Prompted by Poet's Place Cafe

Form of the Week The Lai

Telling a Lai

It is hard to tell
a short story well
in nine
lines meant to propel
a tale and compel
a whine,
hear a ringing bell,
or cause one to yell
"How fine!"
                   ~jvg

Notes ▼

The Lai is a short story in verse. In its strictest form it is a verse form with a rhymed syllabic pattern in three tercets. The elements of the Lai as verse form are:
         1. a narrative, tells a story.
         2. usually a nonet, 9 lines made up of 3 tercets. It can be a hexastich made up of 2 tercets.(When written in 9 lines is can also be called a Bergerette or a Viralai stanza.)
         3. rhymed, rhyme scheme aab aab aab.
         4. syllabic, syllables per line are 5-5-2 5-5-2 5-5-2
Tradition states that the short line must not be indented; it must be left dressed to the poem, a technique known as "arbre fourchu", (forked tree), meant to suggest the appearance of a tree.