Rime Couee: Poetic Forms
Poetic Form Fridays are made to share various poetic forms. This week, we look at the rime couee, a French six-line form.
Poetic Form Fridays are made to share various poetic forms. This week, we look at the rime couee, a French six-line form.
Rime Couee Poems
The rime couee is a French poetic form that uses six-line stanzas with a 3-part rhyme scheme and variable line lengths. Here are the guidelines:
- Six-line stanzas.
- Eight syllables in lines one, two, four, and five.
- Six syllables in the third and sixth lines.
- Rhyme scheme of AABCCB.
The poem can be a single stanza or run for several. For my example below, I reset the rhyme scheme in the second stanza.
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Here’s my attempt at a rime couee:
turn, by Robert Lee Brewer
we turn in the morning and turn
at night when the candle light burns
all the way down the wick
and then say things that we'll regret
knowing we will never forget
how we were both homesick
for a love we felt at the start
when every breath seemed works of art
framed by kissable lips
wet with wanting this waxing dream
transforming to nightmarish screams
over how love can slip
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.
