long, green leaves, 
Ranged in spirals, spend their lives 
Capping a crown that receives 
But rare drops of rain, yet thrives. 

Thrive serene in heartless heat, 
Poised upon your peaceful height; 
See us speed our hurried feet, 
Watch us flee in hasty flight. 

Flight or fight of little ants 
Scrapping over scant amounts— 
Thus must seem our frantic dance 
When you total our accounts.

Pasted from http://www.poetrymagnumopus.com/index.php?showtopic=980

My thanks to Judi Van Gorder for years of work on this fine PMO resource.

My example

Write One of These (Englyn proest gadwynog)

When words, well just sorta rhyme,
wait for even lines to roam.
Make odd lines rhyme true this time.
For both this old form has room.

Room exists to spread your wings,
consonate if you’d rather
I have tried most all these things
but can’t seem to get better.

© Lawrencealot – December 11, 2014

Related Welsh Form are HERE.

Visual template

Rhyme Scheme: aaaa bbbb where red letters indicate half rhyme.
Englyn proest gadwynog

Afflatus or Projacking

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• Afflatus is defined as “the act of blowing or breathing on” and also “overmastering impulse”. As a poetic genre, it is the response to an existing poem by another poet in spirit, construction, theme etc inspiring one’s own creation.. Afflatus is taking inspiration from another poem, when using the same structure it is the same as Projacking.
• Projacking is an exercise in writing learned from a poetry workshop on-line. Basically it means writing a poem using the frame or structure from a published nonce poem written by another.
All of the recognized verse forms were “projacked” at one time or another. The very first sonnet was projacked by someone who imitated the sonnet frame using their own words and thoughts. Now there are many variations of sonnets, all because someone imitated or copied the structure of another’s poem.
I am pretty sure William Carlos Williams, writing the Red Wheelbarrow did not think he was creating a new verse form. But we know from Donald Hall’s “How to Read a Poem”, the frame of the poem is duplicated in an exercise directed by the text, there must be hundreds maybe thousands of “wheelbarrows” out there somewhere. The “wheelbarrow” isn’t in the New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics or most other verse form books, but it has been projacked and the form is developing a following.
So if you see a poem you particularly admire, give projacking a try. You might discover something about writing you didn’t know before and it might even remove some inhibitions you may have, it did me. The first poem I chose to projack was homage to my hips by Lucille Clifton. Honestly when I put my own words and thoughts to the frame created by Ms. Clifton I wrote something that I probably would never have written without following her lead. I learned a great deal about writing from this simple exercise.
○ Find a published poem you enjoy.
○ Do a thorough explication of the poem. Study the content, the intent, opening, progression, and conclusion, the poetic devices used, line count and length, stanza separation, figurative speech used, alliteration, assonance, enjambment, caesura, rhyme scheme, etc. What makes this poem special?
○ Imitate the frame or structure of the poem using your own thoughts and words.
○ With your poem, you should recognize the poet and poem that inspired your work.
leg-acy by Judi Van Gorder (projacked from homage to my hips by Lucille Clifton)
these legs are long legs
they need room to
stretch and flex.
they do not scrunch up into tight
quarters, these legs
are boundless
they won’t break stride.
these legs have trudged up mountains,
they carry the weight of a family
they have run the race of survival
these legs are strong legs
these legs are dancer’s legs.
i have been known to bare them
to draw his eyes
and bring him to his knees!
Pasted from http://www.poetrymagnumopus.com/index.php?/topic/1189-afflatus-or-projacking/
My thanks to Judi Van Gorder for years of work on this fine PMO resource

Many of the forms you will find named on this blog were nonce forms that were purposely projacked by me in order to provide a common point of reference for poets, preventing the necessity of reiterating the characteristics of the form each time we wished to address it.

Those that easily come to mind are a series invented by Algernon Charles Swinburne:

E.g.   Swinburne Decastitch,  Swinburne Octain,  Swinburne Quatrain,  Swinburne Quintet

Stellar

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Pathways for the Poet by Viola Berg (1977) is a book for and by educators. Classic poetic forms as well as many invented forms which appear to have been invented as teaching tools or exercizes for use in workshops or classrooms are included. Some of these invented forms I have found in use in internet poetry communities, a testament to their staying power. On this page I include the metric invented forms found there in which appear to be exclusive to the community of educators from whom Ms. Berg drew her support. I have yet to find these in any other source. …. Whether classroom exercise or sharpening your skill as a writer, some of these forms can be fun to play with.
 

The Stellar is an invented stanzaic form framed in octaves and introduced by Viola Berg

The Stellar is:
stanzaic, written in any number of octaves.
metric, iambic L1-L4, & L8 are tetrameter, L5 & L6 are catalectic pentameter and L7 is dimeter.
rhymed, ababccdd efefgghh etc.
because L5 &L6 are catalectic, they have feminine endings.
 

 
Pasted from  http://www.poetrymagnumopus.com/index.php?showtopic=1199#dionol
My thanks to Judi Van Gorder for years of work on this fine PMO resource.

 My example

 

Succinct (Stellar)

Expanding to ad nauseam
on anything at all my friend
upsets folks and soon you’ll see ’em
just anxious for the talk to end.
Kids forced to read by educator,
long epics, – did, but came to hate her.
Don’t write a tome
If you want poems read at home.

© Lawrencealot – September 28, 2014

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Stellar

Rispetto

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rispetto, ( Italian:: “respect,” ) plural rispetti,  a Tuscan folk verse form, a version of strambotto. Therispetto lyric is generally composed of eight hendecasyllabic (11-syllable) lines. In its earliest form the rhyme scheme was usually abababcc. Later, the scheme ababccdd became more prominent, and other variations can also be found.
The form reached its pinnacle of both artistic achievement and popularity in the 14th and 15th centuries, particularly in the work of Politian, to whom some 200 rispetti are ascribed. Lorenzo de’ Medicialso wrote rispetti.
Pasted from <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/504518/rispetto>

A Rispetto, an Italian form of poetry, is a complete poem of two rhyme quatrains with strict meter. The meter is usually iambic tetrameter with a rhyme scheme of abab ccdd. A Heroic Rispetto is written in Iambic pentameter, usually featuring the same rhyme scheme.
Pasted from <http://www.shadowpoetry.com/resources/wip/rispetto.html>

Restated and consolidated rules:
The Rispetto is:
a poem in an octave, made up of 2 quatrains.
most often written in iambic tetrameter 
or it can be syllabic with lines between 8 and 12 syllables.
rhymed rhymed ababccdd or abababcc or abab cddc
 
The Heroic Rispetto is:
a poem in an octave made up of 2 quatrains.
always written in iambic pentameter.
rhymed ababccdd or abababcc or abab cddc
It appears that either may be separate quatrains or
a single octave as the poet prefers.

Example Poem
Heroic Rispetto by Lawrecealot
Rispetto Be or Not to Be
Rispetto is an old Italian form.
It’s English use has been neglected here.
It’s not in books that are the writers’ norm.
But searching yielded samples quite unclear.
What once was standard tetrameter changed.
It now can stretch to hexameter, dear.
If you have penned two stanza poems arranged
in quatrains your Rispetto may be here.
(c) Lawrencealot – April 16, 2012
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Rispetto

Brace Octave

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Brace Octave
Type:
Structure, Rhyme Scheme Requirement, Stanzaic
Description:
An eight-line stanzaic form with rhyme of abbaabba or abbacddc. No requirements on meter or length. The Italian octave is a subgenre of this.
Origin:
English
Schematic:
abbaabba or abbacddc
Rhythm/Stanza Length:
8
See Also:
Status:
Incomplete
My thanks to Charles L. Weatherford for his fine Poetrybase resource.
Brace Octave ——————————————
The Brace Octave has its roots in music. The brace is the wavey symbol that joins 2 staffs of music, indicating that both scores are played simultaneously. The verse form referred to as the Brace Octave is a lyrical blend of meter and rhyme, the rhyme scheme almost taking the shape of the brace. It could even be said that the octave itself acts as a brace joining two envelope quatrains.
The Brace Octave is:
  • stanzaic, written in any number of octaves (8 lines) made up of 2 envelope quatrains. When writing more than one octave, even numbered stanzas grouped in twos seems to fit best with the venue of the form.
  • metric, iambic tetrameter. Some sources indicate no meter necessary but given the musical nature of the verse, it seems to me measured lines are appropriate if not a prerequisite. The best known poem utilizing the Brace Octave is Two Songs from a Play by W.B. Yeats which is written in iambic tetrameter so I guess Mr. Yeats agrees with me.
  • rhymed, with an envelope rhyme scheme abbacddc (see it does sort of look like a brace lying down.)
    Here is     William Butler Yeats’ poem which was published in his book The Towerin 1928. There is a footnote from Yeats “These songs were sung by musicians in my play Resurrection.”
Two Songs from a Play by William Butler Yeats
I
I saw a staring virgin stand
Where holy Dionysus died,
And tear the heart out of his side.
And lay the heart upon her hand
And bear that beating heart away;
Of Magnus Annus at the spring,
And then did all the Muses sing
As though God’s death were but a play.
Another Troy must rise and set,
Another lineage feed the crow,
Another Argo’s painted prow
Drive to a flashier bauble yet.
The Roman Empire stood appalled:
It dropped the reins of peace and war
When that fierce virgin and her Star
Out of the fabulous darkness called.
II
In pity for man’s darkening thought
He walked that room and issued thence
In Galilean turbulence;
The Babylonian starlight brought
A fabulous, formless darkness in;
Odour of blood when Christ was slain
Made all platonic tolerance vain
And vain all Doric discipline.
Everything that man esteems
Endures a moment or a day.
Love’s pleasure drives his love away,
The painter’s brush consumes his dreams;
The herald’s cry, the soldier’s tread
Exhaust his glory and his might:
Whatever flames upon the night
Man’s own resinous heart has fed.
My thanks to Judy Van Gorder from PMO for the above.  I
 tend to agree with her conceptually about the meter and line length, but many do not.  Below is a poem that strays from isosyllabic lines and abandons consistent meter.
~Love Is Not Just  A State Of Mind~
(Brace Octave)
Love is a very beautiful feeling
Can make you sappy or happy
And at times can give you  healing
Sometimes makes us so unhappy
You reach the stars or hit the ceiling
Emotions makes us  sad or happy
Love is not just a state of mind
For in your heart love you can find
Dorian Petersen Potter
aka ladydp2000
copyright@2011
My example poem
Short Shrift    (Brace Octave)
I tell ya friend
it’s quite okay
to write this way
or else append
sounds to extend
the word array
with more to say
from start to end.
© Lawrencealot – April 20, 2014
Although I do believe that more pleasant poetry results from utilizing meter and a consistent line length of iambic tetrameter or longer, I have to allow any octave using envelope rhyme to be tagged with this name.

Sapphic Stanza

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The Sapphic Stanza is classic Aeolic verse and attributed to the poetess Sappho 6 BC, Greece. Plato so admired her that he spoke of her not as lyricist, poet but called her the 10th Muse. Her poems spoke of relationships and were marked by emotion. In a male dominated era she schooled and mentored women artists on the island of Lesbos and her writing has often been equated with woman-love. “Rather than addressing the gods or recounting epic narratives such as those of Homer, Sappho’s verses speak from one individual to another.” NPOPP. 
Sappho’s work has often been referred to as fragments, because only two of her poems have survived in whole with the vast majority of her work surviving in fragments either from neglect, natural disasters, or possible censorship.
Sapphic Stanza is:
  • quantitative verse, measuring long / short vowels. In English we transition to metric measure of stress / unstressed syllables which warps the rhythm a bit but brings it into context the English ear can hear. L= long s = short
  • stanzaic, written in any number of quatrains. This evolved to a quatrain during the Renaissance period from the ancient variable 3 to 4 line stanzas. The quatrain is made up of 3 Sapphic lines followed by an Adonic line which is usually written as a parallel to L3.
    Sapphic line = 11 syllables, trochaic with the central foot being a dactyl
    Adonic line = 5 syllables, a dactyl followed by a trochee
    (see below for more detail on these two components)
  • The modern Sapphic scansion should look like this (Stressed or Long = L; unstressed or short = s )
    Quantitative Verse (L=long syllable * s=short syllable)
    Ls-Ls-Lss-Ls-Ls
    Ls-Ls-Lss-Ls-Ls
    Ls-Ls-Lss-Ls-Ls
    Lss-Ls
    with substituted spondee
    Ls-Ls-Lss-Ls-LL
    Ls-Ls-Lss-Ls-LL
    Ls-Ls-Lss-Ls-LL
    Lss-Ls
  • originally unrhymed, in the Middle Ages the stanza acquired rhyme, rhyme scheme abab. Because of the predominant use of trochee and dactyls the rhyme will generally be feminine or a 2 syllable rhyme with the last syllable unstressed.
  • Adonic line is most often written as a parallel to a previous line. It is the last line of the Sapphic stanza. It is composed in 5 syllables, a dactyl followed by a trochee. It can also be found as a pattern for the refrain in song to honor Adonis, from which it derived its name.
    “death has come near me.”
    last line of     Like the gods
    . . . by Sappho 4th century BC
    edited by     Richmond Lattimore
    Quantitative Verse
    Lss-Ls
    Meaningless prattle. —jvg
  • Sapphic line -Since the Renaissance period the Sapphic line has been recognized as being a 5 foot trochaic line with the central foot being a dactyl. Prior to the Renaissance period this 11 syllable trochaic pattern was known as the “lesser” Sapphic line and the Sapphic line was a combination of the lesser Sapphic line and an adonic line.After Renaissance Sapphic line Ls-Ls-Lss-Ls-Ls : Passion, lust, consumed our beginnings fully.
    Prior to Renaissance Sapphic line Ls-Ls-Lss-Ls-Ls,- Lss Ls : greed to love? It happened deceptively, tricking emotions.
    Apparently, the technical terms of “lesser” Sapphic and Sapphic lines have been corrupted over time.
My Thanks to Judi Van Gorder for the wonderful resource at PMO
I am restating the specifications for the 21st century English writing poets, knowing full well that academicians may insist we have corrupted Sappho’s use of long and short vowel sounds.  A real poet might strive to make those sounds and the syllabic accents coincide, then none can argue.
A Sapphic Stanza is:
Stanzaic, consisting of any number of quatrains.
Syllabic, each stanza consisting 3 Sapphic Lines plus a Adonic line.
Metrical.  The Sapphic lines being trochaic with the central foot being a dactyl (11 syllables), and          The Adonic lines being a dactyl followed by a trochee (5 syllables)
Rhymed, the pattern being abab.
Example Poem
Quantitative Verse       (Sapphic Stanza)
Seek out passion, write of the trials that poets
face, with no complaint but with guidance, using
items neither trite nor near dying, so it’s
true and amusing.
© Lawrencealot – April 17, 2014
Visual Template
In this example I have tried to make each accented syllable also use an English long vowel sound.
Sapphic Stanza

Seox

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  • The Seox (seox in Anglo Saxon means six) is a verse form written in 6 lines in keeping with its name. It was created by Ann Byrnes Smith.The Seox is:
    • a poem in six lines, a hexastich.
    • syllabic, 3/7/6/5/4/3 syllables per lines.
    • unrhymed.
My Thanks to Judi Van Gorder for the wonderful resource at PMO
My Example Poem
A Way Out     (Seox)
When it is
practically impossible
to force your words to march
to any set rhyme
or metric flow
use this form.
© Lawrencealot – April 5, 2014