Beautiful angels in white,

Bring warmth to the aching heart, 

With their smile and make lives bright.

 

From dawn to dusk, they do their part,

Dress our wounds till they heal,

Bring warmth to the aching heart.

 

Our pain and worry they do feel,

And console us till we are fine,

And dress our wounds till they heal. 

 

Their touch is a magical wine, 

That makes us feel better, 

And console us till we are fine. 

 

Fatigue fails to fetter, 

As they continue to care,

And that makes us feel better. 

 

With doctors they make a good pair, 

And show us the recovery light, 

As they continue to care,

With their smile and make lives bright.

 

Image Courtesy : Photo by Graham Ruttan on Unsplash

Poetry Style : Terzanelle

The terzanelle, invented by Lewis Turco in 1965, is a poetic form that combines the terza rima’s end-line rhyme scheme with the villanelle’s refrain—hence “terzanelle”, from terza rima and villanelle. In fact, “Terzanelle” was the title of Turco’s first terzanelle poem—the first ever written—which was published in the summer edition of The Michigan Quarterly Review that same year. He has since written and published three more terzanelle poems over the years, “Terzanelle in Thunderweather” (The Book of Forms: University Press of New England, 2000), “The Room” (Poetry Miscellany, 1978), and “Terzanelle of the Spider’s Web” (The Southern Review, 1990).

Here are the rules by which a terzanelle poem may be written:

1. The terzanelle is comprised of at least two tercets and a closing quatrain. Item 4 below expands upon this general rule with commentary.
2. The first and third lines of the opening tercet are refrained as the second and fourth lines of the closing quatrain. This will be illustrated later using an actual terzanelle poem.
3. The terzanelle body is comprised of tercets that each refrain the second line of the preceding tercet for its third line. The first line of each of these tercets is rhymed with its refrained line. This will also be illustrated later.
4. There must be a minimum of one tercet for the body, but there may be as many tercets in the body as you think you can get away with. The opening tercet can be thought of as the head of the poem, the closing quatrain as the foot, and any tercets in between as the body.
5. The closing quatrain refrains the second line of the last tercet as its third line and rhymes its first line with that refrain.

There is a pleasant shorthand notation for the first five points. For a 19 line terzanelle, this would be A¹B¹A², bC¹B¹, cD¹C¹, dE¹D¹, eF¹E¹, fA¹F¹A², where like letters indicate the rhyme scheme, and uppercase letters followed by a superscript numeric notation indicate the refrains.