Rondine: Poetic Forms
Learn how to write a rondine, a French 12-liner, including guidelines for the poetic form and an example poem.
As regular readers of this blog can attest, I love me some French forms. And this week's poetic form is a French form: the rondine.
Rondine Poems
If the term "rondine" sounds familiar, almost like rondeau, that's because it's very similar to the rondeau. In fact, I'm thinking of calling it the little rondeau, because it's kind of like a mini-version of the rondeau.
So here are the basic rules:
- 12-line poem
- 2 stanzas
- 7 lines in the first stanza; 5 lines in the second
- 8 or 10 syllables per line, except in the 7th and 12th lines
- 7th and 12th lines are a refrain
- The refrain comes from the opening word or phrase of the poem
- Rhyme pattern looks like this: abbaabR/abbaR
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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 a Rondine Poem:
If I Were You, by Robert Lee Brewer
If I were you, I'd not be me;
instead, I'd be a complete fake
or, perhaps, I mean to say flake
as in snow dissolved in the sea
as in something that's hard to see
and still there'd be nothing to take
if I were you.
For instance, remove my name Lee
from anything I plan to make
and insert your namesake
and replace all traces of me
if I were you.
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Okay, so my example doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but you should get the idea of how the form works now, right? So now you know, and as you know, knowing is half the battle.
So now get poeming!
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.
