A Trio of Triolets

Three poems and a discussion of craft

At the end of 2024, I set out to compose a number of triolets while participating In

Verdurous Glooms

’ challenge to test one’s mettle against that form. I thoroughly enjoyed the exercise and ended up writing a dozen of them. These three were my favorites:

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The Swan Maiden’s Golden Comb

Sweep your golden comb, my love,
Through all my sleeping hair. 
With milk-white hand in feathered glove,
Sweep your golden comb. My love
Would summon swans above
Glass hills if you would dare
To sweep your golden comb, my love,
Through all my sleeping hair. 

---

Of Drowning Men

Of drowning men shipwrecked at sea
There is no end. I long to hear
Some glorious tale instead of these
Of drowning men shipwrecked at sea
Who sailed for islands heavenly. 
I'll stop my ears to get me clear
Of drowning men shipwrecked at sea. 
There is no end I long to hear. 

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These Dappled Lights

These dappled lights through tree limbs break
As on the ear when bells first ring.
There's none save God himself could make
These dappled lights. Through tree limbs, break-
Neck birds career. They preen and shake
The morning frost from steaming wing. 
These dappled lights through tree limbs break
As on the ear when bells first ring. 

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My Approach

If this is your first time encountering a triolet, you likely noticed the use of repetition in the form. Lines 1, 4, and 7 are (more or less) identical, as are Lines 2 and 8. It also has a strict rhyme scheme with Lines 3 & 5 rhyming with Line 1, whereas Line 6 rhymes with Line 2.

When I began attempting this form, rather than working my way through the poem linearly, I started with the first line and penciled it in to lines 4 and 7. Then, instead of jumping immediately to line 2, I went to work on lines 3 and 5, seeing if I could use those rhyming lines to tweak the first line’s meaning. From that point, the plan was to tackle lines 2 and 6 simultaneously, seeing what possibilities lay open to me based on the train of thought in line 5 and what two rhyming words could be employed to tie everything together.

All of that is a bit of a shaggy dog story because, of the above poems, only “Dappled Lights” was composed using this method. With that poem, I was also aggressive with my use of enjambment, particularly the decision to split the word “breakneck” between two lines, a potentially polarizing choice as

Nik Hoffmann

from

Across the Spheres

pointed out to me when I shared the poem with him. But, since formal poetry at all times runs the risk of feeling stiff, I thought a minor transgression like mid-word enjambment might be a simple way to maintain an element of playfulness. “Dappled Lights” was the third triolet I composed.

My fourth attempt at a triolet produced “Of Drowning Men.” That poem would have been impossible to compose using the above method because of the enjambment that makes the end of line 2 the beginning of the thought that runs through lines 3–5. It has been posited that the entire triolet hinges on the meaning of the repeated lines transforming somehow by the time you’ve reached the end of the poem. In “Dappled Lights,” I approached that meaning-shift by assuming a surface level reading of the “lights” when they appear in lines 1 and 4, whereas lines 5 and 6 would force a more poetic reading. In the final two lines, the “dappled lights” would then be a reference to the birds singing through the trees. In “Of Drowning Men,” I effected the meaning change using punctuation alone.

That was all well and good, but I feel like I unlocked something with my seventh triolet: “The Swan Maiden’s Golden Comb.”

How Common Meter Changed Everything

The triolet is an inherently musical form. The refrains are the chorus you’re prepared to sing along with. They’re the motifs that reemerge to bring resolution. Typically, each line of a triolet contains four iambic feet (eight syllables, with stresses on the even numbered syllables). With “The Swan Maiden’s Golden Comb,” I made another transgression of form. I wrote it in common meter: a four foot line followed by a three foot line.

I couldn’t tell you why this sounds more musical than two lines of four feet. Perhaps it’s a matter of varying the line length, or the implied rest at the end of the second line. Maybe it’s because four and three equals seven and that’s the number of completion. Who knows? (Probably someone in the comments) In any case, to my ear, the musicality was far more apparent in this poem than in any of my previous attempts.

Now, there is a problem with attempting to write a triolet in common meter: In a common meter poem, Line 4 is supposed to be three feet, but in a triolet, Lines 1 and 4 are identical—and we already wrote Line 1 as four feet!

Fret not. A simple use of punctuation remedies this situation. I broke line 4 after the third foot, allowing the last foot to feel like they were part of Line 5 (which I wrote as three feet instead of the four a typical common meter poem would produce). I don’t know how to explain this without it feeling like a math equation, but I think the illusion of common meter allows one to glide through the poem.

This foray into common meter gave me another devious idea for “subverting” the form. What if the third foot in Line 1 rhymed with the last word in Line 2? The Triolet rhyme scheme of ABaAabAB would formally survive, but you’d also imply a secondary rhyme scheme of ABababAB. (If those two sequences hurt your brain to look at, the implied sequence alternates the A rhyme and B rhyme equally, whereas the triolet favors the A rhyme—three consecutive occurrences at the ends of lines 3–5).

While none of the above poems utilized this trick, I did manage to write one triolet that implemented the implied-common-meter rhyme sequence:

Upon my downy thigh you'll rest,
Far from the witch's eye.
Forget her trial, your sleep is blessed
Upon my downy thigh. You'll rest 
As magic o'erflows my breast;
I will not let you die. 
Upon my downy thigh you'll rest,
Far from the witch's eye.

It also happens to be based off the same fairy tale as “The Swan Maiden’s Golden Comb.” My excitement over triolets nearly inspired a re-telling of the Swan Maiden fairy tale entirely through stanzas of triolets, but I think that might be asking too much of the form.

Anyway,

The End.