Shrinking Verse
An interesting form indeed:
this one’s the Shrinking Verse.
The more you let your ink pen bleed,
the more, stanzas get terse.
The opposite, I must concede,
for sure, would be much worse.
I can’t draw forth the words I need,
an older poet’s curse.
From eight to six to four to two,
so goes the stanza’s count.
Like run-off rain will often do,
a trickle from a fount,
and when you’ve pared to pairs, you’re through:
time for the big dismount.
The rhyming pattern does repeat;
’Tis just an ‘a’ and ‘b’.
The ‘a’ line always has four feet;
The ‘b’ line, only three.
In truth, it’s not that much to ask,
so I will not shrink from the task.
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The Shrinking Verse has a decreasing number of lines per stanza, typically 8/6/4/2, but you could start at 12 or 10 as well.
The rhyme pattern, 8a:6b, repeats as many times as is needed for the stanza.
The exception is that the final couplet is 8a:8a
Copyright © Jeff Kyser | Year Posted 2023
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