Pantounelle
A Step-By-Step Guide to Writing Pantounelles
A pantounelle is as its name suggests, a merging of the forms of pantoum and villanelle. It's a poem of thirty lines (Again, who says you can't lengthen it as long as you follow the pattern.) that is divided into six quatrains (stanzas of four lines) and one sestet (stanza of six lines). The pantounelle has the same concept of a lyrical, repetitive poem that centers around a main idea or thought, except it's a bit more unwieldy to explain.
A pantounelle, for the most part, follows the 'aabb' rhyme scheme. You'll be seeing a lot of poetry pages
use the a and b "code" for describing rhyme scheme. It's pretty
simple, actually. The letter 'a' means one rhyming sound, and the letter
'b' is another. the code 'aabb' means that there are only two rhyming
sounds, and they are arranged so that the first and second lines rhyme, and the third and fourth lines rhyme. This pattern, however, is broken in the sestet, where it becomes bbaaaa, meaning that the first two lines rhyme, then the last four lines rhyme.
In terms of repetition and rhythm, a pantounelle, as mentioned before, uses a refrain. For example, I chose to begin a pantounelle with the following quatrain:
The light plays with shadow across the floor ---> First line of third stanza
Lapping at furniture, shading the door ---------> First line of second stanza
Casting hot fingers on icy faces ---------------> Last line of third stanza
Searching out shrouded, shadowy places -------> Last line of second stanza
The second stanza would be something like this:
Lapping at furniture, shading the door ----------> First line of fifth stanza
Warm honey yellow creeps over the floor -------> First line of fourth stanza
Making a pattern that the shadow traces -------> Last line of fifth stanza
Searching out shrouded, shadowy places -------> Last line of fourth stanza
And the third, like this:
The light plays with shadow across the floor
Making fantastic shapes, creatures of lore ------> First line of sixth stanza
Across these figures the light races
Casting hot fingers on icy faces ----------------> Last line of sixth stanza
This pattern would continue until the sestet, where the pattern is broken and instead, a recap of the first stanza occurs. The sestet of this poem might be the following:
Searching out shrouded, shadowy places
Casting hot fingers on icy faces
Lapping at furniture, shading the door
The light plays with shadow across the floor
Clutching each other till the light is no more
The light plays with shadow across the floor
There! Easy, isn't it?
The only essential to a
pantounelle is a good first quatrain. Once you start from there, the poem pretty much writes itself due to the number of repetitions. In writing your quatrain, however, try to make each line stand alone as a sentence or sentence-like phrase. I had a tough time with my first ever
pantounelle because of its first quatrain, which went like this:
Tell me to kill love stone dead
As thoughts of it flit through my head
Tell me to forget, by the by
Love's heartless magic, lest I die
Because of how the last line was written, I had a hard time producing third lines to match it. It was written to match only 'Tell me to forget, by the by', and so made for a tough
pantounelle which didn't sound quite as nice.
The challenge is to make the poem sound like a poem, and not like a
chant. If you feel that a form stifles the actual message of the poem,
ditch the form! Some people find writing in form promotes creative
thought, but not all poems can fit into a mold. Don't let the form be
your poem's driving force.
I hope you have fun writing your own
pantounelles. When you feel you're good enough (Usually after the first try you'll get the hang of it.), you can play with the length or even rearrange the rhyme scheme to create a variation. And who knows? You may end up creating your
own form of poem. Best of luck to you all!
~ Key Torres
March 5, 2008