Fun with Forms 1: The Dylanesque Sestet

First, some definitions of the particular quatrains that I will be revisiting in this series (yes, series.) That quatrain in which the rhyme scheme is a-b-c-b is called "long measure" when written in tetrameter lines. When written in alternating tetrameter and trimeter lines (4-3-4-3), it's called "common measure".

Therefore, when using the scheme in pentameter, I like to call it "tall measure". I have been unable to find it’s formal name. (This one had its birth at Starbucks.) And when reversing the common measure to 3-4-3-4, it's called “uncommon measure” of course. Still, beyond the meter and all that measure for measure, the key to these quatrains is the rhyme scheme itself: a-b-c-b.

When the quatrain is combined with couplets, we have an interesting sestet that combines the schemes of alternating rhyme, alternating unrhymes (blank verse? free verse?), and rhyming couplets. I get pleasure from the variations available within that simple six-line form. There’s everything from free verse to blank verse to ballad rhyme to heroic couplets in one simple sestet.

I devised the sestet for my own use, although I am sure it’s a form that has been used by others in the past (I am not that much of a megalomaniac to believe that I was its inventor.) It’s a close relative to the Venus and Adonis stanza, but the unrhymed lines give it a myth of its own.

I dreamed it up while looking for a rhyme scheme that would do several things. First I wanted the freedom of alternating unrhymed lines that would hearken back to my free verse roots. I also wanted the catchy kind of refrain that I often hear in pop songs. Hence, the couplet at the end. And since I had been listening to “Blood on the Tracks” at the time, I called it the Dylanesque Sestet in Bob’s honor.

In forthcoming posts, I will lay out several forms utilizing this sestet in sundry ways for consideration. Please be aware that I like to have fun with the naming of these self-made nonce forms (no longer nonce to me.) Therefore, serious formalistas should be ready to groan in disapproval.