Dawn Song

Dawn song / sweet trills / thin flute roused Splayed light / warm vibe / worn slats doused Dream haunts / harsh cough / plumb tears smart Heart touched / mixed thoughts / frail past frouse _____________________________________________________________ Jueju is a curtailed verse of Chinese origin that grew popular amongst Chinese poets during the Tang Dynasty. Some of the formal rules of the regulated verse forms were applied in the case of the jueju curtailed verse, these rules as applied to the jueju include regular line length (either 5 or 7 monosyllables per line in each quatrain), the use of a single rhyme in even-numbered verses (lines), strict patterning of tonal alternations (see the updated definition of Jueju here at PS), use of a major caesura before the last three syllables, optional parallelism and grammaticality of each line as a sentence. Each couplet generally forms a distinct unit, and the third line generally introduces some turn of thought or direction within the poem. The final line ponders the meaning and draws the parts together. The English form was first taught by Dr Jonathan Stalling at UC Berkeley in 1997 who introduced the rhyme scheme aaba (mimicking the Rubaiyat), and a dictionary of monosyllable words to be used in the phrases. RECOMMENDED READING 1. poems.com/features/what-sparks-poetry/jonathan-stalling-on-spring-snow/ 2. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jueju