Oddquain Butterfly

Oddquain

Oddquain is a short, usually unrhymed poem consisting of seventeen syllables distributed 1, 3, 5, 7, 1 in five lines, developed by Glenda L. Hand.

Oddquain variations:

oddquain sequences - poems made up of oddquain stanzas

crown oddquains - a five stanza oddquain sequence

reverse oddquains - a oddquain with a reverse syllable pattern of 1-7-5-3-1

mirror oddquains - a two stanza oddquain sequence of the pattern 1-3-5-7-1 1-7-5-3-1

oddquain butterflies - a “merged mirror oddquain” where the two stanzas of a mirror oddquain are merged together, one of the middle 1 syllable lines is dropped, resulting in one nine line stanza of the form 1-3-5-7-1-7-5-3-1. Please note that a oddquain butterfly is not a “oddquain” because it doesn’t have five lines, but it is “butterfly” made up of two oddquains that were merged together into one poem.

Pasted from <http://www.shadowpoetry.com/resources/wip/oddquain.html>

Thanks to Shadow Poetry for the above.

I have selected only the Mirror Oddquain here, to represent the oddquain series, simply to introduce a cousin into the Cinquain family tree.

Related forms: Baxter's Hexastitch, Butterfly Cinquain, Cinquino, Crapsey Cinquain, CinqCinquain, Cinquain Chain, Cinquain Swirl,  Didactic Cinquain, Mirror Cinquain, Oddquain Butterfly, Standard Cinquain 

My example poem.

This is Odd

'Tis

odd because

the numbers are not

even, though that's not even

strange.

Even even numbers can

at times strike me odd

I swear to

God.

© Lawrencealot - February 21, 2014