Tag Archives: Vietnamese

Tho Bon Chu

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

Tho Bon Chu or Four Word Verse is written as its name implies, measuring the number of words per line rather than syllables. The elements of the Tho Bon Chu are:

  1. stanzaic, written in a series of couplets.
  2. measured by the number of words in the line, each line has 4 words.
  3. rhymed, tonal rhyme in 1 of 2 distinct patterns and often end-rhymed at the poet’s discretion. w=word Language specific.
    When end-rhymed.           
    w ♭w a#
    w # w a♭
    or
    w # w a♭
    When not end-rhymed
    w ♭w #
    w ♭w a#
    w # w ♭
    or
    w # w ♭
    w ♭w #

My Example

Form: Tho Bon Chu

Since I have no notion about the Vietnamese tonal qualities for words, I have anglicized the rules to interpret Sharp tones as end-stressed words and Flat tones, as not.

Hollering

Sounds normal to shout
with children at home.
To shout in office
is not my suggestion.

© Lawrencealot – February 11, 2015

William Kenneth Keller, writing on Allpoetry as Shades of Bill added this comment and poem which do much to explain the concept which I merely relegated to stress. I am including his work as it really helps things make a little more sense.

The idea of tonality in poetry intrigues me! So here is my humble take on this. In English a word’s pitch comes two ways: stress, (rise and fall) and the tonality assigned to vowel sounds. (long or short)

Here is how I would assess your first line:
‘ow’ in ‘sounds’ would define the baseline for line. (This brings up an interesting point: you can have a baseline that changes line to line, or an overall baseline carried throughout the poem; the latter obviously far more difficult than the former.)
‘or’ in ‘normal’ should be flatter than baseline. (It is: the voice drops slightly.)
‘ooh’ in ‘to’ should sound at same pitch as baseline’. (It seems close enough.)
‘ow’ in ‘shout’ should be sharper than baseline. (It is identical. As an example, the ‘ee’ in ‘sleep’ is pitched slightly higher than the ‘ow’ in ‘sounds when voiced.)

So I took a light-hearted stab at it:

She walks too stiff
Like an old lady
Talks like a sailor
Too long at sea
Looks like an angel
And so I stay

Might not be suitable as an example, but it does seem to have that necessary rise and fall to it. I may try to give it another go, but regardless, the idea of pitch and tonality is going in my Batman Utility Belt!

Bill Keller

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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Bay 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 Bay Chu or Seven Word Poetry [Vietnamese] is written with seemingly more flexible tonal pattern than most Viet verse with the exception of when an end word is flat, the 3rd word must be sharp and when the end word is sharp, the 3rd word in the line must be flat. The elements of the Tho Bay Chu are:

  1. stanzaic, written in any number of quatrains.
  2. measured by number of words, 7 words per line.
  3. rhymed, tonal rhyme appears to be at the discretion of the poet except if and end word is flat, the 3rd word of the line must be sharp or if the end word is sharp, the 3rd word of the line must be flat. End rhyme aaxa bbxb etc. or xaxa xbxb etc.

Note: I cannot begin to write one of these, because the concepts of a tonal flat or sharp is not within my grasp, even though I can find audio samples on Wikipedia.

Tho Sau Chu

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

Tho Sau Chu or Six-Word Verse [Vietnamese] is measured by word count and uses either alternate of envelope rhyme. It can be written in quatrains or octaves. When written in octaves it is called Six-Eight Poetry  The elements of the Tho Sau Chu are:

  1. stanzaic, written in any number of quatrains. It can also be written in any number of octaves.
  2. measured by word count, 6 words per line.
  3. rhymed, either alternate, abab cdcd etc. (when written as Six-Eight abababab cdcdcdcd etc.) or envelope, abba cddc etc. (when written in octaves abbaabba cddccddc etc.)

My Example

Form: Tho Sau Chu

Old New Form Takes a Bow

This poetry form comes from Vietnam
which doesn’t rhyme with Uncle Sam
but with either mom or bomb.
Am I certain? Yes I am!

If my lines led you astray,
it’s because I’m a contrary guy.
I feel my misdirection is okay
when a second reading explains why.

I’m writing this Tho Sau Chu
(though English cannot do it proud.)
This form hereby makes its debut
with only one hundred words allowed.

I think none will be uptight
with a new form that’s presented
to shine and share the spotlight;
with ninety-six words I feel contented.

© Lawrencealot – January 31, 2015

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Song That Luc Bat

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Song That Luc Bat
The Song That Luc Bat is another Vietnamese form. The name means double-seven six eight. The six-eight lines form a luc bat couplet, as above; this is preceded by a rhyming couplet of 7-syllable lines. (The Vietnamese are a delightfully wysiwyg people.) To chain stanzas together, the last syllable of each stanza should rhyme with the first two lines of the next. Three and a half stanzas of this can make a rather pleasant form (admittedly quite unknown to Vietnam), the Song That Luc Bat sonnet:
Making Tracks

Walking in new-fallen snow
I prefer always to go
Where none has trod before
To make my mark. The thaw will come;
Footprints must in time succumb
To Nature’s slow pendulum.
Till then my pugmarks stand,
And blaze a path, crisp and distinct,
On the whiteness darkly inked,
Individual, but linked.
Let others do the same –
But do not play this game to win.
You will lose when spring comes in.
The blanket of snow is thin.
If such things matter to you, you should note that this is not a sonnet at all, strictly speaking.

Pasted from http://volecentral.co.uk/vf/luc_bat.htm#Song%20That%20Luc%20Bat

My thanks to Bob Newman for his years of work on the wonderful Volecentral resource

My example

In Your Face Upper Case (Song That Luc Bat)

I was taught in forty-eight
poetry (to give it weight)
must have rules of its own.
Capitals must begin each line.

Kids absorb new rules just fine.
Rhyme and Caps thus did align
making poetic verse.
For me it was tautology.

Ten years later I would see
e. e. cumming’s poetry
and thought it was absurd.
Dogma disallowed that man’s style.

Lazy, I thought for a while,
scheme of poet to beguile,
and though he’s well acclaimed
still I’ve deigned to pass his work by.

Still don’t like it, but know why.
Change, when sensible, I try.
Upper case helps readers
when it falls where it ought to be.

It helped past type-setters see
Proper breaks for poetry.
Hence it helped all concerned.
Setting of type is now passé .

Now we’re free to have our say
aiding readers seems the way
capitals should apply.
They emphasize full-stops when used.

Still, their absence is abused
i, as me, can’t be excused
Dogma serves in lieu of
thought but bows at last to logic.

© Lawrencealot – August 21, 2014

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Song That Luc Bat

Luc Bat

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The luc bat is a Vietnamese form of poetry.
It means simply “six eight” due to its pattern of syllables per line: 6,8,6,8,6,8, etc. There is no set length to the luc bat, so it can be as long or as short as you’d like.
But what really makes this form interesting is the rhyming structure, which sounds a little complicated but is easy to grasp in practice.
The sixth syllable of every eight-syllable line rhymes with the last syllable of the six-syllable line before it, which in turn rhymes with the eighth syllable of the eight-syllable line before it. When the end of the poem is reached, the last line jumps back and rhymes with the first. In other words, the syllables go like this:
* * * * * a
* * * * * a * b
* * * * * b
* * * * * b * c
* * * * * c
* * * * * c * d
* * * * * d
* * * * * d * a
…although of course the poem can be as long as you wish.
Remember that it is always the final line of the poem which
ends in the “a” rhyme, linking it back to the beginning
Example Poem
Farewell Denied
The ship I sailed and sank
those final years, was dank by then.
I tried to save her when
all hope seemed lost.  My men put out
in boats, and with a shout
“Farewell”, I set about to save
that ship in a nearby cave.
I was not really brave; just done.
I thought it might be one
small chance for grounding run in firth.
Slight chance to find some berth
I tried for what it’s worth, but failed.
Thru all the years I sailed,
and all the sirens hailed with cheer
I never thought I hear
one close until my dear, you found
me sinking soon to drown.
“I’d love for you to down here stay
and with this sprite now play,
but death to you that way I’ll stop.”
You brought me to the top.
A mortal life you swap to free
a mortal from the sea
although you wanted me to stay
I clung to life that day,
but thoughts of you held sway since then.
I’ll leave the world of men
and dive in where back then, I sank.
© Lawrencealot – August, 2012
Author just noted on review that this poem does
not comply to specifications and will be re-rewritten.
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