Glossary of Poetic Forms
The following are poetic forms that have appeared in Shot Glass Journal.
Pantun
The Pantun is a 15th century Malay poetry form that originated as a traditional oral form of expression in the Malay Annals and the Hikayat Hang Tuah. It consists of a quatrain of eight to twelve syllables per line and employs an abab rhyme scheme. The first and second lines can appear disconnected in meaning from the third and fourth, but there is invariably a link of some sort, such as association of ideas or feelings.
Pi-Archimedes
A 6 line poetry form base on PI = 3.14286. Each line represents the number of words used from the PI number.
Prose
A poem written in prose rather than verse. It can look like a paragraph or fragmented short story but acts like a poem. It works in sentences rather than lines.
Quandrel
A Quandrel is a poem of twelve lines, with the refrain appearing at the start and repeating twice. It differs from a Roundel in that the middle stanza has an additional line. The refrain establishes the second or 'b' rhyme (abaR baba abaR).
Rondeau
A lyric poem from the 13th century which is characterized by repeating lines or "rounds". It has 15 lines written as a quintet, quatrain and sestet, with two rhyme schemes.
Rondel
A 14th Century French lyrical poem. A variation of the Roundeau, it consists of two quatrains followed by a quintet (13 lines total) or a sestet (14 lines total). The first two lines are refrains which repeat at the end of the second and third stanzas. The rhyming pattern is ABba, abAB, abbaA.
Rondolet
The Rondolet is a French form consisting of a single septet with two rhymes and one refrain AbAabbA. The capital letters are the refrains, or repeats. The refrain is written in tetra-syllabic or dimeter and the other lines are twice as long - octasyllabic or tetrameter.
Roundel
A Roundel is a poetry form created by Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909). It is a variation of the French rondeau form. A roundel consists of nine lines each having the same number of syllables, plus a refrain after the third line and after the last line. The refrain must be identical with the beginning of the first line: it may be a half-line, and rhymes with the second line. It has three stanzas and its rhyme scheme is as follows: A B A R ; B A B ; A B A R ; where R is the refrain.
Schuttelreim
A rhymed couplet with the first consonant of the end word of the first line and the first consonant of the word prior to the end word on the first line is reversed in the second line. The first consonant of the end word becomes the first consonant of the word prior to the end word on the second line.