shot glass
title
"... brevity is the soul of wit ..."
- William Shakespeare

Glossary of Poetic Forms


The following are poetic forms that have appeared in Shot Glass Journal.

Jisei
Jisei is a poem written by the poet before their own death. These poems reflect the final reflections of one's life. It was generally a tradition with zen monks but were written by poets as well. These poems originated in Japanese, Chinese and Korean cultures as far back as the 7th Century, and can be written in any poetry form, but were traditionally written in tanka or haiku style.

Lanturne
The Lanturne is a five-line verse shaped like a Japanese lantern with a syllabic pattern of one, two, three, four, one.The poem is center aligned and resembles an oil lantern and thus the name. Rhyming is optional and the form is usually employed to evoke serious thoughts.

Naani
Naani is one of the Indian popular Telugu poems. It consists of 4 lines with the total lines consists of 20 to 25 syllables. The poem is not bounded to a particular subject. Generally it depends upon human relations and current statements.

Nonce
A nonce form is generally created by a poet for a specific poem but which may, over time, and with repeated usage by subsequent poets, become a "received form."

Nonet
A Nonet is a nine line poem, with the first line containing nine syllables, the next eight, so on until the last line has one syllable. Nonets can be written about any subject, and rhyming is optional.

Oviellejo
An Old Spanish verse form (derived from ovillo, a ball of yarn). A stanza consists of 10 lines, with a rhyme scheme of AABBCCCDDC. The second line of each rhyme scheme, Line 2,4,6, is short line of up to 5 syllables. The last line is a "redondilla," a "little round" that collects all three of the short lines.

Palindromic cinquain
A Palindromic Cinquain is a Cinquain written as a Palindrome. The Cinquain is a short, usually unrhymed poem consisting of twenty-two syllables distributed as 2, 4, 6, 8, 2, in five lines. The Palindrome is poem with a sequence that is the same forwards and backwards.

Pantoum
The Pantoum is a type of formal verse that is distinguished by cycling refrains. They are written in quatrains, that may be rhymed or unrhymed. The first quatrain consists of four lines. The second quatrain uses the second and fourth lines from the first quatrain as its first and third lines. The second and fourth lines of the second quatrain are new to the poem. The third quatrain uses the second and fourth lines of the second quatrain as its refrains in the first and third line positions. The third quatrain's second and fourth lines are new to the poem. The last line of a pantoum is often the same as the first.

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