Poetry Form - The Terza Rima

Related pages: Books of Poetry Form. Alphabetic list of poetry forms and related topics. How to Write Poetry. Essays on how to write specific forms: Haibun. Haiku. Hay(na)ku. Rengay. Tanka. Tanka surveys. Tan-renga. Concrete. Fib. Ghazal. Lai. Pantoum. Prose poem. Rondeau. Rubáiyát. Sestina. Skaldic verse. Sonnet. Terza rima. Triolet. Tritina. Villanelle.

Las formas de la poesía en Español: El Poema Concreto.

J. Zimmerman (tanka). J. Zimmerman (haiku). J. Zimmerman (poems). Books of Poetry Form.

The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, by Lewis Turco (2000).

The Terza Rima Verse Form
by J. Zimmerman.

History. Form. Examples. Books.

The entire form is shown below.

History.

An Italian stanzaic form, where each stanza is a tercet, often in iambic pentameter, while the original Italian form was iambic pentameter, plus one syllable. Rhymes are interwoven rhymes, aba bcb dcd efe ..., as show at form.

Dante Alighieri has the first recorded use of the form (for The Divine Comedy) and he may have invented it.

Chaucer applied terza rima to English and it has been used in English by Milton, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Auden, and many others.

Form.

The features of the Terza rima are:

• Three lines per stanza.
• The first and third lines rhyme with each other in each stanza.
• In the second and subsequent stanzas, the rhyme of the first and third lines also rhymes with the second line of the previous stanza.
• The resulting chain of rhymes has this pattern:
  a-b-a,
  b-c-b,
  c-d-c,
  etc.
• The rhyme scheme is an aid to memorizing a long poem, as it connects the middle line of a tercet to the opening line of the next tercet.
• Unlimited number of stanzas.
• The poems may end with a single line or with a couplet that rhymes with the second (or penultimate) line of the final tercet.
• Any rhythm may be use.

Examples.

Used by

• Dante Alighieri in his Divina Commedia.
• Sir Thomas Wyatt for "Of the Mean and the Sure Estate Written to John Poins".
• Percy Bysshe Shelley for "Ode to the West Wind".
• Robert Browning for "The Statue and the Bust".

A Last Word.

Just because you start with the intention of writing a Terza rima, 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.

Related pages: Books of Poetry Form. Alphabetic list of poetry forms and related topics. Poetry Index. How to Write Poetry.

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