Couplets are a short form of poetry, and a very popular one! Couplets are two lines of poetry, typically written in the same meter or rhyme. Couplets are an easy poetry to write, and as such are very popular to both read and write! Some of the most notable couplet writers are Shakespeare and Dr Seuss, each having written many couplets. While they can be written on their own, couplets also come at the end of sonnets, and other long poems. Series of couplets are also common. There are a lot of different kinds of couplets, and today we’ll be talking about heroic, split, open, closed, Chinese, and Qasida!
Heroic couplets are the most common kind of couplet in English poetry, having been popularized by Geoffery Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales. Heroic couplets are two lines written in iambic pentameter, wherein each line consists of five sets of two syllables, where the first is unstressed and the second is stressed.
A split couplet is a couplet where each line has a different rhythm, commonly the first line will be in iambic pentameter and the second will be in iambic dimeter, which has two sets of two syllables instead of five.
Open and closed couplets are the opposite of eachother. An open couplet is a couplet where both lines are one continuous sentence, often also called a run on couplet. A closed couplet is a couplet where each line is its own sentence, sometimes called formal couplets,
A Chinese couplet is always its own poem, not a part of a longer poem, and it’s typically written in celebration of a holiday, such as New Years or for birthdays! They often include wishes for prosperous lives.
A Qasida is a kind of Arabic poem, they are a series of couplets all in one poem. They can be any amount of couplets, but traditionally fall anywhere between 60 lines (30 couplets) and 100 lines (50 couplets). It’s also common for every couplet to share the same rhyme, following throughout the whole poem.
Below is an example couplets, specifically a series of them! I encourage you to try and write your own after reading, as couplets are a great way to start writing poetry. It’s only two lines after all!
“Dulpex” by Jericho Brown
A poem is a gesture toward home.
It makes dark demands I call my own.
Memory makes demands darker than my own:
My last love drove a burgundy car.
My first love drove a burgundy car.
He was fast and awful, tall as my father.
Steadfast and awful, my tall father
Hit hard as a hailstorm. He’d leave marks.
Light rain hits easy but leaves its own mark
Like the sound of a mother weeping again.
Like the sound of my mother weeping again,
No sound beating ends where it began.
None of the beaten end up how we began.
A poem is a gesture toward home.