Rondels for our recitals

Everyone knows the sonnet and the quatrain, the most common fixed forms of poems, although many cannot define them. Few people today, however, know the rondel, a model developed in France in the 13th century, used mainly as song lyrics. It can also be understood as a shorter form of the rondeau. Thus, in terms of brevity, it is situated between the quatrain, which is very short, although not as short as the haiku, and the sonnet, which in today's fast-paced world is a long poem, as incredible as it may seem. If the sonnet has the golden key, the synthesis constructed in the final tercet, the rondel, like the rondeau, ends with the repetition of the initial verse, or of the two initial verses, embodying the idea of return, or circular discourse. The model adopted in this book is the repetition of only the first verse at the end of the poem, after the usual twelve lines. The structure is of eight metrical syllables per line (one-two-three-FOUR-one-two-three-FOUR), according to the traditional scheme, which is arranged in three stanzas, with rhymes abba, abab and abba-a. Here, the choice was for the Irish rhyme, which makes only the sound of the vowels coincide, giving more possibilities for the development of the proposed themes.