Quintilla Notes

A 16th-century Spanish Quatrain form the Quintilla is a quintet of eight-syllable or iambic tetrameter lines. The presentation of the rhyme scheme can vary but only two consecutive lines may have the same rhyme. For example

aabba

abbaa

abaab

Weight Watching Poets by Jez Farmer

Calories in everythin’
All add up to that fat or thin
You cannot eat that, you must eat this
A poet can rhyme that with a kiss
Are words therefore also a sin?

I wonder if I should cut
The endless cups of coffee but
I’d only drink my tea instead
I need caffeine to clear my head
To tighten up my lines somewhat.

A poet diets to shed those
Old clich’d words that oft disclose
Too much. Not enough is worse
It is a curse of written verse
Perhaps I should then write in prose