Paper and Smoke
Paper and smoke lift from the fire.
Manuscript pages that were unwanted
now only existing as a poet's memory
and even there they are fast becoming
paper and smoke.
The October night is winter cold.
Words that took years to be set down
vanishing in seconds, some light enough
to rise; others heavy, drop to ash.
You rake the ash into a blank space
and set down a new start — a title:
Paper and Smoke
I was looking through some books on poetic forms looking for a new form to use here. I noticed four forms that not only begin with "R" but also have similarities.
The Rondeau is a lyric poem from the 13th-century which is characterized by repeating lines or "rounds". It has 15 lines written as a quintet, quatrain, and sestet, with two rhyme schemes.
The Rondel is a 14th Century French lyrical poem that is a variation of the Roundeau. It consists of two quatrains followed by a quintet (13 lines total) or a sestet (14 lines total). The first two lines are refrains which repeat at the end of the second and third stanzas. The rhyming pattern is ABba, abAB, abbaA.
Then we have the Rondolet, another French form consisting of a single septet with two rhymes and one refrain The refrain is written in tetra-syllabic or dimeter and the other lines are twice as long - octasyllabic or tetrameter.
And finally, the Roundel, a form created by Algernon Charles Swinburne as a variation of the rondeau form.
DON'T PANIC. We are not asking for any of those four. They are all examples of forms that get so specific that they can trap the poet.
What I see as the central structural element shared across all four forms is the recurring refrain derived from the poem's opening phrase and an organization of three distinct movements or stanzas. So, here is our new poetic form designed around those shared mechanics without any constraints on rhyme or syllable counts. Let's just call it simply a "round."
While "round" is rarely used as a modern standalone name for a text-only poem, it is the literal English translation and ancestor of all these French forms. You probably know rounds as songs like "Row, Row, Row Your Boat," "Frère Jacques," "Three Blind Mice," and"Sumer Is Icumen In" which is the oldest known English round, dating back to around 1250 AD.
As you can see in our example poem, the title is also the refrain repeated in the first line and in the last line making a kind of circle, a round.
In summary, the poem is 12 lines in 3 stanzas. It's free verse (no forced syllable counts or rhyme schemes required). The form also suggests that the poem in some way is itself thematically circular.
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