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Monday, September 28, 2015

Monday Poetry Stretch - Bref Double

The bref double is a French form. It is similar to the sonnet, but has a different rhyme scheme and does not need to be written in iambic pentameter. This form contains three quatrains (four-line stanzas) followed by a final couplet.

It has three rhymes: a, b, and c. Five of the 14 lines are not part of the rhyme scheme. The c rhyme ends each quatrain. The a and b rhymes are found twice each somewhere within the three quatrains and once in the couplet.

Here are some sample rhyme schemes.
abxc abxc xxxc ab
xaxc xbxc xbac ba
xabc xaxc xbxc ab

You can learn more about this form at Robert Lee Brewer's Poetic Asides and Poetry Magnum Opus.

I hope you'll join me this week in writing a bref double. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.

4 comments:

  1. October

    Days shine like August, blue and gold.
    Nothing says October. Why
    are the leaves beginning to turn?
    What do the geese know, and the trees?

    Beach weather, miles away from cold.
    A dog is lolling on the grass.
    A boy in shorts runs past and roses
    toss their heads in a chance-met breeze.

    But—like kindergartners new at school
    the trees are counting daylight now.
    Light by dark by light they learn,
    then whisper secrets to the bees.

    And so the leaves, not sky, will burn.
    It isn’t summer. Someone told.

    —Kate Coombs, 2015
    all rights reserved

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  2. Kate, you are something else. What a wordsmith.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks, Charles! This was a hard one. :)

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