Interlocking Rubaiyat: Poetic Form
Learn how to write interlocking rubaiyat, an ancient Persian form of poetry that is as contemporary as Robert Frost and fun to write. This quatrain form can get addictive fast.
It's been a while since I've shared a poetic form on here. And strange as it seems, this form has been hiding under my nose for years without me even realizing it. Of course, I'm speaking of interlocking rubaiyat, sometimes referred to as rubai.
I've long been familiar with the 12th-century Persian work, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, but I did not recognize it as a form. And without piecing it together, one of my all-time favorite poems ("Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," by Robert Frost) executes interlocking rubaiyat to perfection.
Just goes to show that no matter how much one thinks he knows, there's still so much more to learn. Or at least, there's still "miles to go before I sleep."
Here are the rules of the interlocking rubaiyat:
- The poem is comprised of quatrains following an aaba rhyme pattern.
- Each successive quatrain picks up the unrhymed line as the rhyme for that stanza. So a three-stanza rubaiyat might rhyme so: aaba/bbcb/ccdc. Sometimes the final stanza, as in Frost's example above, rhymes all four lines.
- Lines are usually tetrameter and pentameter.
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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).
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Here's my attempt at an interlocking rubaiyat:
Ringing
Forget the day he plummeted to earth
in a mess of wings and excessive girth
because he once knew the secret of flight
and may someday experience rebirth
like a phoenix transfixed by its own light
with fire that burns against the frozen night
he'll turn to ash like all worldly things do
and be renewed through a pure divine rite.
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.
