TERZA RIMA

I have been reading Stephen Fry's The Ode Less Travelled, and taking up his challenge of writing poems in a variety of verse forms. The results are seldom profound, but can be strangely satisfying--largely because of the sense of having solved a technical conundrum. Here is my first exercise, in the verse form made famous by Dante Alighieri in his Divine Comedy:




Terza Rima

To write in terza rima is my aim,
as Dante (in Italian) chose to do.
This first attempt is fatuous, but game,

and I’ll get better as the lines renew
(at least I hope I will–no guarantees).
I know that my competitors are few:

Young poets never dream that rhyme can please.
They all opine that metre’s had its day,
and prosody’s a lingering disease.

Yet still among the tercets I will play,
with rhyme-scheme ABA BCB D
et cetera, et cetera. Okay?
Go ye and write free verse, and let me be.

                                                  Tom Lips,  April, 2021

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