Metre Question

[Empty Chairs]

If a sonnet should be in iambic pentameter, what sort of metre should the villannelle be in, or the rondeau, or the kyrielle? And what about poems written in rhyming couplets, or rhyming quatrains? Could somebody lay down the rules?

Thanks. :cool:

[weatheringdaleson]

Hey, EC. Until Howard comes by with links to various things extraordinarily pertinent and useful, I will say that a villanelle may be written in any single meter, like Robinson's "The House on the Hill" (http://www.poets.org/poems/poems.cfm?prmID=2506), although it's probably usually IP. I cannot say about the rondeau or kyrielle, but certainly quatrains and couplets will take any meter you can throw at them: witness Desmond Skirrow's "Ode on a Grecian Urn summarized" (http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~stephan/webstuff/poetry/Skirrow-OdeonaGrecia.html).

[weatheringdaleson]

Notes on the Rondeau (http://www.everypoet.org/pffa/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9914)

Who needs Howard?

[HowardM2]

EC--Brian's got it right. Villanelles are most often written in IP in English, but can be written in pretty much any meter as long as it's consistent throughout the piece; the same is true for the rondeau. The kyrielle is normally written in iambic tetrameter. Quatrains and couplets can take any consistent meter.

As for sonnets, IP is the standard meter, and anyone learning to write them should learn to do so in IP first. There are, however, variants; iambic tetrameter is occasionally used for sonnets (Shakespeare has one) as is iambic hexameter (which is much more difficult to make work well, however).

Howard

[HowardM2]

Of course, for sonnet meter, there's always the anonymous Italian sonnet:

"The Aeronaut to His Love"

I
Through
Blue
Sky
Fly
To
You;
Why?

Sweet
Love,
Feet
Move
So
Slow.

[Empty Chairs]

Thankyou! :D