O shiny bird with feathers black,
Raucous cry, and soaring swoop —
How blessed with grace your poised attack
On prey beneath your graceful loop.
Your raucous cry and soaring swoop
Are dreaded sound and fearsome sight
For prey beneath your graceful loop
In bright of day or even’s light.
Are dreaded sound and fearsome sight
E’er thoughts of which your mind concurs
In bright of day or even’s light
When all around you nature stirs?
I ponder if your mind concurs
How blessed with grace your poised attack
When all around you nature stirs.
O shiny bird with feathers black !
©Barbra Lambert
How to Write Pantoum Poetry
Pantoum poetry is a fun and challenging style of verse. Its subject matter can be serious, complex, humorous, commemorative, fanciful, or comprised of whatever its writer’s creativity chooses to theme. Despite the complex appearance of the pantoum's format, it is actually very simple. It consists of 16 lines, or more, written in 4-line stanzas with an alternating rhyme pattern of abab. Below are two of the pantoum’s most distinct characteristics.
- The 2nd and 4th lines of each stanza, or quatrain, are repeated in the 1st and 3rd lines of each successive stanza.
- Upon its completion, the pantoum has repeated every line.
If the writer feels that a change in the phraseology of the repeated lines from each stanza will have a better effect on the poem, he or she can choose to reword the line -- but leave the rhyming word at the phrase’s end.
Upon its completion, the line pattern for a 16-line pantoum is as follows:
------1 2 3 4 - Lines in first stanza
2 5 4 6 - Lines in second stanza
5 7 6 8 - Lines in third stanza
7 3 8 1 - Lines in fourth stanza
