To understand this monster, you must reach deep within the belly of the beast to see that Pantoum has interlacing quatrains, which are four lines of poetry in an ABAB, BCBC pattern, where B is a set of refrains! That's right folks, B comes Back Around!
The second line in the first quatrain is the first line in the second quatrain, and the fourth line in the first quatrain is the third line in the second quatrain! And they rhyme!
This goes on for as long as the competitors have wind in their gullets as Pantoums have no end in sight! But when you are near your limit, Pantoum will give up!
And in the final leg of the battle with Pantoum, the first and third lines of the first quatrain rear their ugly spines again and the entire last quatrain is pre-written by previous quatrains! We begin with the second line in the previous quatrain, then move to the THIRD line of the Original quatrain, and then back down to the quatrain directly before the last quatrain to retrieve the fourth line! Finally, the beginning line of the poem, line numero uno, is the last line of the entire thing!
So in other words:
- I am a cat
you are a dog
I rhyme with cat
this rhymes with dog
you are a dog
this is a new line
this rhymes with dog
I am supposed to rhyme
this is a new line
and this could be the middle
I am supposed to rhyme
or it could be the end, middle?
and this could be the middle
I rhyme with cat
or it could be the end, middle?
I am a cat
But you can put as many quatrains [four lines of poetry] together as you want, and they do not have to end in the same word, I just did that for ease of example.
Check out the link. It explains it better than this XD
Good luck!
