The Terzanelle Edda

By John Beach

This collection of 38 terzanelle poems in based in Norse Mythology and attempts to restructure ideas suggested to the author while reading previous Eddas and discussion about them. The author freely admits that using one poetic structure to help him understand and reinterpret the poetic works and songs of more-knowledgeable poets and skalds may be pretentious folly, blasphemy, and its undertaking nigh unto madness. And yet, that is what he has done here in his Edda. As such, the poems are rooted in a personal journey into northern poetry, folklore, and mythology. As such, his interpretations may be (and probably are) wrong and may frantically differ from those of the reader.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Beach
• Release date: Apr 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215908938

John Beach

John describes himself now as “the evolutionary result of Paperboy to Grocery Store Worker to Professional College Student to Magazine Editor to Computer Night Operator to Jr. Database Programmer to System Administrator to Computer Consultant to College Professor to Dean of Information Technology to Retired Old Guy Who's Really Not Old Enough To Be Retired.” He’s always been around writing and has used it daily in his professional life. He's used it in his leisure time, too, often when he plotted out D&D adventures that he and his players communally craft together around the dining room table and on Zoom. John’s always loved stories, always had them forming, churning, and reshaping in his brain. It wasn’t until he began closing in on an early retirement (for health reasons) that he began to get those stories out of his head and into text documents and then released into the world through ePublishing.You can visit with John on Facebook. He’d love to hear from you regarding his written work (and your hobbies), and he would greatly appreciate it if you could write reviews for his books. Ask him for free coupons if you need them. He only puts prices on his most recent books so that people will take them more seriously. The money’s not important: his stories and poems just want to be read.

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Introduction

The Eddas (Poetic and Prose) are repositories of Northern culture, mythology, and heroic lore. As such, they are immeasurably valuable.

The terzanelle is a poetic form that combines elements from the terza rima and the villanelle. Terza is Italian for one third (of three equal parts), while rima means rhyme. Each stanza of a terza-rima poem contains three lines—often ten syllables each—and the poetic structure uses an end-rhyming pattern: ABA, BCB, CDC, and so on. A terza rima consists of any number of these interlocking tercets, but it usually concludes with a couplet (or a single line) rhyming with the second line of the last tercet. The subject matter can be about anything the author wishes, but anecdotes or descriptive portraits have been popular choices. The villanelle began life as a loose, ballad-like song in France. As it matured, the villanelle gained more formal structure: five tercets and a concluding quatrain. It uses the end-line rhyming structure of A1bA2, abA1, abA2, abA1, abA2, abA1A2. The A1 and A2 lines appear four times each, end-rhyme with each other and with four other a lines. In between these are five rhyming b lines, which end-rhyme only with themselves. Due to the regular repetition of lines, subject matter within a villanelle tends to showcase the author’s obsessions. Finally, the terzanelle combines the interlocking transitional mechanism of the terza rima with the obsessive (yet not-quite-as-obsessive) nature of the villanelle. It features five tercets and one concluding quatrain: 19 ten-syllable lines (ideally using iambic pentameter) and only four of the poem’s lines do not repeat. However, since no single line is echoed more than once, the poet of a terzanelle has some increased flexibility over using the villanelle. A terzanelle often uses the end-line rhyming structure of A1BA2, bCB, cDC, dED, eFE, and fA1FA2.

The terzanelle is