Gavin Bennett's Blog: Trimeric: Poetic Form

Here’s one final poetic form before the November PAD Chapbook Challenge: Trimeric! Check back in December for more poetic forms.

Trimeric Poems

I’ve really been having fun trying out new (to me) poetic forms recently, but I think the trimeric may be one of my faves. Invented by Charles A. Stone, the rules are pretty simple:

Trimeric has 4 stanzas
The first stanza has 4 lines
The other three stanzas have 3 lines each
The first line of each stanza is a refrain of the corresponding line in the first stanza (so 2nd stanza starts with the second line, third stanza starts with the third line, etc.)

Note: No other rules on line length, meter, or rhyme.

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Here’s my attempt at a Trimeric:

About Superheroes, by Robert Lee Brewer

The thing about being a superhero is
you never get to be with the person you love
for more than a couple story lines. It’s almost
like being a superhero is a cruel curse.

You never get to be with the person you love,
because they’re being kidnapped or killed or you find
out they’re the bad guy you’ve been slugging it out with

for more than a couple story lines. It’s almost
as if your personal life is a magnet for
drama, though that’s what got you here in the first place–

like being a superhero is a cruel curse,
but you continue to show up even when no
one knows you’re saving them, because you know you can.

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Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Content Editor of the Writer’s Digest Writing Community and author of Solving the World’s Problems (Press 53). Follow him on Twitter @RobertLeeBrewer.

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