Notes on the Triolet

[Howard Miller]

The triolet is a repeating metrical French form of 8 lines built on only two rhymes.
The 8 lines can be of any meter, although iambic tetrameter is the most common.
The pattern is as follows (Capitalized and Numbered lines are those which are
to be repeated, the repetends):

A1
B1
a
A1
a
b
A1
B1

Here is an example by William Ernest Henley:

"Easy Is The Triolet"

EASY is the Triolet,
If you really learn to make it!
Once a neat refrain you get,
Easy is the Triolet.
As you see!--I pay my debt
With another rhyme. Deuce take it,
Easy is the Triolet,
If you really learn to make it!

Most often, the triolet is used for light comic verse, although originally
it was used for serious meditative verse; today, it is still occasionally
serious in intent.

In contemporary usage, the ideal goal is, by altering punctuation or spelling
but not the words themselves, to produce a difference in meaning on each
reappearance of the repeated lines. Here is an example by Sandra McPherson:

"Triolet"

She was in love with the same danger
everybody is. Dangerous
as it is to love a stranger,
she was in love. With the same danger,
an adultress risks a husband's anger.
Stealthily death enters a house:
she was in love with that danger.
Everybody is dangerous.


There are few subjects that can't be accommodated by
the triolet form, as Harold Witt's poem shows:

"First Photos of Flu Virus"

Viruses, when the lens is right,
change into a bright bouquet.
Are such soft forms of pure delight
viruses? When the lens is right,
instead of swarms of shapeless blight,
we see them in a Renoir way.
Viruses when the lens is right
change into a bright bouquet.


Rather than as a poem complete in itself, the triolet
has sometimes been used simply as a stanza pattern
for a longer poem, as in Dana Gioia's "The Country Wife":

She makes her way through the dark trees
Down to the lake to be alone.
Following their voices on the breeze,
She makes her way. Through the dark trees
The distant stars are all she sees.
They cannot light the way she's gone.
She makes her way through the dark trees
Down to the lake to be alone.

The night reflected on the lake,
The fire of stars changed into water.
She cannot see the winds that break
The night reflected on the lake
But knows they motion for her sake.
These are the choices they have brought her:
The night reflected on the lake,
The fire of stars changed into water.

[HowardM2]

Here is a discussion of a particular triolet by Harry, edited in from another thread:

Jarrow
by Carol Rumens


Nothing is left to dig, nothing to make.
Night has engulfed both firelit hall and sparrow.
Wind and car-noise pour across the Slake.
Nothing is left to dig, nothing to make.
A stream of rust where a great ship might grow.
And where a union man was hung for show
Nothing is left to dig, nothing to make.
Night has engulfed both firelit hall and sparrow.

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Technical issues first.

This is a triolet. As Howard points out in the thread I just linked to, ' In contemporary usage, the ideal goal is, by altering punctuation or spelling but not the words themselves, to produce a difference in meaning on each reappearance of the repeated lines.' I don't object to that – some fine poems have been written that way – but it can feel a bit like making the language jump through hoops for the sake of it. Maybe it's because of my interest in medieval poetry, but I rather like triolets (and rondeaus and so on) which make use of the repeated line as a simple refrain; no attempt to disguise it, just a repetition of the same words. It harks back the real origins of lyric poetry as a song form, with choruses, and the simple directness of that kind of poetry.

In this case, apart from the enjambment across L6-7, not only is the refrain repeated unchanged, but every line is a separate sentence. It's a very direct poem in that way – just a series of declarative sentences; and that's harder to do than it looks. There's a good reason why 'deceptively simple' is a cliché.

I also like the fact that the title rhymes with one of the repeating lines, but that she has resisted the temptation to use the word 'Jarrow' in the poem (I'd love to know if she used it there in any of the earlier drafts).

And now, Subject Matter.

(I'd like to think you didn't need to know all this background to enjoy this poem, but I hope it helps.)

The key to this poem is the way it brings together two disparate subjects into an effective whole. Jarrow is a town in the north of England; two aspects of its history are touched on in this poem. It's probably most famous for British readers because of the 1936 Jarrow Crusade, when 200 men marched from Jarrow to London to protest against extreme poverty and unemployment; as a result, it's closely associated with heavy industry (specifically coal and ship-building) and unionism. But about 1200 years earlier, it's where Bede, the writer of The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, lived.

So we have these two very different subjects – an Anglo-Saxon theologian and historian, and the C20th decline of British heavy industry –which are apparently linked solely by geographical coincidence. But in this poem they are woven together extremely neatly.

The first thing to appreciate is that Anglo-Saxon poetry was generally pessimistic in its world view, and common subjects include the word being in decline, and the transience of human wealth and glory. One of the ways it treated this subject was gloomy, somewhat elegiac poetry about ruins, like The Ruin, thought to be about the ruins of Roman Bath. So the theme of deserted shipyards in fact has a distinctly Anglo-Saxon mood to it.

Apart from the general tone of the poem, the direct relevance of Bede is in the reference to the sparrow. The sparrow flying through a firelit hall is a famous image drawn from the Ecclesiastical History. It occurs in a passage about the conversion of Northumbria to Christianity -


quote:
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Another of the king's chief men, approving of Coifi's words and exhortations, presently added: " The present life man, O king, seems to me, in comparison with that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparow through the room wherein you sit at supper in winter amid your officers and ministers, with a good fire in the midst whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail abroad; the sparrow, I say, flying in at one door and immediately leaving by another, whilst he is within is safe from the wintry air, but after a short space of fair weather he immediately vanishes out of your sight into the dark winter from which he has emerged. So this life of man appears for a short space but of what went before or what is to follow we are ignorant. If, therefore, this new doctrine contains something more certain, it seems justly to deserve to be followed.'
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To fully appreciate this image, you need to know that the great hall – a communal space where people ate and drank and sang together - was used in A-S literature as the epitome of everything good. It was a safe haven, an island of warmth, conviviality, and community in an unstable world. But notice how she has taken the sparrow image one step further – it's not just the sparrow being engulfed by the night, but the hall itself.

Obviously this powerful image of transience is relevant to the death of the shipbuilding industry; but also, the 'firelit hall' carries industrial resonances, I think; it could almost be a description of a steelworks or a shipyard, with the flames of smelting, or welding.

I wouldn't suggest that this is a very great poem, but I think it's an excellent example of how to draw together different subjects in such a way that they complement and enhance each other. And all in eight lines, including a load of repeats – that's what I call efficiency.



Harry

[HowardM2]

(These are some comments about the function of the repetitions I made in response to a posted triolet.)


The original function of the triolet in medieval times was as an aid to religious meditation; in that context, the repetends--the repeated lines--had a specific function. On each appearance of each repetend, it was to take on new and deeper significance and enhanced meaning through its changed context, leading the reader into a deeper understanding of the subject of the meditation. Although the triolet is rarely used for religious purposes today, its fundamental purpose remains unchanged; the triolet writer is expected to do more than simply mechanically repeat lines because the form requires it; he is expected to use the repetitions in a meaningful way within the poem. Dana Gioia's "The Country Wife" is an excellent example:

She makes her way through the dark trees
Down to the lake to be alone.
Following their voices on the breeze,
She makes her way. Through the dark trees
The distant stars are all she sees.
They cannot light the way she's gone.
She makes her way through the dark trees
Down to the lake to be alone.

The night reflected on the lake,
The fire of stars changed into water.
She cannot see the winds that break
The night reflected on the lake
But knows they motion for her sake.
These are the choices they have brought her:
The night reflected on the lake,
The fire of stars changed into water.


Gioia's repetends increase in significance on each appearance, intensifying and deepening the dark, brooding atmosphere of the piece and leading up to the final two lines, the full significance of which becomes apparent only on their last appearance. That is what the triolet is all about; that is what it is capable of doing, that is what a successful triolet should do. Most beginners to the form, however, just mechanically repeat lines because the form calls for repetition, not because the repetitions in any way add significance to the piece.

Poetic forms are not simply patterns of rhyme, meter, repetition, and so on; those are only their surface characteristics. What makes a successful form viable--whether it's the sonnet, triolet, villanelle, or whatever--is that each form possesses an internal dynamic, a logic if you will, that differs from that of any other form; to write successfully in a given form, the writer has to understand what it is that the form does, why it has the pattern it does. Until the writer understands that internal logic, she won't be able to write pieces that are genuinely successful in that form; she'll just be imitating the external characteristics and producing decorative but empty shells--eggs without yolks, M&Ms without chocolate.