Skeltonic Verse

If you feel the absolute urge to rhyme, then Skeltonic Verse (also known as Tumbling Verse) is the way to go. The rules of Skeltonic 

Verse are simple.

Keep the line lengths between three and six words.

Every end word rhymes with the last until you start a new set of rhymes “ heart, fart, tart, smart, cart, start, line, shine, dine, mine, sign, vine

Keep the same rhyme until it starts to lose its energy/impact.

The poem should have energy and be fun.

Skeltonic Verse is named after its creator, English poet John Skelton (1460-1529). Skelton tutored King Henry the Eighth when he was just a prince, spent time in prison, was censured by the Church and in general, seemed to have a great amount of fun.

Skeltonic Verse which today is sometimes also referred to as Tumbling Verse, is from the 15th century when English poet John Skelton (1460-1529) created short lines which resemble the hemistich of the Tumbling Verse of King James. It is a subgenre of Georgic, didactic verse, the verse usually being instructional in nature. The lines are of irregular dipodic meter with a tumbling rhyme.

Skeltonic Verse is:

• written in any number of dipodic* lines without stanza break.
• *dipodic which is a line with 2 heavy stresses and any number of unstressed syllables.
• rhymed, tumbling rhyme is any number of monorhymed lines until the rhyme runs out of energy then the lines switch to a new mono-rhyme series.

These findings were copied and pasted from words of Judi Van Gorder,aka Tinker from PoetryMagnumOpus, which is linked from this site.

Example Poem

Dipodic What?

Dipodic Verse

will be Terse.

Stress used just twice

to keep it nice,

short or long

a lilting song

or sounding gong

that won't go wrong

if you adhere

to the rule here,

Now is that clear

My dear?