It is said that a young Japanese poet once asked a Chinese poet how to compose a Chinese poem. “The usual Chinese poem is four lines," he was told. "The first line contains the initial phrase; the second line, the continuation of that phrase; the third line turns from this subject and begins a new one, but the fourth line brings the first three lines together."
A popular Japanese song illustrates this:
Two daughters of a silk merchant live in Kyoto.
The elder is twenty, the younger, eighteen.
A soldier may kill with his sword,
But these girls slay men with their eyes.
Many well-known four-line Chinese poems, particularly those in the jueju (or quatrain) form, masterfully incorporate a "turn" or a shift in perspective, mood, or subject matter in the third line, before the concluding fourth line brings the poem to a close.
Poems from all cultures often have a turn. That turn is known as the "volta" which comes from Italian, meaning “turn.” It traces back to the Latin verb volvere, which means “to roll” or “to turn." In poetry, it metaphorically represents a shift in thought, emotion, or argument.
Petrarch, the 14th-century Italian poet, popularized the sonnet form that includes a volta between the octave (8 lines) and the sestet (6 lines). In his sonnets, the octave presents a problem or situation, and the sestet offers a resolution or counterpoint. Later, Shakespearean sonnets adopted a different placement for the turn. It often appears before the final rhymed couplet.
Two examples of turns in longer English poems: In Shakespeare’s "Sonnet 18," the turn comes at line 9: “But thy eternal summer shall not fade…” —shifting from admiring nature to praising the beloved’s lasting beauty. In Elizabeth Bishop’s "The Moose," the turn moves from a mundane bus ride to a mystical encounter with a moose and transforms the poem’s tone and meaning.
For our September issue, we are interested in the shorter jueju form popular during the Tang Dynasty where the turn occurs in line 3 of the 4-line poem. Not unlike haiku, this structure allows for a "finale" and invites reflection.
Although most jueju are a single 4-line poem, "On Returning Home," by He Zhizhang, is a double jueju. There are two third-line turns.
When young, I left home, now old, I return.
My hometown accent is still the same.
Children don't know who I am.
Smiling, they point at the strange man.
I dismount my horse at the gate of my house.
I ask after the old friends I knew.
Where are the peach and plum trees, now gone with the spring wind?
The old man who lives there is no longer me.
A turn is a shift in a poem’s tone or mood. It could indicate a turn from sorrow to hope. It could also indicate a turn in perspective or speaker, or mark a turn in an argument, or imagery.
"Thoughts Four" by Zhang Jiuling
South of the Yangtze the tangerine grows.
All winter long its leaves are green.
What can prevent our worries?
Forget the shade of other trees.
The turn (or turns, in poems of multiple stanzas) in a poem can add several things. It can add depth by introducing complexity and surprise. In a longer poem, it adds movement, keeping the poem dynamic. Near the end of a poem, it can present a resolution to earlier ideas, or even intensify rather than resolve them.
The Tang Dynasty (618–907) is considered to be the golden age of Chinese culture, and many of China’s greatest poets were writing at this time. Poetry and the arts flourished. Poets were writing about all the big themes of love, war, the delights of drinking and dancing, and the beauties of nature.
Many anthologies of Tang poems exist and are still popular in Chinese homes.
The deadline for submissions for the next issue is August 31, 2025.
Please refer to our submission guidelines
and look at our archive of 26
years of prompts and poems. Follow our
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