Terza Rima - Poetry Exercise

The point of this exercise it to get familiar with terza rima which is a form of poetry where the rhyme scheme is aba, bcb, cdc, etc. It is an open form which means the poet can go on forever as opposed to closed forms where there are meant to be a fixed number of lines. It is stopped usually by adding an additional line to the last remaining stanza which so that the last stanza is abab instead. Or as Stephen Fry pointed out, Hopkins end stopped his by using a rhyming couplet instead.

The task was to write a self-referential terza rima explaining the form of the form.

Terza Rima:

I tried to write a rhyme once
Or twice, or thrice, but it was hard.
The rhythm slid away from this dunce.

Then I scribbled a terza rima shard
And it didn't seem too bad.
Not quite a poem yet - I'm not the Bard.

But aba, bcb, cdc, wasn't too hard
In fact I think I could go on and on
And on. Each interlocking rhyme is shared
Between the stanzas to lead me along.


This new poem written as an exercise comes after a haitus and is written in thanks too to another blogger who blogs on Taking5 who very kindly obtained a discounted copy of Stephen Fry's The Ode Less Travelled for me. I had been using a copy from the National Library of Singapore and had already renewed it once. At the rate however that I was working through the book, it would have taken many more renewals and with each renewal at S$0.50, Taking5 had worked out it made more sense to buy a copy especially since she had a discount coupon. So I finally sat myself down in Dome in Dempsey today with an expresso and an orange carrot muffin to fuel me and worked this exercise out.

Many thanks to Taking5 for her encouragement.