Hi everyone! Today, we are trying out some creative and challenging ways to write couplets.

A couplet sounds simple enough: two lines that belong together.

But those two lines can do a surprising amount of work.

The word couplet comes from the French couplet, related to the Latin copula—a bond or link. In poetry, the two lines are joined by thought, rhythm, rhyme, or some combination of the three. Couplets have been part of English poetry since at least the thirteenth century, eventually becoming one of its most recognizable forms.

The traditional heroic couplet, written in iambic pentameter, became especially influential through Chaucer, Dryden, and Pope. A couplet may be closed, bringing a thought to a satisfying stop, or open, carrying the thought forward into the next line.

Think of Alexander Pope:

A little Learning is a dang’rous Thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring;

Two lines. One complete thought. Rhythm, rhyme, and a memorable conclusion.

But couplets don’t have to be tidy.

Ben Jonson famously said he considered couplets among the bravest sorts of verse, “especially when they are broken.”

And that gives us somewhere interesting to begin.

What can a couplet do?

Rhythm
The quick movement of two lines can create energy and momentum. William Blake’s opening to The Tyger moves almost like a chant:

           Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
           In the forests of the night;
           What immortal hand or eye,
           Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

Imagery
A couplet can also create an entire image in very little space. Robert Frost’s Nothing Gold Can Stay moves through the changing colours of nature in a series of rhyming couplets:

         Nature’s first green is gold,
         Her hardest hue to hold.

Emphasis
And sometimes two lines make an idea land with particular force. Shakespeare often uses couplets at important moments in his plays:

        Parting is such sweet sorrow
        That I shall say good night till it be morrow.

Couplets can also provide closure. Shakespeare’s sonnets famously end with a rhyming couplet that gathers the poem’s thought into a final statement.

So perhaps the interesting question is:

What happens when we disturb that bond?

Three ways to break the couple:
1. The Broken Couplet
Break the expectations of the traditional couplet.

Disrupt the rhyme. Break the rhythm. Interrupt the syntax. Let the first line resist the second. Or let the two lines almost—but not quite—belong together.

The couplet doesn’t have to resolve.   It can fracture.

2. The Split Couplet
Make the two lines unequal.

Traditionally, a split couplet uses an asymmetrical rhythm: a longer first line followed by a shorter second line—often iambic pentameter followed by iambic dimeter.

You don’t have to count feet to try it.

Simply think:   long → short
build → drop
breath → pause

Example:
    The weighty seas are rowled from the deeps
    In mighty heaps,”

Richard Steere’s “On a Sea-Storm Nigh the Coast.”

3. The Hinged Couplet
Think of the two lines as hinged together.

The first line opens in one direction.  The second line swings it somewhere else.

The hinge might be a word, an image, a repetition, a contradiction, or a sudden shift in thought. What happens in the second line makes us reconsider the first.

For example:
I thought the door was closing
then I heard the garden breathing

The second line turns the first. What seemed like an ending becomes an opening.

Your Challenge
This week, break the couple.    Write a poem incorporating one of these couplets.

Choose one:
Broken Couplet — disrupt the expected relationship between the two lines.

Split Couplet — experiment with a longer first line and a shorter second line.

Hinged Couplet — let the second line turn, transform, or change the meaning of the first.

Rhyme and meter are optional—unless you want to challenge yourself.  The only rule: Let the two lines change each other.  Break the couple. See what happens.

Further reading on Couplet:  MasterClass     Poetry Foundation       Poets Org.

New to dVerse? Here’s how to join in:

*Write a poem incorporating the elements of the couplet as described above.
*Enter a link directly to your poem and your name by clicking Mr. Linky below
and remember to check the little box to accept the use/privacy policy.
*You will find links to other poets and more will join so please do check
back later in order to read their poems.
*Read and comment on other poets’ work–we all come here to have our poems read.
*Please link back to dVerse from your site/blog.