Poetry Form - The Lai
The Lai Verse Form
by J. Zimmerman.
History.
Form.
Your Composition.
Examples.
Books.
The
Lai, a French syllabic verse form,
is a poem of one or more stanza of nine short lines that include two rhymes.
The stanza of the Virelay, also a French syllabic verse form,
uses the same rhymes and syllabic count (5-5-2 repeated 3 times) as the Lai.
The difference is that the long lines of the each stanza after the first rhyme with the short lines
of the immediately preceding stanza. The interlocking continues for the length of the poem,
until the final stanza whose short lines rhyme with the long lines of the first stanza.
This shows some relationship to the
Rubáiyát
and to the
Terza rima.
The entire form is shown below.
- History.
-
The Lai developed in France.
- Form.
-
The features of the Lai are:
- 9 lines.
- Two rhymes, giving the form aabaabaab.
- Lines ending with the 'a' rhyme are five syllables long.
- Lines ending with the 'b' rhyme are two syllables long.
- Rhyme scheme
(where a lower-case letter indicates a rhyme with each line designated by the
same lower-case letter):
a
a - Rhymes with 1st line.
b
a - Rhymes with 1st line.
a - Rhymes with 1st line.
b - Rhymes with 3rd line.
a - Rhymes with 1st line.
a - Rhymes with 1st line.
b - Rhymes with 3rd line.
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A related form is the French syllabic Lai Nouveau (the New Lai), with some similarities to the villanelle.
The features of the Lai Nouveau are:
- 16 lines in two 8-line stanzas.
- Repetition of the first two lines as the last two lines of the 16, but in reverse order.
- Two rhymes, giving the form below.
- Lines ending with the 'a' rhyme are five syllables long.
- Lines ending with the 'b' rhyme are two syllables long.
- Rhyme scheme
(where an upper-case letter indicates the appearance of an identical line,
while a lower-case letter indicates a rhyme with each line designated by the
same lower-case or upper-case letter):
A1
A2 - Rhymes with 1st line.
b
a - Rhymes with 1st line.
a - Rhymes with 1st line.
b - Rhymes with 3rd line.
a - Rhymes with 1st line.
a - Rhymes with 1st line.
a - Rhymes with 1st line.
a - Rhymes with 1st line.
b - Rhymes with 3rd line.
a - Rhymes with 1st line.
a - Rhymes with 1st line.
A2 - Repeats 2nd line.
A1 - Repeats 1st line.
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- Your Composition.
The brevity and the repetition of lines in a Lai make this
an attractive poem to write. A writer of the Lai is often also interested in longer forms with refrains,
such as the
Villanelle
and the
Pantoum.
Try the traditional form first.
After you have success, you are ready to vary the form if you wish.
Take these steps:
- Ponder on what you want to accomplish.
Do some free writing for a few pages, perhaps at more than one time,
to collect a pool of words and ideas.
This is a very helpful exercise, when you want to generate a short poem with
repeated lines.
Look back over your pages to find candidates for your repeated lines.
You will notice that some ideas and phrases occur
often, making them into good candidates for those lines.
- Many poets begin writing a Lai by finding a preliminary
but memorable
couplet. These two lines are strong enough and interesting enough to open the stanza,
close the stanza, and
provide more than half of the 8 lines of the poem. Remember that these two lines do not rhyme.
- Lay out your Lai with the 5 repeating lines, following
the form
and leaving
blank lines for the 3 remaining lines that you will compose.
- Write the rest of the stanza, following the form of the rhyming pattern
to match the existing lines.
- The repetition should feel natural and should adds depth to the poem.
Revision of a Lai should include increasing the smoothness and appropriateness of the repetition.
- Variations in your form can include altering the punctuation
used in your refrains, or using homonyms.
While a refrain line should sound identical to the line it echoes,
its meaning does not have to be fixed.
Puns and other wordplay may enrich a Lai.
- Examples.
Examples include:
- A Last Word
Just because you start with the intention of writing a Lai, you do not have to
keep your poem in that form.
Your attempt to write a formal poem
may help you find words that you would not have found otherwise.
And you may decide to end up with a
poem in a different form, perhaps even a
prose poem.
Books
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