Of course I had to write a poem for this one. That name just tickles my Muse. I spotted this little tugboat parked along the Mississippi river in St. Paul. I've seen it pushing huge strings of barges, although this day is was idle.

This poem is a Pantoum.
A Pantoum is a poem that is made up of quatrains with interweaving repeated lines. In that sense, the Pantoum is a form of poetry similar to a Villanelle. It is composed of a series of quatrains; the second and fourth lines of each stanza are repeated as the first and third lines of the next. This pattern continues for any number of stanzas, except for the final stanza, which differs in the repeating pattern. The first and third lines of the last stanza are the second and fourth of the penultimate; the first line of the poem is the last line of the final stanza, and the third line of the first stanza is the second of the final.

Ideally, the meaning of lines shifts when they are repeated although the words remain exactly the same. So, although they are the same words, their meaning is changed. this gives the poem it's intrinsic beauty.

A four-stanza pantoum is common,(although more may be used) and in the final stanza, you could simply repeat lines one and three from the first stanza, or write new lines.
The pantoum outline is as follows:

Stanza 1 A B C D (or A C B D)
Stanza 2 B E D F (or C E D F)
Stanza 3 E G F H Stanza
Stanza 4 G I (or A or C) H J (or A or C)
No specific meter requirement is identified. I wrote this one in iambic tetrameter.

This photograph was written by the author himself on March 6, 2016.

You need to login or register to write reviews. It's quick! We only ask four questions to new members.