Pantoum

Quatrains that circle back on themselves: each stanza's middle lines return as the next stanza's opening pair.

Specifications & Metrics

type

Fixed poetic form

origin

Malay pantun, adapted in 19th-century France

originator

Malay oral poets; French adapters (Hugo, Baudelaire)

meter

Usually iambic tetrameter or free

Core Principles & Analysis

• Lines two and four of each stanza return as lines one and three of the next.
• The French adopted the Malay pantun as the pantoum in the nineteenth century.
• Ashbery's 'Pantoum' and Baudelaire's made it a form of obsession.

Sources

• Wikipedia: Pantoum