Ch'I Yen Shih

Ch'i-Yen-Shih metre

This is, believe it or not, a Chinese verse form. Whether it's worth doing in English is debatable. Stanzas have four lines of seven syllables each, with lines 2 and 4 rhyming. Each line has a caesura, or break, after the fourth syllable; I have laid the example out to emphasise this. That's all there is to it, really, except that, to make it sound a little more Chinese, only words of one syllable should be used. 

Fenland

Long straight black road

far from home.

The moon hangs snagged

in the trees.

Foot down, I speed

through the night.

Rain falls in sheets,

starts to freeze.

The cats eyes pulse

like Morse code.

Far sparks speed close,

blaze then fade.

For hours on end

there’s no change:

Road, light, rain, wind,

screen and blade.

I’m tired and cold,

on my own.

How much of this

can I take?

I grit my teeth,

try to guess

How long I’ll last

till I brake.

Pasted from <http://volecentral.co.uk/vf/chiyenshih.htm>

Thanks to Bob Newman for his wonderful Volecentral resource site

Ancient Verse is probably the same verse form as Ch'I Yen Shih from the Lu Shi code verse. Ancient Verse is found desribed in John Drury's poe-try-dic-tion-ar-y and is similar to Ch'I Yen Shi, with slight variation. As described by Drury, caesura was not specified and more latitude was given in the character count. This is probably an example of how form evolves or is corrupted by translation. For now I will treat this verse form as separate.

(Drury uses "syllable count") Technically in Chinese prosody, character count and syllable count are one in the same since Chinese characters are one word and Chinese words are usually one syllable. However in English translation, a character could represent a 2 or 3 syllable English word. I use "character" in most of my metric descriptions of Chinese verse and often count words rather than syllables when attempting to write poems using Chinese verse forms in English. However, since Drury's book describes the meter for this form as syllabic, I follow his lead.

Ancient Verse is:

• stanzaic, written in quatrains.
• syllabic, 5 to 7 syllable lines.
• rhymed, rhyme scheme either xaxa xaxa etc or xaxa xbxb etc.
• no fixed tone pattern.
• always composed with parallels and balance.
  
  pyramid by Judi Van Gorder
  
  fresh dug dirt makes space and waits
  rich earth forms a pyramid
  to welcome polished pine box
  with white roses on the lid

Pasted from <http://www.poetrymagnumopus.com/index.php?/topic/633-ancient-verse/>

Thanks to Judi Van Gorder for her wonderful PMO resource site.

My example poem

Surveillance       (Ch'I Yen Shih)

My house has eyes in the dark

Big dogs see but first they smell.

I don't switch them - off or on

still they serve as my door bell.

© Lawrencealot - April 9, 2014

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