Echo Verse: Poetic Forms
Learn how to write echo verse, a repetitive form, including guidelines for the form and a couple examples.
Last week's form (treochair) had some wild rhymes. This week's form is a little more straight forward. Bring on echo verse!
Echo Verse Poems
Unlike many of the poetic forms we examine on this blog, echo verse has a pretty simple rule: Repeat the end syllable(s) of each line. No other rules.
There are two ways to do this: Repeat the ending syllable(s) at the end of the same line (as in my example below); or repeat the ending syllable(s) on its own line directly beneath each line. I'll include a variant example below.
*****
Play with poetic forms!
Poetic forms are fun poetic games, and this digital guide collects more than 100 poetic forms, including more established poetic forms (like sestinas and sonnets) and newer invented forms (like golden shovels and fibs).
*****
Here’s my attempt at Echo Verse:
something to talk about, by Robert Lee Brewer
Is there anything to know? No!
Or a person to betray? A
man is doomed by other men; men
find solace in nothing; nothing
leads to what no one can know. No,
I'd rather find something something.
Here’s my variant attempt at Echo Verse:
something to talk about, by Robert Lee Brewer
Is there anything to know?
No!
Or a person to betray?
A
man is doomed by other men;
men
find solace in nothing;
nothing
leads to what no one can know.
No,
I'd rather find something
something.
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.
