All PostsAfter I posted somewhere about rhyme in comics, Matt Madden sent me his version of how to construct a pantoum in comics.
A traditional pantoum is made of quatrains with a rhyme scheme of abab. In the second quatrain the first line is the same as the second line of the previous quatrain, and the third line is the same as the fourth line of the previous quatrain. For the last quatrain its second line repeats the third of the first quatrain and its last line is identical to the first line of the first quatrain. Briefly:
abcd (quatrain 1)
bedf (quatrain 2)
egfh (quatrain 3)
(as many quatrains as desired)
gcha (last quatrain)
Matt describes his comic form:
I treat each tier like a line such that each page has four tiers. The second page has the second and fourth tier from page one in the first and second position and then the third page repeats that repetition/shift. The story I’m doing is four pages where–according to one rule I read–the second and fourth tiers [of the last page] are the first and third from the first page but in reverse order (open and close with the same tier). For this first attempt I think I’m going to keep the repeated tiers almost exactly the same but the beauty of the pantoum is that you can make minor changes in the repeated lines. I think this is a particularly promising structure for comics and I would love to see more people do them. They have the additional advantage that they are much easier than sestinas.
Anyone want to take up the challenge?
There is plenty of room for variation here based on how one translates from a line of poetry into a comics equivalent. It is a rather strict form that may not lend itself to straightforward narrative, and instead could be a branching off point for a more abstract “poetic” style of comics.