Short Verse 

- Ms. Nalini Sharma

In this era of scientific advancement and materialism, poetry has not yet lost its old world charm. Many scientific men and people of all the disciplines have stolen time out of their extremely busy schedules to woo this dainty damsel, poetry. To drive my point home, I am reminded of two prominent personalities- both men of science, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam our Hon. President and Dr. Kazuyosi Ikeda the renowned physicist of Japan. Both have a mind of science and a poet’s heart. Such is the fascination of poetry that holds the readers spellbound. I quote here the famous line of Omar Khayyam on poetry tickling our taste buds like elixir from the vineyards of Bordeaux “A book of verse, a flask of wine and thou beside me singing. ..”

Let me make it clear at the outset that poetry is not merely the opposite of prose. Sheer arrangement of words in an order of maintaining syllables or lines for prescribed specific length is not poetry. Imagination or creative element is the essence of poetry. It is an intense feeling expressed in a rhythmic manner. Rhythm brings out music the essential component of poetry. Poetry is a confluence of rhyme, rhythm and rhapsody. Two of the biggest powers of poetry are melody and rhythm. Rhythm is the pulse through which its regularity enhances our interest and sustains our excitement. Melody is the music of vowels and consonants, syllables and words. Rhyme, rhythm, vision, imagery, alliteration, emotion and sound effect all go in the making of a good poetry. Poetry emanates from the heart and not from the mind. A poet has to be only responsive to the inner calling and write accordingly. As a river in spate. breaks the restraints overflowing the embankments so does poetry bursts out from an emotionally charged heavy heart. It must pour when the clouds are thick. Such is the case with the poets. They must express otherwise they would suffocate.

“Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, it takes its origin from emotions recollected in tranquility,” says Wordsworth. Shelley observes, “A poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.”

In the words of Keats, “If poetry comes not as naturally as leaves to a tree, it had better not
come at all.”
Gone are the days of long epics. The second half of the last century has witnessed: tremendous spurt in the composition of short verses and journals promoting it with global circulation. And the last two decades have proved to be a milestone for the upsurge of short verse in the ambit of Indian English literature. Advantageously brief, the beauty of short verse in its myriad forms has charmed many. Very few poets have come to our notice trying their hands at long poems. As far as my knowledge is concerned Dr. Mahanand Sharma our contemporary, has composed three epics in this era of short verse. They are : Flowering of a Lotus containing 187 Spenserian stanzas, A Rudraksh Rosary and A Spiritual Warrior each running into more than four thousand lines of blank verse.

Well, short verse is best described as a vast view on a small canvas. Though short, it is wide in scope, all-embracing and inclusive of thoughts and emotions. Short verses in their multi-coloured glory powerful yet subtle in expression condensed in thoughts and expression capture the essence of thoughts. It requires skillful use of words on the part of a poet so as to compress his expression leaving much to the readers to elaborate and draw meaning using his imagination. It is like a small capsule loaded with powerful thoughts and a powerful bomb that unleashes the reader’s power of imagination. Lot of information capsuled clearly and in few words. Short verse is pithy, succinct and compendious.
Allow me to deal with the varied forms of free verse first. Time constraint leaves me no choice but to present only one example of a particular genre to illustrate my point. To begin with
ZEN POETRY- A three line form but contains lesser syllables than Haiku i.e. less than 17 syllables featuring the Zen element in them.
World is beautiful
For the blind
Darkness. [Dr. Fakhruddin]

HAIKU - is a 3 lines form with 5-7-5 syllables in each line concise, terse and forceful. It is a craft that sharpens the imagination and disciplines the mind helping one to enter a state of meditationHaiku is a rose
That grows certainly not in
Everyone’s garden. [MF]

T ANKA- has a FIVE-line form. The first three lines have the same number of syllables as that of a Haiku but the last two lines have 7 syllables in each line i.e. 5-7-5-7-7.
If one questions me
On the Japanese spirit
I answer it is
Like the wild cherry blossoms
Shining in the morning sun. {Dr. Kazuyosi Ikeda}

LIMERICK- is a humorous five-line poem with a rhyme scheme aabba mostly sung between improvised verses at a gathering. Here is a funny limerick by NEAL WILGUS of USA
And now for the memory test
In which we will see who is best
At remembering the time
We witnessed the crime
And- I think I’ve forgotten the rest.

Now I move on to STRUCTURAL VERSE:
To begin with I take up the most loved genre COUPLET- a pair of successive lines of verse, typically rhyming and of the same length. Here I quote my own couplet
Locked into a loveless marriage they lock horns
On the street in public defying decent norms.

Another form TERCET - a set or group of three lines of verse rhyming together or connected by rhyme with an adjacent triplet. Here is a tercet by Hazara Singh on Ritualism
Ritualism makes mockery of goodliness 
An attempt to show not inwardly glow 
Culminating as fun or disorderliness. 

MY QUATRAIN 
Tiresome and tedious worldly affairs 
Put strain on mind disrupt tranquility 
Not to waste my life on mundane matters 
I stay tuned to nature’s charm and beauty. * Should be in the Stanza Form

QUATRAIN- a stanza of four lines, typically with alternate rhymes. Author’s Quatrain is left out. 
SITIGOTYO the structural form of Japanese verse. SITIGOTYO poems are the 4 line quatrains with 12 syllables each line. Each line is further divided into two parts with 7-5 syllables. The quatrains follow the rhyme pattern of ABBA or ABAB or AABB. Dr. Ikeda has set a record in the annals of English literature as contemporary creator of this genre of quatrain.

Who knows that it will shortly be toppled over?
The massive wooden pillar, now unshakable!
Don’t make light of us, white ants; so formidable;
Our strength, united exceeds that of a wrestler. [Dr. Kazuyosi Ikeda]

THE QUINTET or QUINTAIN is a five lines stanza verse form that is popular over the last four hundred years. Here is the Swinburne verse to which I allude with rhyme scheme a b a b b.
I the grain and the furrow
The plough cloven clod
And the ploughshare drawn thorough,
The germ and the sod
The deed and the doer, the seed and the sower, and the dust which is God.
The most often quoted poem in the Quintet format is that of Shelley- TO A SKYLARK
Hail to thee, blithe spirit [a] 6 syllables
Bird thou never wert, [b] 5 syllables
That from heaven, or near it [a] 7 syllables
Pourest thy full heart [b] 5 syllables
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. B] 12 syllables.
American poet Robert Frost has also composed in this format.

DAVIDIAN- is made up of 4 quatrains [4 line verses composed either in rhyme or in blank verse and each line is made up of TEN syllables. each quatrain is complemented with a single line of just 7 syllables to be repeated with each subsequent stanza. 
Here is a poem in this format by BERNARD JACKSON 
So fades dull winter, wakened hope renews [a]
For darkness that consumes our day is past [b]
And sunlight smiles on all that now ensues [ a] Though few birds wing and skies be overcast, [b]
Spring shall bring the black bird’s song. [c]
From youth till age, we mark the season’s turn; How welcome, then, through passing of the years, When woodland in renewal we discern;
And, when on boughs fresh budding there appears. Spring shall bring the blackbird’s song.

Our world becomes a miracle of green
Where God in His glory, shining through
Late moments loved and days we’ve not yet seen Nor shall there be restraint of Nature’s due; Spring shall bring the black bird’s song.

When Time is spent and life can be no more, May music be our recompense in death
Ere what we’ve cherished in those times before, Then, savoured in the soul from dying breath, Spring shall bring the blackbird’s song.

The next.genre of structural verse is RONDEAU or RONDEAUX. It is a thirteen-line poem extended by two repetitions of the opening four syllables of its first line to make a total of fifteen lines in all. The lines are divided into three separate stanzas, and Rondeaux are written throughout on two rhymes only. The repeated refrain should not rhyme with accompanying lines. The rhyme order is: aabba aab refrain aabba refrain so that taking as a ftrst line.

My two poems set in RONDEAU secured FIRST position in the contest category B held by MM - GRANT ME LIFE and THE DEADLY NYMPH. Here is THE DEADLY NYMPH- .
Him she enticed with all her wiles
Robbed my sole prize before my eyes.
In agony, my love I missed
Tormentor in his arms, he kissed.
Shed I tears, none to hear my cries.

Spinning web for men, time she whiles Lethal her charm, how she beguiles! “Leave us alone”, at me, she hissed. Him she enticed.


Though near yet apart, I by miles Neither he returned nor my smiles. Deprived of love, my joys she killed. Wonder I, why such life fate willed. With seductive ways, how she riles! Him she enticed.
The next fixed form I am illustrating is VILLANELLE. It is a pastoral or lyrical poem of 19 lines each pf 10 syllables and two rhymes. It consists of five triplets and a concluding quatrain. Its haunting quality is mainly accounted for by the ordered repetition of its two key lines. The rhyme scheme is ax b ay/ a b ax! a b ay/ a b ax! a b ay/ a b ax ay. Symbols ax and ay represent repetition of lines. Here too is my poem set in Villanelle format titled STILL NIGHT that secured 4th place in
the contest category B held by METVERSE MUSE

Oft I lie awake when the night is still Listening to the rhythm of my heart beat
Tread I lone path thorny in winter chill.

Disrupts my quiet an ill timed voice shrill Is it a stray dog’s bark or a goat’s bleat? Oft I lie awake when the night is still.

The lone birdie strays to my window sill Hopping nearer, peers sideways at my feet.
Tread I lone path thorny in winter chill.

Thinking of all dear ones the time did kill Hope against hope some day shall them I meet. Oft I lie awake when the night is still.

Past memories haunt but future hopes fill Thy sad memories etched never will delete.
Tread I lone path thorny in winter chill.

The moon showers silver in night vigil Moves round the sky on eternal beat. Oft I lie awake when the night is still.
Tread I lone Path thorny in winter chill.

SONNET - has held the poets spell bound right from Shakespeare to date. It is a poem of 14 lines having 10 syllables per line. Here is an exquisite sonnet composed by Dr. Fakhruddin set in the
rhyme scheme abab abab abab aa.

Sweet memories are fathomless delight My dried out heart blooms like a desert rose; I live, I die! Forgotten my dear plight,
My flesh and mind refined a lost repose.

My mind surveys the woodlands of desire
My heart tranquility in a fairyland;
Imagination leaps, as if on fire,
Sleep shines! I wake; I hear my love’s command.
This is no limitation, on my dreams
Which, like volcanic floods, so interact
That all cascades before them, nothing seems,
To question my delight which is a fact.

But dreams are facts called phantoms of the mind, The heart is self-deceived, and love is blind.

There are many more. The list is long. I have only illustrated the forms mostly in vogue in our times.

Nalini Sharma
486/MIG II / HUDCO/BHILAI [CG]
PHONE No. 0788/2326708
Mobile No. 9300621298