Three Word Braid (Love Triangle)

[A. Baez]

 

Love says, “No one meshes souls as I;

Without me there are just loose strands—so love

Me first,” she presses, eyeing me and you.

 

I lay myself then on her lap of love,

Even as I’m stretching toward you; I

Soon find myself, perforce, abreast with you.

 

Next, you wrap around me, sidelining Love;

Yet in so clasping me, it happens you

Alight upon her right, just as had I.

 

Let nothing come between my Love and you—

Not even I; she knots us closer! Love

Shows up the symmetry of you and I,

 

And yet I’m drawn to her, and thus to you

Again, now, from a different view. Still, I

Cannot escape our common thread—this Love—

 

And neither can you; ever-freshly I

Await your sweet return—you, only you,

And yet you do not come except for Love.

 

She moves again: I know there is no I,

No you; there’s only she, full center—Love

Enjoining me to seek her joy in you.

 

[A. Baez]

Happy Valentine's Day!

[dr_con]

TY! and to you as well! What an enchanting, embracing, entrancing piece. It twined most gracefully. Wonderful

 

J

[Tinker]

AB,  Another treat for Valentine's Day.  This is beautiful.   To be in love with love is so often ignored and yet such a vital part of any loving. The personification gives love life, awesome.

~~Judi

[A. Baez]

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What an enchanting, embracing, entrancing piece. It twined most gracefully. Wonderful

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This is beautiful.   To be in love with love is so often ignored and yet such a vital part of any loving. The personification gives love life, awesome.

I'm glad you two seem to have gotten this. It was a pretty weird concept, trying to mirror, in the poem's end-words, the pattern of the order of strands from left to right at each successive stage of braiding until the strands return to their original order, while alluding to each of those stages in each stanza, while at the same time teasing out a metaphor of love as the third participant in a relationship.

Have you ever seen a word-braid nonce like this, Tinker?

It actually made me so dizzy putting this together that I started thinking of you, Juris! Where have you been, by the way? I miss you!

[Tinker]

AB, No I have not seen this before.  I did notice that the three strand braid, you, me and love was framed in tercets with end words repeated.   It might very well make a very interesting form to emulate in any trio.   This is how invented form gets its start, see the Badger Hexastich.  I added it to my forms documentation because I copied the frame and thought it fun to write and now I've seen it used over and over throughout the internet.   Someone used it as a forms challenge at another site, and several people wrote their own Badger Hexastich. Love it.   I'll have to give this one a try and add it to the reference section, may I use your poem as example?  

The Three Strand Braid is an invented form created by A Baez that braids any triad into tercets with repeated end words. 

The elements of the Three Strand Braid are:

1.  stanzaic, written with a minimum of 3 or more tercets
2.  metric, all lines iambic pentameter
3. rhymed, the rhyme is actually a repetition of the end words of the first stanza. The order of the words may be repeated in random order though when read alone should create a phrase.   ABC BCA CAB ABC etc or mix it up.
4. the theme should center on a triad, any 3 connected things.

[A. Baez]

That is so funny about the Badger Hexastich! He must feel great to have inadvertently started such a movement! I'll have to look it up now...

Sure, I'd be honored for you to use my poem as an example of the Three Strand Braid nonce (or Three Word Braid--it's fine if you draw from my title [which I had edited before to change ""Braid" to "Braiding" but which edit I just noticed didn't stick the first time!] and it would be more poem-specific). In reality, I have to imagine that someone, somewhere (probably more than one) has used this form before, but I just don't know who they are--or more importantly, what the poem/s is/are.

I'd say that a Three Word Braid form proper should be strictly 7 tercets with the scheme ABC BAC BCA CBA CAB ACB ABC. Why? Because this "rhyme" scheme reflects exactly the order in which three threads, left to right, appear at each successive stage of being braided (in a standard braid) until one round of plaiting brings the strands' positions back to their original one. Thus, the end tercet mirrors the first one. Try the pattern out with three different colored threads if you want to double-check my scheme! (I got it wrong in my first series of drafts! 😙) There are exactly 6 order variations possible for a sequence of 3; the above scheme allows for one round of each of these variations and then a return to the first sequence. Sure, folks could do any "twist" on this scheme that they wanted, but such would be more of a "Three Word Knot;" I think there are some special qualities and magic in the form as I've defined it, so I'd prefer to present this as the official format. I'd like to think that the mind at least subconsciously picks up on the fact that the "rhyme" pattern reflects that of a traditional three-strand braid. (I can't actually find a definition of "braid" that specifies exactly how the twining occurs, but I've never heard of a three-strand braid that doesn't follow the sequence of my form. And yes, I see the challenge that lies ahead for me--creating a poem that follows the pattern of a French braid! Lol.) I do like how you've defined all the other elements, although when you say "when read alone [the end words] should create a phrase," I think you should specify "in the first and last stanzas." However, I can also easily imagine a viable variation on this in which there is no actual phrase created, just three interrelated words.

[tonyv]

I, too, am excited by this steamy personification of love. "In love with love" is close to home for me, but here you take it to the next level, and I'm almost reluctant to go there; I don't want the love I love to be so willing to share me with another! She's making me jealous ...

Thank you for this Valentine,

Tony 🙂

PS -- loved "ever-freshly"

[A. Baez]

Lol! Tony, the point is, it's like the Holy Trinity--three in one. When it's all one, there's nothing to be jealous of.

Glad this did it for you. 😁

Cheers,

"Amanda" ("lovable, worthy of love"--my pen name for today.)

[tonyv]

1 minute ago, A. Baez said:

Lol! Tony, the point is, it's like the Holy Trinity--three in one. When it's all one, there's nothing to be jealous of.

Glad this did it for you. 😁

Cheers,

"Amanda" ("lovable, worthy of love"--my pen name for today.)

I thought it was a poem about a more secular love. 

[A. Baez]

We each bring something different to a poem, but my concept was a spiritualization of human love.