Why Not Try the Triolet?

Published June 30, 2026

By Deborah L. Brewer

Perhaps you’d like to give your mind a little workout—a sudoku for writers, if you will. Let me introduce the triolet, a delightful but somewhat tricky poetic form, in which the first line appears three times. Originating from the medieval French, the triolet’s brevity and repetition make it well-suited to both spiritual meditations and light humor.

It’s not unusual for writers of fictional stories to also write poems. Take, for example, this triolet by G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936), the English, Christian apologist who wrote the Father Brown mystery stories.

Triolet

I wish I were a jelly fish
That cannot fall downstairs:
Of all the things I wish to wish
I wish I were a jelly fish
That hasn’t any cares
And doesn’t even have to wish
‘I wish I were a jelly fish
That cannot fall downstairs.’

—G. K. Chesterton

From The Wild Knight (1900)

I am sorry for Chesterton. It takes a truly rotten day to prefer spinelessness to bones. But what a lovely, human way to salve the sting of his humiliation. The repeated lines gain depth as the poem progresses, the new lines adding to their meaning.

Sarcasm Anyone?

Let’s enjoy this little gem of feigned admiration from Dorothy Parker (1893-1967), an American author known for her sharp wit and insightful short stories.

Triolet

Her teeth were accidental stars,

With a talent for squad drill;

The Pleiades, Orion, Mars—

Her teeth were accidental stars,

Assured celestial corporal’s bars,

So straight they stood, and still.

Her teeth were accidental stars,

With a talent for squad drill.

—Dorothy Parker

From “Verses in the Night (After an Evening Spent in Reading the Big Boys),” this poem was the second poem in a three-part suite originally published in Dorothy Parker’s collection Sunset Gun (1928).

It was Parker who quipped, “Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.” In this poem, she follows the tradition of poets referencing, praising, and even roasting other poets and their work in verse. Her poem isn’t only about teeth. It’s a parody of the dense metaphoric imagery used by T. S. Elliot (1888-1965), American poet, essayist, and playwright. The first two lines of Parker’s triolet are a near quote from Elliot’s poem “Hysteria,” about a woman’s laughter.

Composing a Triolet

The essentials for a triolet are an unrhymed couplet, a handful of rhymes, and a good grasp of iambic meter.

Typically, iambic tetrameter is used—that’s four iambic feet per line. In simple terms, each line has eight syllables in four pairs, whose light and heavy stresses sound like:

(dah DUM) (dah DUM) (dah DUM) (dah DUM).

Pardon me a few paragraphs while I get technical. In the English language, syllable stress isn’t a binary light versus heavy. Like most things in life, it lies on a spectrum. Not only that, part of the expression of English is the modulation of the stresses—they change in relation to word order and emphasis. So yes, you can look in a dictionary to see how particular syllables in a word are stressed, but that stress will vary in practice. The trick with scanning iambic feet is to compare only the stresses of the two syllables within a single foot.

Consider this example:

(When I)    (feel bright)    (I like)       (to write.)

(dah DUM) (dah DUM) (dah DUM) (dah DUM)

Take a minute to appreciate this. Read the whole line out loud, then go back and scan the lines, which means to take note of the stresses in each foot.

Note the “I” in the first foot has less stress than “feel” in the second, while “bright” has even greater stress than “feel.” The four syllables (When I feel bright) seem to climb a staircase of sound. And the “I” in the first foot has heavy stress, while the “I” in the third foot has light stress. Same word, different situation.

You can learn all this and more about meter and versification in Timothy Steele’s excellent All the Fun’s in How You Say a Thing: An Explanation of Meter and Versification. I heartily recommend it, and though my explanation here is simplified, I hope it’s done him proud.

Recipe for a Proper Triolet

Ingredients:

Stanza of 8 lines of 8 syllables each

Iambic tetrameter 4(dah DUM)

Rhyme scheme ABaAabAB (capital letters represent repeated lines)

Directions:

1. Your first line (A)
2. Your second line (B)
3. A new line that rhymes with line 1 (a)
4. Repeat line 1 (A)
5. Another new line that rhymes with line 1 (a)
6. A new line that rhymes with line 2 (b)
7. Repeat line 1 (A)
8. Repeat line 2 (B)

Write the first two lines of eight, and you’ve only three to go.

As with anything, the triolet has exceptions, nuances, and variations. There are poets who use a looser version of the form. If you are writing the poem for fun—do you. If you plan on submitting it to a poetry magazine, you’d do better to stick with the guidelines above.

Freedom Within the Form

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), was an English novelist and poet. Among his works are Tess of the d’Urbervilles and The Return of the Native. His poem “Birds at Winter Nightfall,” which seems to depict him gazing longingly out his window, was published in the year of his death.

Birds at Winter Nightfall

Around the house the flakes fly faster,

And all the berries now are gone

From holly and cotoneaster

Around the house. The flakes fly!–faster

Shutting indoors that crumb-outcaster

We used to see upon the lawn

Around the house. The flakes fly faster,

And all the berries now are gone!

—Thomas Hardy

From his poetry collection, Winter Words in Various Moods and Metres (1928).

You’ll notice the first line and its rhyming lines have an extra syllable at the end with light stress—a graceful exit instead of a resounding thump. This is one of those variations to the iambic meter considered conventional, a feminine ending, it’s called. Due to the additional syllable in these lines, counting 9 instead of 8, the B/b rhyme lines are shorter than the A/a rhyme lines, which lends a little lightness to the poem. Note the poet varies the punctuation. The exclamation point at the end heightens the emotion and gives additional closure to the poem.

The Proof

It’s customary for the writer of a blog such as this to provide a poem of their own for their audience’s inspiration. It’s like the proof offered by celebrity chefs, taking a bite of their figgy pudding and doing a happy dance. I’ve done likewise.

If All I Do…

If all I do are easy things,

I place limits on my growth.

Can’t learn to soar on muses’ wings

If all I do are easy things,

Retreating each time effort stings,

I’ll end up sad or mad, or both.

If all I do are easy things,

I place limits on my growth.

—Debby Brewer

Whatever writing you are working on today, don’t hold yourself back.

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For further insight:

1. S. Elliot’s poem “Hysteria” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44211/hysteria
2.  Dorothy Parker’s “Verses in the Night,” from her collection Sunset Gun (1928). https://archive.org/details/sunsetgun0000doro/page/58/mode/1up

Deborah L. Brewer joined Pikes Peak Writers over a decade ago, seeking help with writing a mystery. When the novel was completed, she stayed for the camaraderie. Associate Editor for the PPW blog, Writing from the Peak, and an editor for several of PPW’s anthologies, Debby is also the paper artist at Pausetiles.com.