Orvillette Verse Form

The Orvillette is an invented verse form created by Virginia Noble. It’s written in four quatrains (four line verses), making it a poem of sixteen lines. The rhyme scheme is abab, acac, adad, aeae.

Written in iambic tetrameter, meaning eight syllable lines, it also has a rentrament, which is the repetition of part of one line as a line elsewhere in the poem. In this case, the first line of the first verse repeats as the first line in the rest of the verses. Just to make it more interesting, the first three syllables of the last line of the first verse are repeated at the beginning of the last line in the other three verses.

Maybe it would be a little easier with a schematic (I used z to stand for the repeated syllables):

xxxxxxxa
xxxxxxxb
xxxxxxxa
zzzxxxxb

repeat of line 1
xxxxxxxc
xxxxxxxa
zzzxxxxc

repeat of line 1
xxxxxxxd
xxxxxxxa
zzzxxxxd

repeat of line 1
xxxxxxxe
xxxxxxxa
zzzxxxxe

Or maybe not. :-D But hopefully you can follow along with my example.


First Line

The first line is the hardest one
when I’m writing a brand new verse,
often the words are left undone
I struggle and make it all worse

The first line is the hardest one
no matter how often I try
to change a word or make a pun –
I struggle, the words go awry.

The first line is the hardest one
whether I write verse or write prose.
Oft it ends before its begun –
I struggle, but just can’t compose.

The first line is the hardest one
when you’re writing to save your life.
Once written words can’t be undone –
I struggle, words cut like a knife.