Howard Miller
01-08-2002, 08:39 AM
Terza rima is a highly adaptable verse form, invented by Dante for use
as the verse form employed throughout his Commedia, where the number
"3" was of great significance. It has been used by many other poets since and
continues to be used today.
I. Basic Form
Basically, terza rima is written in tercets, or three-line
stanzas, with an interlocking rhyme pattern in which the second line of one tercet
rhymes with the first and third lines of the following tercet:
aba bcb cdc ded . . . .
There is no set number of lines, so a poem written in terza rima can be of any
length. Nor is there a set meter, although iambic pentameter is the most common
in English. Here are the opening lines of Shelley's The Triumph of Life:
"Swift as a spirit hastening to his task
Of glory and of good, the Sun sprang forth
Rejoicing in his splendour, and the mask
Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth--
The smokeless altars of the mountain snows
Flamed above crimson clouds, and at the birth
Of light, the Ocean's orison arose,
To which the birds tempered their matin lay.
All flowers in field or forest which unclose
Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day,
Swinging their censers in the element,
With orient incense lit by the new ray . . . ."
Endings:
A terza rima poem may end in one of several different ways:
1) A single line which rhymes with the second line of the last full
tercet; this is the method Dante himself used, as can be seen in
the last lines of Canto XXI of the Inferno in this translation by
Robert Pinsky:
". . .Wheeling along the left-hand bank. But first
Each signaled their leader with the same grimace:
Baring their teeth, through which the tongue was pressed;
And the leader made a trumpet of his ass."
Dante used this method of ending each canto perhaps because
it gives a symmetry (an important concept to him) to the beginning
and ending of each section, with a distinct two-line rhyming group
different from the three-rhyme groups of the body of each canto.
2) A couplet in which the two lines rhyme, sometimes also rhyming
with the second line of the last full tercet; John Ciardi, in this translation
of the same passage, follows the first of these but not the second:
"They turned along the left bank in a line;
but before they started all of them together
had stuck their pointed tongues out as a sign
to their Captain that they wished permission to pass,
and he had made a trumpet of his ass."
This method, perhaps because of the prevalence of the closing couplet in
the sonnet in English, is relatively common in terza rima poems
in English, as well.
3) In addition, there are other alternatives for endings:
a tercet with all three lines rhyming; a couplet which
rhymes with the two a-rhymes of the opening tercet
(a technique which again gives a symmetry to the opening
and closing); or a single line which also picks up the
a-rhymes.
A Variant Form
Besides regular terza rima, there is a variant called "inverted
terza rima"; in this variant, the 1st and 3rd lines of a tercet
rhyme with the 2nd line of the following tercet, exactly the
reverse of the usual procedure:
aba cac dcd ede . . . .
This version would leave the 2nd line of the first tercet unrhymed
altogether and would have the 1st and 3rd lines of the concluding
tercet as two rhymes without a third.
Here are the opening tercets of W. D. Snodgrass's "A Visitation":
At my window, I pull the curtains wide
On the Detroit night. So; it's you, again,
Old ghost? Not left once since the day you died?
I am faithful, shivering still and pale,
Streaked yet by traffic lights, waiting outside
Like the poor dead soldier in some folktale
The Jews, your jailers, couldn't bear to face
Your dutiful Jewish face, in their jail,
On TV, postered, every public place,
Come to his true love's window, wanting in
To ask, now their love's final, love's embrace.
I am true to you; I have always been. . . .
Greg Williamson used a slightly different version of "inverted terza rima" which both begins and ends with a couplet, producing the pattern aa bab cbc dcd . . . :
"Figures of Speech"
Under a tree across the grassy reach
Sat men and women signing each to each.
Their passionate hands maneuvered like wild birds,
Embellishing the air with figured speech
Whose meanings I could not put into words,
As if their flying fingers spoke in tongues.
Where breezes in a tree are never heard
And the songs of birds are silently unsung,
The language must be foreign as the land.
Perhaps, as painters hear the waves among
The grass with aural eyes, they understand
The frequencies of light and shade and stone
In idioms they've written out by hand,
Conversing with the world by picturephone.
Then, by degrees, across the silent lawn,
In tree trunk bass and gravel baritone
And the shook maraca of the sunlit frond,
I thought I saw the day begin to speak,
Though what it had to say I can't repeat.
II. Uses of Terza Rima
Terza rima, because of the interlocking rhymes, produces a strong
sense of forward motion; this movement, in turn, makes the verse form
a useful one for a variety of purposes, including narration, description,
logical argumentation, and theoretical speculation. Here is an example
of a primarily descriptive poem by Robert Bridges, "London Snow":
"London Snow"
WHEN men were all asleep the snow came flying,
In large white flakes falling on the city brown,
Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying,
Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town;
Deadening, muffling, stifling its murmurs failing;
Lazily and incessantly floating down and down:
Silently sifting and veiling road, roof and railing;
Hiding difference, making unevenness even,
Into angles and crevices softly drifting and sailing.
All night it fell, and when full inches seven
It lay in the depth of its uncompacted lightness,
The clouds blew off from a high and frosty heaven;
And all woke earlier for the unaccustomed brightness
Of the winter dawning, the strange unheavenly glare:
The eye marvelled--marvelled at the dazzling whiteness;
The ear hearkened to the stillness of the solemn air;
No sound of wheel rumbling nor of foot falling,
And the busy morning cries came thin and spare.
Then boys I heard, as they went to school, calling,
They gathered up the crystal manna to freeze
Their tongues with tasting, their hands with snowballing;
Or rioted in a drift, plunging up to the knees;
Or peering up from under the white-mossed wonder,
"O look at the trees!" they cried, "O look at the trees!"
With lessened load a few carts creak and blunder,
Following along the white deserted way,
A country company long dispersed asunder:
When now already the sun, in pale display
Standing by Paul's high dome, spread forth below
His sparkling beams, and awoke the stir of the day.
For now doors open, and war is waged with the snow;
And trains of sombre men, past tale of number,
Tread long brown paths, as toward their toil they go:
But even for them awhile no cares encumber
Their minds diverted; the daily word is unspoken,
The daily thoughts of labour and sorrow slumber
At the sight of the beauty that greets them, for the charm they have broken.
Bridges uses the single line ending, as did Dante. He also does not separate
the poem into individual tercets but sets the poem continuously without stanza
breaks (another common practice--one which sometimes obscures the actual
terza rima pattern).
Here is a contemporary example of a terza rima lyric poem,
Sylvia Plath' s "Medallion":
By the gate with star and moon
Worked into the peeled orange wood
The bronze snake lay in the sun
Inert as a shoelace; dead
But pliable still, his jaw
Unhinged and his grin crooked,
Tongue a rose-colored arrow.
Over my hand I hung him.
His little vermilion eye
Ignited with a glassed flame
As I turned him in the light;
When I split a rock one time
The garnet bits burned like that.
Dust dulled his back to ochre
The way sun ruins a trout.
Yet his belly kept its fire
Going under the chainmail,
The old jewels smoldering there
In each opaque belly-scale:
Sunset looked at through milk glass.
And I saw white maggots coil
Thin as pins in the dark bruise
Where his innards bulged as if
He were digesting a mouse.
Knifelike, he was chaste enough,
Pure death's-metal. The yardman's
Flung brick perfected his laugh.
Here, as often in current poetry, Plath uses slant rhyme rather
than exact rhyme, and the second line of the final tercet picks
up the slant rhymes of the 1st and 3rd lines of the opening
tercet, yet another way of ending this type of poem.
Specialized Forms:
In addition, there are two specialized uses of terza rima:
1) The terza rima sonnet:
This verse form can be adapted very well to the sonnet form
by using four tercets and a final couplet:
aba bcb cdc ded ee
Unlike the Shakespearian sonnet, the terza rima sonnet
is divided into five sections, requiring a slightly different pattern
of development. As with the Spenserian sonnet, the volta
tends to occur at the final couplet, although it may be found earlier.
Shelley's famous "Ode to the West Wind" is, in fact, a sequence of five
terza rima sonnets
Here is a contemporary example by Mike Alexander, "Dressage":
High up, the pelvic crunch of Bourbon Street
twelve floors below, we couple in the bed,
a steeplechase in the crux of our suite.
You ride me as the local Loas ride
a mount into the nether regions where
the course we run threatens to run me mad.
I spread my knees. Your knees clench together.
The pommel of my saddle penetrates
me. I have no idea where we are.
A cheer risen from pavement celebrates
our bare-bacchante heroics, cantering.
We race, accelerate through reckless gates
of dawn. We spur each other, centering
the sky, a centaur, we are entering.
2) The terzanelle:
The terzanelle is an adaptation of the villanelle to the
form of terza rima verse. The pattern (repetitions in
capitals and numbered) is:
A1B1A2 bC1B1 cD1C1 dE1D1 eF1E1 fF1A1A2
The final stanza may have the alternate pattern fA1F1A2
One advantage of the terzanelle over the villanelle
is that no line is repeated more than twice, thus reducing
what some perceive as a rather static repetitive quality
of the villanelle. It's also somewhat easier to find variations
by punctuation for the repeated lines, since there are fewer
repetitions of each line.
Here is an example (with the pattern marked) by Lewis Turco,
"Terzanelle in Thunderweather" (he uses the alternate pattern
for the concluding quatrain):
{A1} This is the moment when shadows gather
{B1} under the elms, the cornices and eves.
{A2} This is the center of thunderweather.
{b} The birds are quiet among these white leaves
{C1} where wind stutters, starts, then moves steadily
{B1} under the elms, cornices and eves--
{c} these are our voices speaking guardedly
{D1} about the sky, of the sheets of lightning
{C1} where wind stutters, starts, then moves steadily
{d} into our lungs, across our lips, tightening
{E1} our throats. Our eyes are speaking in the dark
{D1} about the sky, of the sheets of lightning
{e} that illuminate moments. In the stark
{F1} shades we inhabit, there are no words for
{E1} our throats. Our eyes are speaking in the dark
{f} of things we cannot say, cannot ignore.
{A1} This is the moment when shadows gather,
{F1} shades we inhabit. There are no words, for
{A2} this is the center of thunderweather.
as the verse form employed throughout his Commedia, where the number
"3" was of great significance. It has been used by many other poets since and
continues to be used today.
I. Basic Form
Basically, terza rima is written in tercets, or three-line
stanzas, with an interlocking rhyme pattern in which the second line of one tercet
rhymes with the first and third lines of the following tercet:
aba bcb cdc ded . . . .
There is no set number of lines, so a poem written in terza rima can be of any
length. Nor is there a set meter, although iambic pentameter is the most common
in English. Here are the opening lines of Shelley's The Triumph of Life:
"Swift as a spirit hastening to his task
Of glory and of good, the Sun sprang forth
Rejoicing in his splendour, and the mask
Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth--
The smokeless altars of the mountain snows
Flamed above crimson clouds, and at the birth
Of light, the Ocean's orison arose,
To which the birds tempered their matin lay.
All flowers in field or forest which unclose
Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day,
Swinging their censers in the element,
With orient incense lit by the new ray . . . ."
Endings:
A terza rima poem may end in one of several different ways:
1) A single line which rhymes with the second line of the last full
tercet; this is the method Dante himself used, as can be seen in
the last lines of Canto XXI of the Inferno in this translation by
Robert Pinsky:
". . .Wheeling along the left-hand bank. But first
Each signaled their leader with the same grimace:
Baring their teeth, through which the tongue was pressed;
And the leader made a trumpet of his ass."
Dante used this method of ending each canto perhaps because
it gives a symmetry (an important concept to him) to the beginning
and ending of each section, with a distinct two-line rhyming group
different from the three-rhyme groups of the body of each canto.
2) A couplet in which the two lines rhyme, sometimes also rhyming
with the second line of the last full tercet; John Ciardi, in this translation
of the same passage, follows the first of these but not the second:
"They turned along the left bank in a line;
but before they started all of them together
had stuck their pointed tongues out as a sign
to their Captain that they wished permission to pass,
and he had made a trumpet of his ass."
This method, perhaps because of the prevalence of the closing couplet in
the sonnet in English, is relatively common in terza rima poems
in English, as well.
3) In addition, there are other alternatives for endings:
a tercet with all three lines rhyming; a couplet which
rhymes with the two a-rhymes of the opening tercet
(a technique which again gives a symmetry to the opening
and closing); or a single line which also picks up the
a-rhymes.
A Variant Form
Besides regular terza rima, there is a variant called "inverted
terza rima"; in this variant, the 1st and 3rd lines of a tercet
rhyme with the 2nd line of the following tercet, exactly the
reverse of the usual procedure:
aba cac dcd ede . . . .
This version would leave the 2nd line of the first tercet unrhymed
altogether and would have the 1st and 3rd lines of the concluding
tercet as two rhymes without a third.
Here are the opening tercets of W. D. Snodgrass's "A Visitation":
At my window, I pull the curtains wide
On the Detroit night. So; it's you, again,
Old ghost? Not left once since the day you died?
I am faithful, shivering still and pale,
Streaked yet by traffic lights, waiting outside
Like the poor dead soldier in some folktale
The Jews, your jailers, couldn't bear to face
Your dutiful Jewish face, in their jail,
On TV, postered, every public place,
Come to his true love's window, wanting in
To ask, now their love's final, love's embrace.
I am true to you; I have always been. . . .
Greg Williamson used a slightly different version of "inverted terza rima" which both begins and ends with a couplet, producing the pattern aa bab cbc dcd . . . :
"Figures of Speech"
Under a tree across the grassy reach
Sat men and women signing each to each.
Their passionate hands maneuvered like wild birds,
Embellishing the air with figured speech
Whose meanings I could not put into words,
As if their flying fingers spoke in tongues.
Where breezes in a tree are never heard
And the songs of birds are silently unsung,
The language must be foreign as the land.
Perhaps, as painters hear the waves among
The grass with aural eyes, they understand
The frequencies of light and shade and stone
In idioms they've written out by hand,
Conversing with the world by picturephone.
Then, by degrees, across the silent lawn,
In tree trunk bass and gravel baritone
And the shook maraca of the sunlit frond,
I thought I saw the day begin to speak,
Though what it had to say I can't repeat.
II. Uses of Terza Rima
Terza rima, because of the interlocking rhymes, produces a strong
sense of forward motion; this movement, in turn, makes the verse form
a useful one for a variety of purposes, including narration, description,
logical argumentation, and theoretical speculation. Here is an example
of a primarily descriptive poem by Robert Bridges, "London Snow":
"London Snow"
WHEN men were all asleep the snow came flying,
In large white flakes falling on the city brown,
Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying,
Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town;
Deadening, muffling, stifling its murmurs failing;
Lazily and incessantly floating down and down:
Silently sifting and veiling road, roof and railing;
Hiding difference, making unevenness even,
Into angles and crevices softly drifting and sailing.
All night it fell, and when full inches seven
It lay in the depth of its uncompacted lightness,
The clouds blew off from a high and frosty heaven;
And all woke earlier for the unaccustomed brightness
Of the winter dawning, the strange unheavenly glare:
The eye marvelled--marvelled at the dazzling whiteness;
The ear hearkened to the stillness of the solemn air;
No sound of wheel rumbling nor of foot falling,
And the busy morning cries came thin and spare.
Then boys I heard, as they went to school, calling,
They gathered up the crystal manna to freeze
Their tongues with tasting, their hands with snowballing;
Or rioted in a drift, plunging up to the knees;
Or peering up from under the white-mossed wonder,
"O look at the trees!" they cried, "O look at the trees!"
With lessened load a few carts creak and blunder,
Following along the white deserted way,
A country company long dispersed asunder:
When now already the sun, in pale display
Standing by Paul's high dome, spread forth below
His sparkling beams, and awoke the stir of the day.
For now doors open, and war is waged with the snow;
And trains of sombre men, past tale of number,
Tread long brown paths, as toward their toil they go:
But even for them awhile no cares encumber
Their minds diverted; the daily word is unspoken,
The daily thoughts of labour and sorrow slumber
At the sight of the beauty that greets them, for the charm they have broken.
Bridges uses the single line ending, as did Dante. He also does not separate
the poem into individual tercets but sets the poem continuously without stanza
breaks (another common practice--one which sometimes obscures the actual
terza rima pattern).
Here is a contemporary example of a terza rima lyric poem,
Sylvia Plath' s "Medallion":
By the gate with star and moon
Worked into the peeled orange wood
The bronze snake lay in the sun
Inert as a shoelace; dead
But pliable still, his jaw
Unhinged and his grin crooked,
Tongue a rose-colored arrow.
Over my hand I hung him.
His little vermilion eye
Ignited with a glassed flame
As I turned him in the light;
When I split a rock one time
The garnet bits burned like that.
Dust dulled his back to ochre
The way sun ruins a trout.
Yet his belly kept its fire
Going under the chainmail,
The old jewels smoldering there
In each opaque belly-scale:
Sunset looked at through milk glass.
And I saw white maggots coil
Thin as pins in the dark bruise
Where his innards bulged as if
He were digesting a mouse.
Knifelike, he was chaste enough,
Pure death's-metal. The yardman's
Flung brick perfected his laugh.
Here, as often in current poetry, Plath uses slant rhyme rather
than exact rhyme, and the second line of the final tercet picks
up the slant rhymes of the 1st and 3rd lines of the opening
tercet, yet another way of ending this type of poem.
Specialized Forms:
In addition, there are two specialized uses of terza rima:
1) The terza rima sonnet:
This verse form can be adapted very well to the sonnet form
by using four tercets and a final couplet:
aba bcb cdc ded ee
Unlike the Shakespearian sonnet, the terza rima sonnet
is divided into five sections, requiring a slightly different pattern
of development. As with the Spenserian sonnet, the volta
tends to occur at the final couplet, although it may be found earlier.
Shelley's famous "Ode to the West Wind" is, in fact, a sequence of five
terza rima sonnets
Here is a contemporary example by Mike Alexander, "Dressage":
High up, the pelvic crunch of Bourbon Street
twelve floors below, we couple in the bed,
a steeplechase in the crux of our suite.
You ride me as the local Loas ride
a mount into the nether regions where
the course we run threatens to run me mad.
I spread my knees. Your knees clench together.
The pommel of my saddle penetrates
me. I have no idea where we are.
A cheer risen from pavement celebrates
our bare-bacchante heroics, cantering.
We race, accelerate through reckless gates
of dawn. We spur each other, centering
the sky, a centaur, we are entering.
2) The terzanelle:
The terzanelle is an adaptation of the villanelle to the
form of terza rima verse. The pattern (repetitions in
capitals and numbered) is:
A1B1A2 bC1B1 cD1C1 dE1D1 eF1E1 fF1A1A2
The final stanza may have the alternate pattern fA1F1A2
One advantage of the terzanelle over the villanelle
is that no line is repeated more than twice, thus reducing
what some perceive as a rather static repetitive quality
of the villanelle. It's also somewhat easier to find variations
by punctuation for the repeated lines, since there are fewer
repetitions of each line.
Here is an example (with the pattern marked) by Lewis Turco,
"Terzanelle in Thunderweather" (he uses the alternate pattern
for the concluding quatrain):
{A1} This is the moment when shadows gather
{B1} under the elms, the cornices and eves.
{A2} This is the center of thunderweather.
{b} The birds are quiet among these white leaves
{C1} where wind stutters, starts, then moves steadily
{B1} under the elms, cornices and eves--
{c} these are our voices speaking guardedly
{D1} about the sky, of the sheets of lightning
{C1} where wind stutters, starts, then moves steadily
{d} into our lungs, across our lips, tightening
{E1} our throats. Our eyes are speaking in the dark
{D1} about the sky, of the sheets of lightning
{e} that illuminate moments. In the stark
{F1} shades we inhabit, there are no words for
{E1} our throats. Our eyes are speaking in the dark
{f} of things we cannot say, cannot ignore.
{A1} This is the moment when shadows gather,
{F1} shades we inhabit. There are no words, for
{A2} this is the center of thunderweather.