Explore the Craft of Writing Light Verse
The Rubliw is an invented form created by American poet Richard Wilbur then named and defined by Lewis Turco, author of The Book of Forms among other works. A short metric poem was sent by Wilbur to Turco containing a challenge to name the verse form framing the poem. Turco responded in kind and named the form by reversing the spelling of Wilbur's name. He also wrote humorous, didactic messages in the same form to fellow poets Dana Gioia and Sam Gwynn. The Rubliw as created would fall under the category of Light Verse.
The elements of the Rubliw are:
a poem in 9 lines.
metric, iambic pattern, L1 monometer, L2 dimeter, L3 trimeter, L4 tetrameter, L5 pentameter, L6 tetrameter, L7 trimeter, L8 dimeter and L9 monometer.
mono-rhymed.
I found the following in an Essay by Lewis Turco:
Dear Lew
All hail to you,
Old formalist, who through
Your Book of Forms inform the new
If you can name this bloody form, please do,
before it disappears from view,
For you're the one man who
Might manage to.
Adieu.
---Richard Wilbur
Rubliw For Richard Wilbur
Dear Dick,
It's quite a trick
To name the form poetic
You sent Sam Gwynn who, in the nick
Of time, included it in his panegyric
Celebrating my arthritic
Remove from the academic,
But rubliw's a quick
Kick.
---Lewis Turco
RUBLIW FOR DANA GIOIA
Dear Dan-
a, in the main,
A rubliw is a skein
Of monorhymes making a chain
To this point that's formally a cinquain,
But then the lines, like a train
Losing cars, refrain
And start to wane
Again.
---Lewis Turco
And that's how verse forms are born!