#3 - HOW TO WRITE A TRIOLET
If you’ve been following this series you’ll know that last time I mentioned how some people think villanelles are difficult, but we saw how they’re not. Those same people probably think the triolet is difficult too. Frankly, I don’t know if anyone much writes triolets these days. (Oh! That rhymes!) To be honest, I’ve never written one before, but how hard can it be?
But if nobody writes them now it doesn’t really matter because if that’s the case you could start a new trend or create a niche (i.e. almost non-existent) market, which might be the first step to poetry success and - who knows? - even becoming the Poet Laureate in the future. They don’t set the bar very high for that nowadays, so you could maybe take a shot.
2.
The triolet only has 8 lines, which is nice’n’short. The first, fourth and seventh lines are the same, as are the second and final lines, which makes the first and last couplets (pairs of lines) the same as well. All of which means you don’t have to think up many lines, although that means the ones you do think up and repeat, like in the villanelle, have to be pretty damn good, and worth repeating.
The down sides of the triolet are two: (1) there should be rhyme, and (2) you have to think about iambic feet and syllables.
3.
As far as the rhyme is concerned, the pattern is ABaAabAB; the capital letters represent the repeated lines i.e. the repeated first, fourth and seventh lines rhyme with lines three and five, and ….. well, I’m sure you get the drift. If not, it’ll become clear as we go on. Imagine an early morning, and the meadowy landscape is beautifully blurred by a picturesque mist, Celia is dancing ballerina-like across the greensward, her fairy feet dampened by the dew, then the sun shines more strongly, the mist disperses, and everything becomes crystal, which is when you remember Celia is gone. I’m not saying this will be like that, but imagine it anyway.
Actually, in history there are a couple of other rules about
the rhyme in a triolet depending on which country’s version of the triolet you
look at, but I’m giving you a kind of bog-standard modern English version here,
mainly because those other rules just complicate matters, and life’s complicated
enough already.
4.
The lines in the triolet should be what is called iambic* tetrameter, which is basically 8 syllables, going “dee DUM dee DUM dee DUM dee DUM”.
* Some people have dared to suggest that my iambic feet are sometimes
not as iambic as they should be. Those people are wrong. When reading poetry
such as a sonnet or a triolet just make sure you really go for the “dee
DUM dee DUM dee DUM dee DUM” thing, and get that bouncy rhythm going, then it
will be alright. You have to bounce a bit sometimes, otherwise what’s the
point? Also, needless to say, I don’t spend loads of time on this stuff, and
you get what you pay for.
5.
So anyway, we need two lines that will bear repeating, and mine are
She WON’T give ME her NEW addRESS.
and
Her HEART is HARD. Her HEART is STONE.
The bits in capital letters are, of course, the “DUM” of the
iambic “dee DUM”. (I’m not going to do that capital letter thing again for the
other lines, it would get a bit tedious.) And yes, I do seem to be writing a
lot of poems about Celia at the moment. I’m not sure she deserves it, but the
poet writes what the poet has to write, apparently. I heard someone say that on
the wireless.
6.
If we now think about the line pattern of the triolet, and the way two lines are repeated, we are faced with this:
She won’t give me her new address.
Her heart is hard. Her heart is stone.
(new line needed,
rhyming with “address”)
She won’t give me
her new address.
(new line needed,
rhyming with “address”)
(new line needed,
rhyming with “stone”)
She won’t give me
her new address.
Her heart is hard. Her heart is stone.
So you can see we only have to find three new lines to fill
in the gaps, and a bit of rhyme, and we’re done! Easy-peasy!
7.
Here is my completed triolet, with my three new lines:
She won’t give me her new address.
Her heart is hard. Her heart is
stone.
In truth I could not care much less.
She won’t give me her new address,
And here’s the thing I need to stress:
I’m glad that bitch, that bird has flown.
She won’t give me her new address.
Her heart is hard. Her heart is stone.
That was actually a
piece of cake, and not terrifically challenging, so you should also find it’s
pretty easy. I’m not sure if I’m going to keep that “bitch” in line 6; I might
change it to something else. “Bitch” is a word that might upset some people,
but upsetting people is a big part of what art is about, so it’s probably worth
keeping. Whatever. There’s loads of one-syllable words I could use to describe
Celia, so I’ll have a think, but “bitch” and “bird” both start with a B, so it
sounds good. Anyway, like I said, this triolet wasn’t very challenging. It took
me longer to do the Cryptic Crossword in today’s newspaper, which was a bit of
a bugger. I got stuck on several clues, including 4 Down: “Alice is a confused girl.
(5 letters).”
8.
As usual, we round
off things by thinking up a decent title. I’m calling this one “OF CELIA,
WHERE’ER SHE MAY BE”. I think the old-fashioned poetic-sounding contraction of
“Wherever” to “Where’er” is a nice touch.