Tetractys Workshop
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The tetractys, made famous by Pythagoras, was created into a modern-day poetic form by Ray Stebbings. A tetractys should express a complete thought, profound, witty or wise using 20 syllables. There is no limit to the number of verses. Rhyming is optional.
A tetractys' structure is:
- Line 1 has 1 syllable
- Line 2 has 2 syllables
- Line 3 has 3 syllables
- Line 4 has 4 syllables
- Line 5 has 10 syllables
Here is an example:
It's
Better
To love than
To hate and it's
Better still to agree with what she says.
A double tetractys' can be written in two ways. Option one's structure is:
- Line 1 has 1 syllable
- Line 2 has 2 syllables
- Line 3 has 3 syllables
- Line 4 has 4 syllables
- Line 5 has 10 syllables
- Line 6 has 10 syllables
- Line 7 has 4 syllables
- Line 8 has 3 syllables
- Line 9 has 2 syllables
- Line 10 has 1 syllable
Here is an example by Ray Stebbings:
Campanile
Life
depends
on a strand
as frail as fine
as a migrating spider's silken line.
As windblown, random, as subject to chance,
our short days drift -
on thin threads
helpless
dance.
Alternatively, you can write your double tetractys in the following way:
- Line 1 has 10 syllables
- Line 2 has 4 syllables
- Line 3 has 3 syllables
- Line 4 has 2 syllables
- Line 5 has 1 syllable
- Line 6 has 1 syllable
- Line 7 has 2 syllables
- Line 8 has 3 syllables
- Line 9 has 4 syllables
- Line 10 has 10 syllables
Here is an example by Ray Stebbings:
Epitaph for Everyman
He lived a long life filled with good intent
but often found
his meanings
sadly
bent.
With misconceptions hapless lives are fraught,
what others hear
so seldom
matches
thought.
You can also try your hand at a reversed tetractys and its structure is:
- Line 1 has 10 syllables
- Line 2 has 4 syllables
- Line 3 has 3 syllables
- Line 4 has 2 syllables
- Line 5 has 1 syllables
Here is an example:
How Ironic
Young, free and single, was quite hard to be,
If only we
Knew then what
We know
Now.
