Post-weekend Poetry: Writing a Terza Rima

Welcome to Post-weekend Poetry and the final part of this five-part series, introducing you to different forms of poetry. You can read the post on Haiku here, Fibonacci here, Sonnet here, and Pantoum here. Today, we are looking at sonnets. Wikipedia explains them as the following…

Terza rima (Italian pronunciation: [ˈtɛrtsa ˈriːma]) is a rhyming verse stanza form that consists of an interlocking three-line rhyme scheme. It was first used by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri. The literal translation of terza rima from Italian is ‘third rhyme’. Terza rima is a three-line stanza using chain rhyme in the pattern A-B-A, B-C-B, C-D-C, D-E-D. There is no limit to the number of lines, but poems or sections of poems written in terza rima end with either a single line or couplet repeating the rhyme of the middle line of the final tercet. The two possible endings for the example above are d-e-d, e or d-e-d, e-e. There is no set rhythm for terza rima, but in English, iambic pentameter is generally preferred.

Writing a Terza Rima

I sat right down and tried my best

To write a weird sonnet, lines of three

My head, it hurt, too much of a test

Try as I might, I just couldn’t see

How to fit the form, harder than the last

I gave up and said “it’s not meant to be”

But then I remembered a thing from the past

A tip, a hint, how it should be done

Then lost the plot, sighed and looked aghast

at the half-blank sheet, it wasn’t much fun

“Just be patient,” I wanted so hard to say

“it’s meant to be tough, then rewards are won.”

So I started again for a second day

Until it was finished… hip, hip, hooray!

***

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