Monday Poetry Stretch - Terza Rima

I've been sonnet writing lately, so I have iambic pentameter on the brain. I need, however, to try a different form, so this week I've chosen terza rima. The Handbook of Poetic Forms defines it in this fashion.

Terza rima is a tumbling, interlocking rhyme scheme that was invented by the thirteenth-century Italian poet Dante for the creation of his long poem, The Divine Comedy.

Terza rima (an Italian phrase meaning "third rhyme") consists of a series of three-line stanzas (tercets) with the rhyme scheme aba bcb cdc ded and so on. It can go on as long as the poet wishes. At the end of the poem an extra line is often added to complete the structure: yzy z.

You can read more on this form at Poets.org. Generally, terza rima is written in iambic pentameter, though you will find exceptions. One notable one is this terza rima by William Carlos Williams. You'll notice a lot of near rhyme and then ... not so much.

The Yachts

contend in a sea which the land partly encloses
shielding them from the too-heavy blows
of an ungoverned ocean which when it chooses

tortures the biggest hulls, the best man knows
to pit against its beatings, and sinks them pitilessly.
Mothlike in mists, scintillant in the minute

brilliance of cloudless days, with broad bellying sails
they glide to the wind tossing green water
from their sharp prows while over them the crew crawls

Read the poem in its entirety.

Here is a clearer example of the form.

Ode to the West Wind
Percy Bysshe Shelley

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being
Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thou
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Read the poem in its entirety.

Will you join me in writing a terza rima? Leave me a comment about your poem and I'll post the results later this week.