The terzanelle, invented by Lewis Turco in 1965, is a poetic form that combines the villanelle’s refrain with the terza rima’s end-line patterning. Turco’s "Terzanelle", the original terzanelle poem titled for the name of the form, was first published in the summer edition of The Michigan Quarterly Review that same year. He has since written and published three more terzanelle poems, "Terzanelle in Thunderweather" (The Book of Forms: University Press of New England, 2000), "The Room" (Poetry Miscellany, 1978), and "Terzanelle of the Spider’s Web" (The Southern Review, 1990).
Over the years, Turco’s invention has become well known and popular. Hundreds of terzanelle poems may be found on the web by as many authors. Although Turco’s "Terzanelle in Thunderweather" is often quoted as an example of the poem’s structure, it is seldom—if ever—mentioned that Turco is in fact the inventor of this form.
Here are the rules by which a terzanelle may be written:
1) The terzanelle is comprised of at least two tercets and a closing quatrain.
2) The first and third lines of the opening tercet are refrained as the second and fourth lines of the closing quatrain.
3) The terzanelle body is comprised of tercets that each refrain the second line of the preceding tercet for its third line. The first line of each of these tercets is rhymed with its refrained line.
4) There must be a minimum of one tercet for the body, but there may be as many tercets in the body as you think you can get away with.
I’m taking a liberty here in defining the terzanelle body. While Turco created the terzanelle as a fixed form of 19 lines (four tercets in the body), it seems clear to me the terzanelle is stanzaic in nature. As such, I imagine the terzanelle may be expanded or contracted at will so long as the rhyme and refrain of the body are not compromised in the process.
5) The closing quatrain refrains the second line of the last tercet as its third line and rhymes its first line with that refrain.
6) Lines may be in any length or meter within reason.
7) Terzanelles may be written on any subject.
Again, there is a pleasant shorthand notation for the first five points above. For a 19 line terzanelle, this would be
A1B1A2,bC1B1,cD1C1,dE1D1,eF1E1,fA1F1A2, where like letters indicate the rhyme scheme, and uppercase letters followed by a superscript numeric notation indicate the refrains.
As with the villanelle, one of the primary challenges with the terzanelle is finding a way to change the meaning or context of each refrain. In one way the terzanelle is a little easier than the villanelle in that there is a fresh refrain to work with for each tercet. In another way the terzanelle is much more difficult than the villanelle because the refrains from the opening tercet need to be woven in with a refrain from the final tercet in the quatrain. This alone has proven to be the most challenging aspect of the terzanelle for me.
A note on rhyme: I often use alternative prosodic devices in place of rhyme. Such devices include consonance, assonance, and alliteration. I also often combine different prosodic devices. For instance, one set of lines might use end-line assonance while another set uses end-line consonance.
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