Rictameter - Form

The rictameter is a new poetry form invented in the early 1990s by Rich, Jason Wilkins' cousin. Its first appearence on the internet was in 2000, as far as I know. Jason more recently wrote

"Sometime in the early 90's my cousin Rich and I, after watching "Dead Poet's Society" repeatedly, decided that we too wanted to form a society of poets in our hometown of Stockbridge, GA. It was to be called "The Brotherhood of the Amarantos Mystery". Sadly, we two were it's only members. Rich began the idea of a poetry "duel" such as Wordsworth and Keats used to have. We took turns setting the challenge, such as, topic, form, or length."

"(...) one day it was Rich's turn to set the challenge and he came up with the 2A,4,6,8,10,8,6,4,2A form. I decided to call it Rictameter because it was his idea and it sounded better than Jasonometer. After that duel, I began using it frequently because it was challenging and I liked the results."

So there you have it. Rictameter is syllabic verse with the following line lengths prescribed

2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2

To make it more challenging, the second rule is that the first and last lines should be exactly the same. Here is an example, one of mine:

water;
a heron stands
by the blue of the lake
against the gold of a sunrise.
a carp mirrored in the wind-touched blueness
jumps into the sound of water.
grey flight into morning.
only the sound -
water

Because of the repeated words at the beginning and end the form suits certain types of subject.

• circular thoughts that bring the reader back to the beginning, or on in a spiral

• writing based on some sort of word play so that though the words are the same the meaning changes.

As with all syllabic verse (imho) the best examples make use of the provided line breaks rather than trying to work around them by using run on lines or extra punctuation mid line. Work arounds destroy the specific sound of increasing and then diminishing lines.

ba ba
black sheep have you
any wool? Yes sir, yes sir
three bags full. One for the master
one for the dame. One for the little boy
who lives down the lane. Thank you said
the master thank you said
the dame. Thank you
ba ba

just is not a satisfactory rictameter on so many levels!

Finally, if it is not yet sufficiently challenging for you, as the rictameter has a very distinctive shape some like to ensure that the reflected halves are symetrical.

So there you have it. Go play with Rictameter and post your efforts here for our edification.

Ps Rich and Jason were somewhat surprised to discover the popularity of rictameter - there are currently about 10,000 references to the form on Google