Welcome to One Stop Poetry Form.
Our goal is to give you a very brief overview of poetry forms. We hope our look at a few poems, the basic structure will pique your interest and encourage you to make an attempt or two. Today and next week we will be looking at the Triolet. Thanks to my friend Shan Hendry who will graciously host the next two weeks of Triolet for One Stop. Enjoy.
Triolet
How Great My Grief
by Thomas Hardy
How great my grief, my joys how few
Since first it was my fate to know thee!
-Have the slow years not brought to view
How great my grief, my joys how few,
Nor memory shaped old times anew,
Nor loving-kindness helped to show thee
How great my grief, my joys how few,
Since first it was my fate to know thee?
Triolets are an early form of French Poetry dating back to the early 13th Century. They were mainly used in the French Court for recitation during breaks between dances.
Basically a one stanza poem, they were deemed long enough, and light entertainment for the ladies to regain their breath before dancing anew. The rhythm of the triolet was said to be akin to that of a dance, but a dance of words. Triolets were thought to be favoured by women, for their “daintiness.”
They were first used in English poetry around the beginning of the 17th Century, with poets like Patrick Carey and Robert Bridges penning them on a regular basis.
The form itself is simply eight lines, usually written in iambic tetrameter <four stresses> or pentameter <five stresses>, similar to the rhythm used in the Villanelle which was covered by Luke Prater for One Stop Poetry. Very basically an Iamb is a stressed and an unstressed syllable; there should be four or five of these to each line. Very much like a De-DUM rhythm of a heartbeat, dum being the stressed syllable. A quick example from me:
They al so serve who onl y stand and wait
Dee dum dee dum dee dum dee dum dee dum
1 2 3 4 5
I’ve only started writing Iambs myself, recently, and I find it easiest to stick to simple words with one or two syllables until you’re comfortable with the placement of stresses!
Like theVillanelle, the Triolet has two repeating refrains: an A line and a B line. They also follow a strict rhyming scheme, usually ABaAabAB; this can be varied, but we’ll stick to the basics here. If you’re stuck with your rhymes, then I’d suggest visiting www.rhymezone.com, it can be a godsend when you’re stuck!
With the repeating refrain, choose a strong theme for A, and play with an answering line in line B. Remember the meaning of your triolet is centred on these refrains.
Ok a few examples for you.
there is no running from this crime A
these hands are stained with metaphors B
this leaking pen won’t heal with time a
there is no running from this crime A
and this vocabulary ain’t mine a
‘cause I’m no better than before b
there is no running from this crime A
these hands are stained with metaphors B
This one was my first and written in iambic tetrameter.
Here is a more classical example:
We poets are so very strange!
We write and write and lose our minds!
Emotions flow in quite a range;
We poets are so very strange!
We’re happy. Then, we quickly change;
To make a world it takes all kinds.
We poets are so very strange!
We write and write and lose our minds!
LuAnne Kennedy
So very simply, there’s a Triolet for you! Can’t wait to see what you make of the form!
We would like to encourage you to try your hand at writing a Triolet and then linking in to Mr Linky. This is an exercise, an opportunity to learn. Give it a try and have fun with it!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mihalorel/1385624845/in/photostream
Hoping everyone has fun with the triolet! I do
Can’t wait to start reading!
Oooo! Bless you. I massacred this form last week so I am looking forward to getting my head round it.
Thanks for the insight Shan. Mind you, rhyming, counting and where the stresses fall? Tough challenge!
Thanks for participating sweetie, I think I killed my first two villanelle too, I couldn’t even spell them properly! These little ditties are such fun!
Had to give this ago….I hope I have it right, the stresses and syllables can be tricky, as much as ensuring a smooth tale is woven throughout the piece whilst repeating the lines… thank you Shan for a great insight on Triolets…cheers pete
I tried one. why not? lol for me, it’s not a comfortable form, but who says comfort zones are all they’re cracked up to be? I missed on the “light and dainty” subject matter of old. . . but we’d not be on the moon either if somebody’d not thought outside the box
Monty
not completely sure of what I did, but it felt good…
thanks for the exposure,
we need to look at everything, or else we will miss something
Peace, hp
These triolets are from my archive. I like to write ‘a trio of triolets’ in order to develop the idea beyond one stanza. Feedback would be appreciated.
This is interesting.I never knew you had this…I have the same one on http://umaspoembook.blogspot.com/p/experimenting-with-poetry-forms.html
and I like to try a Triolets soon
Great lesson today Shan…I’m a better poet for it
Now, I just have to manage to pen something that might be worth posting. Certainly not as easy as it looks!
thank you for hosting Shan…..bkm
Not sure if my tetrameter was perfect, but at least I made a valiant attempt. Enjoyed the heck out of the form! THANK YOU!
Posted and linked. I hope my arithmetic was correct….
uurgh…done
It will have to stand as my first ever as it is..hopefully subsequent ones will improve!
OK, you are a cruel task master, I’m not sure if I butchered this art form or just squeaked by on the rules. This was hard for someone who hasn’t sat through a lit course in 21 years. Fun though.
Back again, clearly I have not understood this lesson, since reading the entries submitted. I was a little confused with the ABaAabAB rules, thought the last word needed to be repeated not the entire line. Will try harder next time.
Sorry to whomever left me a note and now can’t find it on my triolet. WordPress ate it before I could read it. For some reason it sends half my comments to spam. Actually it sent the entire poem to trash and when I fished it out the comments didn’t come back with it. But two were retrieved from emails. The other is gone.
Wrote this for another prompt, but it came out as a triolet after reading Shan’s excellent exposition, so I linked here as well.
Love this form for just one thought at a time…but I made a mess of linking mine. Can I remove it and link again?
It’s great to see you here, Shân. I’ve loved the triolets you’ve posted to your blog. I’m afraid this is way beyond my abilities. I’ll save the post and maybe I can tackle this in the future.
dani ♥
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I searched Google for tetrameter and I found your blog
I like your blog, well done!
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