The Third Rhyme

Your man Dante (1265 - 1321) invented the rhyme scheme of terza rima (the third rhyme) and employed it to marvellous effect in his most famous poem, the one we all know as 'The Divine Comedy ', epic in length, painstakingly composed over thirteen years, and completed only months before the poet's death. 

In the wake of interesting blogs about terza rima by Pam and Terry, let me throw in a couple of tantalising reveals before we knuckle down to business: Firstly, Dante Alighieri's poem, as originally written, was simply titled 'Comedia ' (Comedy) and that's how it was known (in manuscript form obviously as this was before printing-presses) and then in the first printed editions from the 1470s onwards. It wasn't retitled 'La Divina Comedia ' until 1555, over two hundred years after the author's death. Secondly, Dante Alighieri wasn't strictly speaking even Dante, for he was christened Durante di Alighiero. Crazy, no?

Durante's 'Comedia ' then...😉

Not only was 'Comedia ' written in tercets (three-line stanzas) with a rhyme scheme of aba bcb cdc ded  et cetera (where the third line shares an end rhyme with the first and the ending of the middle line provides the end rhyme for the first and third lines of the following stanza), but its 14,000+ lines were equally divided between three cantiche (parts or volumes), sub-titled 'Inferno ' (hell), 'Purgatorio ' (purgatory) and 'Paradiso ' (paradise), with each cantiche consisting in turn of 33 cantos, so 99 in total (plus a preface to the entire poem, making 100 cantos in all). Furthermore, every single line was hendecasyllabic (consisting of eleven syllables or beats), so each tercet or stanza contained 33 syllables. Given his fascination with threes and multiples thereof, some might even consider this spectral Durante to be the Third Man... (cue famous tune).

Dante foresees being translated into English by a crime-writer

I first read 'The Divine Comedy ' when at university in the 1970s. We read it both in English (the Penguin Classics edition, translation by Dorothy L. Sayers, more famed for her crime novels) and in the original (for which we took Italian lessons in parallel with our English studies). I say first read, but in truth I've not opened a copy in fifty years. Now that I'm more than "halfway through the journey of our life..." and given the pile of unread books awaiting my reading pleasure, I'm fairly certain I shall never venture into its yellowed pages again. 

If you've been following my blogs and poetry for a while, you've probably realised that I'm not a huge fan of constraining rhyme schemes, but I'm prepared to give anything at least a try-out, terza rima no exception. However, I'm invoking Dead Good privilege on this one, so while I will respect the rule of the third rhyme (aba bcb cdc etc) there will be no kow-towing to the idea that all the lines have to be of equal length (whether Dante's hendecasyllabic eleven beats or the more common decasyllabic ten beats of  iambic pentameters). My beats will be irregular. Think of it as terzarrhythmia.

heart monitor

I was diagnosed at a recent health check with an erratic pulse. A couple of quick ECG traces proved inconclusive. I have no obvious symptoms (no dizziness, shortness of breath, physical pain et cetera) and I consider myself to be reasonably fit and healthy. I've taken to measuring my blood pressure and heart rate (beats per minute) when at rest several times a day. Blood pressure is usually around 115/65 (the median of three readings) but my pulse, although generally in the range of 60-70 bpm often seems to skip a beat, sometimes two in a row. It is thought I may have some kind of arrhythmia, and so one day earlier this week I was fitted with a 24 hour heart monitor to try and get a better understanding of what might be going on, to see if there is any obvious pattern or evidence of malfunction. I was told to do exactly what I would ordinarily do in my day and to keep a log of timings of activities (eating, walking, driving, writing poetry, watching tv, sleeping etc) - although as I was told not to get the apparatus wet, I did have to forgo my usual hour at the gym followed by a shower. I wore the device from 11.00am one day to 11.00am the next and I wait now for the analysis.

I wrote the majority of this latest poem on that wired-up day...I might revise/improve it in due course:

Rainy Day 24-Hour Heart Monitor Blues

Dear heart! The thought that you might flaw

pulls me up a moment to reflect

on mechanics and mortality. This downpour

is relentless, England's summer. Why ever expect

burnished beach days of sandy-toed fun?

I sit torso bared waiting for a nurse to connect

the spider to my chest. You're a tricky one hun

she says, and shaves small clearings in the fur

the better to affix five sticky patches. All done

she declares, as she plugs me in, a brief whirr

from the tiny recording angel at my waist

indicating my 24 hours have begun. I thank her,

walk through the storm to the car in haste

mindful not to get the apparatus wet.

Just act normal  she'd said. I wonder is this a taste

of purgatory? Either way I don't need to let

imagination run away but there's a limit

to what one can do when the weather is set

to be so thundery foul for the duration. I sit

with wipers flipping and slip Lightnin' Hopkins

into the player - Rainy Day Blues - a bit of a hit

from an age away. Fire up the engine. Who dares wins

as they say. Get into gear and pull out into the flow.

What have I done for my sins?

It's what I can't see or feel that worries me so,

the depressing possibility something's awry,

a wave of fear sweeps for what I don't know...

Woah Lordy, these clouds won't pass away.

Woah Lordy, these clouds won't pass away.

Thanks for reading 💗 S ;-)

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Terza Rima - Don't Panic!

Terza rima is a rhyming verse form, in which the poem, or each poem-section, consists of tercets (three line stanzas) with an interlocking three-line rhyme scheme: The last word of the second line in one tercet provides the rhyme for the first and third lines in the tercet that follows (aba bcb cdc ). The poem or poem-section may have any number of lines, but it ends with either a single line or a couplet, which repeats the rhyme of the middle line of the previous tercet (yzy z or yzy zz ).

I don’t know about you but my eyes glazed over half way through that paragraph. It makes sense with an example such as Robert Frost’s:

Acquainted with the Night

I have been one acquainted with the night.                    a
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.                    b
I have outwalked the furthest city light.                            a

I have looked down the saddest city lane.                       b
I have passed by the watchman on his beat                    c
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.                   b

(etc)             

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right         e
I have been one acquainted with the night.                     e

The first use of terza rima is in Dante's "The Divine Comedy ", completed in 1320. In creating the form, Dante may have been influenced by the sirventes, a lyric poetry form used by the Provençal troubadours. He set his poem using hendecasyllabic (so well known that I’ll not bother explaining) lines which are suitable for the Italian language. Whereas in English, poets tend to use iambic pentameter which is a line of writing that consists of ten syllables in a specific pattern of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.

Now I knew what to look for here’s an example from "The Divine Comedy ":

Tant’ è amara che poco è più morte;
ma per trattar del ben ch’i’ vi trovai,
dirò de l’altre cose ch’i’ v’ho scorte.

Io non so ben ridir com’ i’ v’intrai,
tant’ era pien di sonno a quel punto
che la verace via abbandonai.

Ma poi ch’i’ fui al piè d’un colle giunto,
là dove terminava quella valle
che m’avea di paura il cor compunto...

It doesn’t matter what it means and anyway a friend tells me that English translations don’t do the words justice.

The first occurrence of Dante’s terza rima rhyme scheme in English is found in parts II and III of Geoffrey Chaucer's poem "Complaint to His Lady ". Here’s a few lines:

Hir name is Bountee, set in womanhede,
Sadnesse in youthe, and Beautee prydelees
And Plesaunce, under governaunce and drede;

Hir surname is eek Faire Rewthelees,
The Wyse, yknit unto Good Aventure,
That, for I love hir, she sleeth me giltelees.

I just about get the gist of that and the form gained popularity as it also allowed poets to connect stanzas to one another, creating a smooth transition from topic to topic or from image to image.

As ever with forms that are transposed from one language to another e.g. haiku, they can be modified. Frost’s poem keeps to the rules but then Derek Walcott in his book length poem entitled "Omerus " (which is brilliant) takes more than a few liberties with the Terza Rima form.

All the above begs the question of whether you view rhyming verse of any sort as a help or a straightjacket.

To be fair to Robert Frost, here is the complete poem:

Acquainted with the Night

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right
I have been one acquainted with the night.

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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if winter comes can spring be far behind?

By Ashley Lister

If Winter comes can Spring be far behind?

This is the final line from ‘Ode to the West Wind’ by Percy Bysshe Shelley. I came across these words the week before last as I was researching poetic forms for one of my creative writing classes.

I was surprised by this line for two reasons.

Primarily, I was surprised because I’ve heard the phrase quoted before, but I’d never previously seen the whole poem. It was a pleasure to put the phrase in context – almost like mentally completing a jigsaw.

But I was surprised by the poem for another reason.

Over the past few years I’ve taught a wide variety of poetic forms and I sometimes worry that I’ve worked with every established form of poetry that’s been recorded. I’ve worked with poetic forms from abecedaries through to Zéjels and many more in between. But it seems there are an infinite variety of poetic forms. And, whilst I was looking through records of what I’ve taught and what’s still out there waiting to be taught, I came across Shelley’s ‘Ode to the West Wind.’

Obviously, I’ve taught the concept of odes before. Technically, the ode is not a poetic form. Length, meter, rhyme scheme and structure can all vary in the ode dependent on the needs of the writer and the way the subject matter needs to be presented. But ‘Ode to the West Wind’ is written in the form of a Terza Rima and that’s a form I hadn’t previously covered in my classes.

The Terza Rima is originally an Italian form that’s been used by Milton, Shelley, Byron, Frost and Dante Alighieri. It’s written in tercets (three lined stanzas) with a rhyme scheme of aba bcb cdc (and so on) until the final stanza. The final stanza can either be a single line, relating back to the middle rhyme of the penultimate stanza, (yzy z) or it can be a concluding couplet (xyx zz).

The structure suits iambic pentameter or iambic tetrameter and the interlocking rhyme scheme presents a neat little form that is a challenge to write and a pleasure to read. This is the opening from the aforementioned poem by Shelley. The rest of it can be found through this link: (http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15693)

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

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill

(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)

With living hues and odours plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;

Destroyer and Preserver; hear, O hear!

And, if anyone here is up to the Saturday challenge of building a poem, let’s see if we can each contribute a tercet in the comments box below.

Which moron here chose the dragon topic

For this winter’s dead good poet’s event?

The theme’s making me feel misanthropic…

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