These poems are patterned on Chinese jueju, a verse form developed by the scholar-poets of the Tang dynasty (607 – 917 CE). Composing jueju sharpens my observation of the landscape and reflection on my place in that natural world.
The poems are short and superficially simple, but there is a deeper sophistication. They are rooted in a thousand years of treasured Chinese poetry, following complex rules of structure, sound, and rhythm. Those constraints are quite challenging. To complete a poem in this style is to solve an intricate word-puzzle.
I follow the guidelines for English jueju pioneered by Professor Jonathan Stalling of the University of Oklahoma. You will immediately notice that jueju are quatrains of one-syllable words, with uniform lines of five or seven words. I usually write with seven words per line.
Juejue can be “regulated” or “unregulated.” I use the stricter rules of the “regulated” form.
The first couplet of each poem in the “regulated” form must show parallelism in image and grammar between corresponding words in lines one and two. The second couplet is less constrained.
Typically, the first line observes a natural scene, the second line looks at that scene more closely, the third line turns to a human element (perhaps an emotion), and the final line integrates the human with the natural.
The sound of each word is critical. Some words have short vowels and hard endings (“stick”) while others have longer vowels and softer endings (“tree”). Poems must follow complex patterns for the sound in each space in the poem. This mirrors the expectations in classical Chinese for particular patterns of “ping” (level) tones and “ze” (deflected) tones.
Professor Stalling lectures engagingly on his concept of English jueju. And he maintains a wonderful interactive website www.juejupath.com. Another site links to more written materials and videos: About English Jueju.
Like its Chinese prototype, English jujue invites oral recitation. In phrasing, a seven-character jueju has a particular rhythm. In each line, the first two words are a phrase, the second two words are a phrase, and after a longer pause the last three words are a final phrase. I format my poems to encourage this phrasing.
Professor Stalling emphasizes an aaba rhyme scheme, but I also use an abcb rhyme scheme. This, too, is traditional. See the chart on page 10 of this PDF ; and see Zong-qi Cai, How to Read Chinese Poetry (New York: Columbia University Press 2008) pp. 170-171.
Now I invite you to explore the poems, organized by season and theme.