Last summer I tried writing one poem every day. The Writer’s Digest has a list of 168 poems for writers to try and I attempted to write an example of each one. I did not make it. But, I have a good selection that I can edit and work with now. Here is an example of one of those poems. The information on the rubaiyat is from Writer’s Digest .
Here are the rules of the interlocking rubaiyat:
- The poem is comprised of quatrains following an aaba rhyme pattern.
- Each successive quatrain picks up the unrhymed line as the rhyme for that stanza. So a three-stanza rubaiyat might rhyme so: aaba/bbcb/ccdc. Sometimes the final stanza, as in Frost’s example above, rhymes all four lines.
- Lines are usually tetrameter and pentameter.
Babcia (Busha)
Sepia pictures of my grandmother
Standing a foot taller than her brother.
It is 1918; she’s standing proud.
She is a Polish immigrant daughter.
She speaks Polish and flawed English aloud
When she is 60 a storm comes with many clouds
Her ears hear ‘tunder’ instead of thunder
Only 8 years of school she was allowed
“Daisy, Daisy” was sung with much laughter
as my Grandma tickled with her fingers,
Bent and gnarled, the black and white keys of my
Childhood piano. Her blue eyes glitter.
