The Tetractys, form definition

The Tetractys - a new short form of verse. You pronounce it to rhyme with malpractise. 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 suggested 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. If centred, the form gives a pleasing triangular shape: Fat Man Walking Bulk teeters gracefully on tiny feet - as any ballerina, light and neat Turn the tetractys on its head and you get the reverse tetractys: As windblown, random, as subject to chance, our short days drift - on thin threads helpless dance. Although these particular examples rhyme and alliterate, tetractyses do not have to do so. The tetractys could be Britain's answer to the haiku. Its challenge is to express a complete thought, profound or comic, witty or wise, within the narrow compass of twenty syllables. Or forty. Top one tetractys with another, and we get... Lifelines Life depends on a strand as frail as fine as a migrating spider's silken line. As windblown, random, as subject to chance, our short days drift - on thin threads helpless dance. ... a double tetractys. There are another three possible shapes for a centred double tetractys. Of course, you don't need to centre the tetractys; it can also be left- or right- justified. These shapes, too can be inverted and combined, which opens up further possibilities... I leave you to work them out for yourself. If you're really ambitious you could write a tetractys series. The perfect tetractys would satisfy all the following criteria: 1. the correct syllable count, 2. meaningful words (e.g. not the, a , an) in the single-syllable line, 3. line breaks that make sense, ie. conform to normal syntax, not separating words that quite obviously form a unit of meaning. (If 2 and 3 did not apply, writing a tetractys would merely involve taking a twenty-syllable line and chopping it arbitrarily into the requisite lengths - it doesn't take a poet to do that!) In addition to these the normal criteria for good poetry apply: 4. effective use of imagery, 5. effective choice of words, 6. appeal to the ear, certainly by rhythm, possibly by use of other sound effects (rhyme, alliteration etc), 7. and lastly, and most importantly, appeal to the intellect and the emotions; moving the reader to laughter, tears, deep thought, anger...I got this information from the web doing a yahoo search for tetractys. These are not my words. Written March 21st, 2002 © on Mar 21 2002 02:42 PM PST, Heinz Scheuenstuhl    0 • 10