Ballade: Poetic Forms
Poetic Form Fridays are made to share various poetic forms. This week, we look at the ballade, a French poetic form.
Poetic Form Fridays are made to share various poetic forms. This week, we look at the ballade, a 28-line French poetic form.
Ballade Poems
The ballade is a French poetic form that offers everything I love about French forms, namely plenty of rhymes and refrains.
Here are the basic guidelines:
- 28 lines
- three stanzas of eight lines followed by a quatrain (or four-line stanza) called an envoy (or envoi)
- rhyme scheme: ababbcbC/ababbcbC/ababbcbC/bcbC
- final line of each stanza is a refrain
- each line is usually comprised of eight or 10 syllables (flexible, but consistent within the poem)
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Here’s my attempt at a ballade:
the revolutionaries, by Robert Lee Brewer
we live large & in charge of all
we see or saw or whatever
because a rise precedes a fall
as a worse comes from a better
or a storm breaks up good weather
& maybe we seem like we're clowns
laughing our way to the never
& there's no one to slow us down
so do what you want but don't stall
& assume that we're not clever
because a rise precedes a fall
& best believe we want better
than what we have or whatever
we lost that you claim you have found
our want will swallow us forever
& there's no one to slow us down
if you want a word you can call
& pretend the line's not severed
because a rise precedes a fall
& we don't believe your better
that you've been selling forever
expecting us to hang around
we've found a way of whatever
& there's no one to slow us down
so lie your lies & whatever
makes you feel like you're safe & sound
but we're coming for our better
& there's no one to slow us down
Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Editor of Writer's Digest, which includes managing the content on WritersDigest.com and programming virtual conferences. He's the author of 40 Plot Twist Prompts for Writers: Writing Ideas for Bending Stories in New Directions, The Complete Guide of Poetic Forms: 100+ Poetic Form Definitions and Examples for Poets, Poem-a-Day: 365 Poetry Writing Prompts for a Year of Poeming, and more. Also, he's the editor of Writer's Market, Poet's Market, and Guide to Literary Agents. Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.
