Tetractys - a poetry form invented in 1999 by one of the Harlow Poets

If you liked playing with Rictameter and the Fib then you may well like Tetractys too.

The form is based on the mathematical sequence the tetractys and was (as far as I can tell) first suggested in 1999 by Ray Stebbing, a UK lecturer and one of the Harlow poets.

The form is syllabic and consists of five lines with 1, 2, 3, 4, and 10 syllables. In Ray Stebbing's examples lines five and 10 rhyme. He centres the poems, so emphasising the form

Of the form he says this,

"Searching one day in the Oxford English Dictionary, I came across an unfamiliar word - 'tetractys'. It seems that Euclid, the mathematician of classical times, considered the number series 1,2,3,4 to have mystical significance because its sum is 10, so he dignified it with a name of its own - Tetractys. This gave me an idea for a new form of syllabic verse consisting of five lines, the first of which contains a single syllable, the second two, the third three, the fourth four and the last ten syllables. What better name could I give it than 'Tetractys'?"

He offers a number of examples, and also proposes the double tetractys. Two of his examples are shown below.

ON SCAFELL PIKE

Stone
upon
huge stone piled -
a devil's cairn

Antlike I clamber towards a grey sky.

SNOWFIELD

Look!
Behind
your footprints
fading fast, show
where you have been. Before you virgin snow

White crystals, wind-driven, fly - conceal your past
So, tread blithely!
Thus shriven
surely
blest!

Rene Jonesfrom somewhere in the orbit of my own sphere 558 posts	on Jan. 20 2008 I will definitely have to give this a try soon... ----- could someone turn the world back over, I'm getting dizzy! I am orbiting, I don't know where, but I am orbiting something!
Jones, Paganinifrom Hyde in Cheshire 385 posts	on Jan. 20 2008 hat raincoat rubber boots my sandwich lunch: monday morning and late for work again Edited by Pags, IFPN on May 17 2008
Ryan Wilbur	on Jan. 30 2008 Pags: Did you mean L4 and L5 rhyme? Or am I reading this wrong? Nature to Man "Braid and twine the river to brier crown. Criss cross and patch myrrh to my ragged gown Zig zag and loop blackberries to my bones weave to weave, then please leave my dress alone" Ryan B. Wilbur
Jones, Paganinifrom Hyde in Cheshire 385 posts	on Jan. 30 2008 Ryan, as he proposes it, these may rhyme as you have done ie syllables 10 and 20, or not. He also suggests that the double can have 4 forms - a diamond (as you have done) a bow (yours with the verses reversed), two triangles sitting on their base or two triangles sitting on thei points. It's so new that anything goes really.