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Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Romantic Stanza


The Romantic Stanza is named for the poem Venus the Star by Maksim Bahdanovic, Belarus 1891-1917. The poem was originally titled "Romance" 1912 until it was published as lyrics to a song in 1930. It is distinguished by the use of a rentrament, the first phrase of L1 repeated as a refrain in L4 similar to the French Rondeau. The difference is that each quatrain has its own rentrament.
  
Romantic stanza
Type:
Structure, Metrical Requirement, Repetitive Requirement, Rhyme Scheme Requirement, Stanzaic
Description:
Alternating quatrains of basically dactylic meter where lines one and three have eleven syllables, line two has ten, and line four is the first seven syllables of line one.
Attributed to:
Maksim Bahdanovic, stanza so named by Bob Newman
Origin:
Belarus
Schematic:
Rhyme: (Ba)baB
Meter:
Xxx Xxx Xxx Xx
Xxx Xxx Xxx X
Xxx Xxx Xxx Xx
Xxx Xxx X
Starting Point:
With each quatrain, start with the first/last line, since that line establishes your rhymes.


Notes
The form was named Romantic Stanza by Bob Newman


    • written in any number of quatrains.
    • accentual syllabic, dactylic with L1, L2, and L3 either tetrameter and L4 is dimeter or trimeter.
    • rhymed, rhyme abab cdcd etc.
    • written with each quatrain employing the first phrase of L1 as a rentrament, repeated as L4. 
Note: Part of this info was cut and pasted from the work of Judi  Van Gorder, aka Tinker on PoetryMagnumOpus, which is linked from this blog.

Example Poem


 Our Genesis   (Romantic Stanza - 11/10/11/7 Version)

Clustering, combining dust aggregating
assembling Hydrogen just as it must.
Assembling atoms, Helium's a-making,
Clustering, combining dust.

Billions of our years gone by with life absent.
Galaxies born, made from stars as they die.
Pressures of their dying create content .
Billions of our years gone by.

Busting outward from that blast, all elements
required for biologic life at last.
All living things sprung from stars' final events,
bursting outward from that blast. 

(c) Lawrencealot - January 27, 2013

Visual Template(s)
Ah...correct the format below to aa/10/11/7  not 5!

You see there is some discrepancy in the specs, so I have provided a tetrameter template




1 comment:

  1. Hi I love that you provide links to Poetry Base and another source. But you then copy and paste the outline for this particular form from [url=http://www.poetrymagnumopus.com/index.php?showtopic=1068]Poetry Magnum Opus[/url] yet give no link nor mention to that site. This bothers me because I spent 7 years researching genre and form and developing a style and language through which I thought others could understand best and then I find it copied and pasted here appearing as if the poster wrote it. I see you did this on this page and other pages. You are no exception I find this all over the internet but I would appreciate it if you feel you want to use my words, link back to the source as you've shown this courtesy to others. I have so much more at PMO than just the outline to offer. The PMO site as you apparently have already discovered has the largest documentation of forms and genres out there. And the outline form and language is as much my intellectual property as any poems I might have written. Thanks for the courtesy.

    Judi Van Gorder AKA Tinker

    ReplyDelete