The Canción, Spanish meaning song, now generally refers to any 16th century Spanish isostrophic poem with Italianate lines. It is the Spanish equivalent of the Italian Canzone. Verse forms that would be included in this genre are the Silva, the Lira and the Endecha. However the Canción, sometimes called the Petrarchan Canción, can be written in nonce verse and stand on its own.
The Canción or the Petrarchan Canción is:
• isostrophic, written in any number of lines in a stanza or strophe although it is very often written in 13 line strophe, the pattern of which is fixed in each subsequent strophe.
• syllabic, Italianate lines, mixed lines of 7 and 11 syllables make up a stanza or strophe. L6 and L13 are ALWAYS 11 syllables. The pattern of line length of the first stanza, becomes a fixed pattern for subsequent stanzas. (Note: in Spanish prosody, a hendecasyllabic line always has the primary accent or stress on the 6th syllable.)
• rhymed, often the rhyme scheme begins abcabc . . . . . . .
• often ended with a shorter strophe called an envío. A short summary.
Pasted from http://www.poetrymagnumopus.com/index.php?showtopic=1027
My thanks to Judi Van Gorder for years of work on this fine PMO resource.
Sleek, dark, always a snob, Liliana was
beautiful, Italian with a Teutonic
half, from Trento in the Dolomites, Fascist
and Allies along the parental divide,
secretive, witty, seductive and quite rich.
She reasoned like a cloud of Italian bees.
Prowling the streets of San Francisco, daring
the rules of good sense, taste. She felt safest in
the Castro, safer yet in dark Mission bars
with pimps, prostitutes, Siliqua in drag than
in the unutterable quiet whiteness
of home: the Heights commanding that paradise
the Gate, the gold, the Bay, the sky and islands.
“Men in drag, acting out their fantasies,” she
said, “and Spanish lovers, will not murder me.”
With her buzzing, rich, visionary brain, she
she developed salons of art, museums,
she gave and gave her heart’s blood. Then suddenly
leaving paradise for Europe with a seed
of greed, she returned a Colonialist.
Empires to build! Money was not to her taste,
she bicycled, wore sweats, ate always at home,
but unobstructed institutes, foundations
conflagrated her dreams. Born precocious, world-
wise, she had escaped to adventure the earth
as a girl, ended playing bridge, exercise
machines, dominating waiters, surfeited
with late blooming desires to be the richest
of all, quite convinced, after a youth of art
and architecture, banquets, Nazi banknotes
in the attic trunks, that money was the root
of all power to do. Odd progress for her:
loving, enchanting, gifted, married to a
thumb-sized mate who, until late in life, she kept
camped in dolomite valleys outside her heart.
Pasted from http://janhaag.com/PODes067-099.html