Ch'I Yen Shih

[Tinker]

Explore the Craft of Writing Poetry
Chinese Verse

Lu Shi (code verse) is a genre of Chinese forms that carry two or more parallels of content and phonetic tone. Its values match and balance and tends to be responsive not imaginative.

The Ch'I Yen Shih is the oldest of the Lu Shi verse forms. John Drury's poe-try-dic-tion-ar-y describes a verse form, Ancient Verse, which is probably  an evolution of the Ch'I Yen Shih with slight variation.

The elements of the Ch'I Yen Shih are:

1. stanzaic, written in no more than 3 quatrains, usually only 1 quatrain.
2. measured by 7 characters per line which in Chinese are mono-syllable words but could be words of more than one syllable in English.
3. most often written with a caesura after the 4th word in a line.
4. rhymed. Rhyme xaxa xbxb xcxc, x being unrhymed.
5. always written with parallels and balance.
   
   One Note Tones by Judi Van Gorder
   
   Words in low tones, one by one,
   lines of pen-scratch, black on white,
   thoughts set to sing, please the ear.
   Sight and sounds blend, born to write.
   
   Other Code Verse
   • Ssu Yen Shih
   • Wu Yen Shih
   • Chueh Chu