Saturday, May 17, 2014

Sunday Form Challenge - Terzanelle

In my quest for a new and interesting form for us to try out this weekend, I came across a hybrid of two well-loved forms.




The Terzanelle is a marriage of the Italian Terza Rima with the French Villanelle conceived by Lewis Turco in his "The Book of Forms”. This is a 19 line poem, consisting of five stanzas of three lines (tercets), and the final stanza having four lines (quatrain), in which the first and last lines of the first stanza are repeated as a refrain. In addition, other lines are repeated throughout, and a rhyme scheme comes into play:
The middle line of the each of the tercet stanzas is copied and becomes the last line of the following stanza and the first line of that stanza rhymes with it, thus making it an interlocking form. The lines are traditionally written in iambic pentameter, but instead of focusing on meter, I would suggest a consistent line length of 10 syllables.



Schema for stanzas 1 - 5

Line 1 - Rhyme A1
Line 2 - Rhyme B
Line 3 - Rhyme A2

Line 4 - Rhyme b
Line 5 - Rhyme C
Line 6 - Line 2 repeated (B)

Line 7 - Rhyme c
Line 8 - Rhyme D
Line 9 - Line 5 repeated (C)

Line 10 - Rhyme d
Line 11 - Rhyme E
Line 12 - Line 8 repeated (D)

Line 13 - Rhyme e
Line 14 - Rhyme F
Line 15 - Line 11 repeated (E)


The final stanza follows the same pattern as previously, with Line 1 becoming Line 17  and Line 3 becoming Line 19, completing the link back to the first stanza.  Finally,  Line 14 is repeated as Line 18.

Schema for stanza 6:

Line 16 - Rhyme f
Line 17 - Line 1 repeated (A1)
Line 18 - Line 14 repeated (F)
Line 19 - Line 3 repeated (A2)

I hope I have not added further complication to a complex form! I would suggest that you skip over to The Poet's Garret, where an example is laid out in a very comprehensive way.




While form challenges may not be to everyone's taste, we dedicate one post a month to those who do like to try their hands at them. Therefore, I ask that only new poems in the Terzanelle form be linked up here. Any unrelated poems will be removed from the Linky, with the reminder that a poem of your choice may be shared on Open Link Monday.

The pictures used for this post may be used on your blogs, so long as credit is given as follows in the order in which they appear:

photo credit: origami joel via photopin cc

photo credit: kevin dooley via photopin cc

photo credit: Shenghung Lin via photopin cc

23 comments:

Grace said...

What a challenging form Kerry ~ I will be back later in the afternoon to post mine ~

Kerry O'Connor said...

Yes, Grace. This one will take some figuring out, I think.

Ella said...

You always entice me! I know what my Confession poem would be-poetry is my forbidden lover. I am going to go visit your link and see what romantic notions speak to me.

I love the photos, you selected!
Thank you Kerry~

Anonymous said...

I think - THINK - I've done it... *trying to catch breath* Love these forms (never thought I'd hear myself say that!), even though they give me a headache at times! Great prompt!

brudberg said...

Terza rima is challenging.. And so is Villanelle.. I Will be back tomorrow,, hmm

hedgewitch said...

I am officially on blog vacation, but this is a fascinating form--it looks extremely challenging, but like both terza rima and villanelle, I'm sure it also is equally rewarding. I will file it with all the other challenges I have not been able to do lately, as there is just neither time, energy nor will for poetry atm. Thanks for finding this one, Kerry--I will definitely be coming back to it.

Kerridwen said...

I'll have to give this a try!

Susan said...

I wrote a very strange poem, for me, to this count and rhyme challenge. It was the threes, I think, that got me there, triple God, trinity, etc. I couldn't stop until it was done, and it's way past supper time now so I'll come back to visit others tomorrow. Grin. (I know I altered some of the repeat lines.)

Anne V said...

Woah. Never tried this complex structure before, my poetry is mostly all stream of consciousness writing and I write as things come to me... I will do this as homework and if I am in time, will link back here, thanks for an awesome prompt! :)

Hannah said...

My favorite kind of puzzle!!

Thank you, Kerry this made my Saturday night a joy! :)

Sumana Roy said...

i hope i did it correctly..the form's very interesting..thanks Kerry for the challenge :)

avalon said...

Kerry, you have a wicked streak!

Kerry O'Connor said...

Haha! Yes, I do but it kind of backfires on me, as I am battling over my own piece even now. Not sure it is not just a whole mish-mash of vaguely correlating thoughts.

Kerry O'Connor said...

Phew! At last...
My end result combines all the prompts of this week!
Ella, I also returned to one of your prompts in April, which I was unable to try out at the time.

avalon said...

Can I just make it clear that I am trying to comment on WP blogs, but for some reason they get spat out. Have done this past week.
I loved what I read.

Gail said...

I hope I accomplished the task.

Thanks for the fun!

Ella said...

I looked mine over until I was dizzy!

Wow, Kerry-thank you for sharing! I will be by~

I hope I nailed it! Thank you Kerry!

Maude Lynn said...

This was brutal!

Fireblossom said...

Honestly, it's Greek to me.

Anonymous said...

A cool form, Kerry--mine is a little uninspired. Yours was tremendous. K.

Fireblossom said...

After reading what some of you have been able to do with this, I am impressed. I have come back four times to try to understand it enough to try it, but I think I need a color-coded wall chart or something. :-(

Fireblossom said...

Laffin hard here! There IS a color coded chart! In the link! I can't believe that. Ask and receive!

Marian said...

Kerry, this form is so intriguing, but i'm just not up to it at the moment. i just don't have the focus. but it pains me to let a complicated form pass by... i'm sure i will try this, after a spell. thanks for introducing it! xo