THE ODD COUPLE

At a writers’ workshop a few years ago I encountered a couple of amusing poetic forms that challenge the brain. 

One was the Univocalic and the other the Tetractys: I’m still trying to work out how to pronounce that second one.

They operate like this. The univocalic poem uses a single vowel throughout and avoids all others, while the tetractys is a poem with five accumulating lines. Line 1 is one syllable, line 2 has two syllables and so on to a maximum of five syllables. A Double Tetractys is two such poems back-t0-back.

I like to play with rhyme and form and once challenged myself to combine the two: a univocalic poem in the form of a double tetractys. Rather an odd couple.

It didn’t quite come off because I needed to add a couple of extra five-syllable lines to complete it, but the univocalic element, avoiding a,i,o and u, was spot-on.

The result was Wren, of which I’m rather proud.

WREN

See

the wren,

resplendent:

her clever eye,

her sweet essence. Deep, 

let her sleep be deep;

there, let the green hedge

be her perfect bed;

the rye, the reed,

be her screen;

shelter

her.