Our theme this month at Tweetspeak Poetry is the Pantoum. As always, we gently invite you to both read along and write along with the theme. To do that, you might need to keep your options open. We get that. So here are…
5 Great Ways to Write a Pantoum
1. Hire someone to write a pantoum for you. We can recommend our teenaged contingent, writer of sestinas, sonnets, pantoums, villanelles, or whatever else the poetic establishment might dream up
2. Pretend you know what a pantoum is and sing your way through it with One Direction and Bon Jovi
3. Consult our Pantoum Infographic.
4. Borrow a pantoum from Every Day Poems. We will visit you in detention if you get busted for poetry filching.
5. Suck it up and follow the basic guidelines for becoming a pantoum master…
Basic Guidelines for How to Write a Pantoum
1. Remember that a pantoum is similar to a villanelle, with lines repeating throughout the poem
2. Contains a series of quatrains (stanzas of four lines), that rhyme abab until the final stanza (you’ll see why in number 5)
3. Repeat the 2nd and 4th lines of each stanza as the 1st and 3rd lines in the stanza that follows. For example:
Stanza 1 lines: A B C D
Stanza 2 lines: B E D F
Stanza 3 lines: E G F H
4. Continue for any number of stanzas
5. Switch it up in the final stanza: last line grabs 1st line from very first stanza, 2nd line grabs 3rd line from very first stanza
Final Stanza lines: I C J A
6. Get fancy? Alter your repeating line meanings by punning, moving punctuation, changing context, or substituting one or two words without losing the overall sense that it is the same line
7. Unlike the villanelle, which can be fairly comic if one wishes, the pantoum tends to ruminate. Great for when you are feeling out-of-sorts. (Actually, we dare you to try to write a funny pantoum. Let us see it if you do.)
Photo by Pink Sherbet Photography, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by L.L. Barkat, author of Rumors of Water: Thoughts on Creativity & Writing
_____________________
- Poetry Prompt: In the Wild Secret Place - January 6, 2025
- Journeys: What We Hold in Common - November 4, 2024
- Poetry Prompt: My Poem is an Oasis - August 26, 2024
Mary Ellen Stypinski says
Please reply. Where and how do I submit my Pantoum? I have completed writing this form.
Thank You
L. L. Barkat says
Our editor, Seth Haines, is happily waiting for pantoums over here…
https://www.tweetspeakpoetry.com/2013/03/04/pant-pant-ou-ou-oum-a-goat-song-pantoum-poetry-prompt/
Just drop it in the comment box 🙂
Donna says
Clarification… If we go with option one is there contractual confidentiality included or does that cost extra?
L. L. Barkat says
Ha 🙂
oh sure, she can keep a secret for no extra charge 🙂
What’s your bid this morning?
Donna says
HA! 😀 Weeeellllll…. Thanks but….I think I’ll write my own and sleep better at night! 😉 snicker snicker!
Maureen Doallas says
I wrote this one way back in 2010. Does it count?
http://writingwithoutpaper.blogspot.com/2010/11/holding-hands-poem.html
(P.S. I rebelled a bit against the traditional form.)
L. L. Barkat says
of course it counts. Send it over to Seth? 🙂
Forms were made to rebel against 🙂
Maureen Doallas says
I wrote a new one, using that Gabriel Garcia Marquez line from WordCandy (“There’s always something left to love”) as inspiration.
It’s a dark pantoum.
Chris Yokel says
Hey, I wrote one of those back in grad school. It was inspired by LOTR:
A Pantoum in Khazad-Dûm
We cannot get out
Drums doom in the deep
The folly of our pride released
We dug too deep
Drums doom in the deep
Rattling chains in chasm’d halls
We dug too deep
Unleashed the shadow of our fall
Rattling chains in chasm’d halls
Lost from light so long ago
Unleashed the shadow of our fall
In greed our industry suspired
Lost from light so long ago
Hence Khazad-Dûm, Moria became
In greed our industry suspired
Our glory lost beneath Caradhras
Hence Khazad-Dûm, Moria became
In the darkness corpses mingled
Our glory lost beneath Caradhras
Our shame of defeat swallowed, entombed
In the darkness corpses mingled
Do not let your specter join us
Our shame of defeat swallowed, entombed
Let it not become your eternal grave
Do not let your specter join us
The folly of our pride released
Let it not become your eternal grave
We cannot get out
L. L. Barkat says
my favorite line:
“drums doom in the deep”
And that seems to be the mood of the basic pantoum as well 🙂