Tuesday, April 15, 2014

"The Microsoft Windows of English Poetry"

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I clicked over to NaPoWriMo to get the daily prompt. Oh! A form! I'm doing well with writing in form for NaPoWriMo this year and this is a new form for me to play with.

Then I saw it - the title I used for today's post. It made me laugh out loud, so I had to share it here.
Today, I challenge you to write a poem in terza rima. This form was invented by Dante, and used in The Divine Comedy. It consists of three-line stanzas, with a “chained” rhyme scheme. The first stanza is ABA, the second is BCB, the third is CDC, and so on. No particular meter is necessary, but English poets have tended to default to iambic pentameter (iambic pentameter is like the Microsoft Windows of English poetry). One common way of ending a terza rima poem is with a single line standing on its own, rhyming with the middle line of the preceding three-line stanza. 
Now on to write my terza rima.
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