Roundabout

A roundabout is a circular land in a road around which vehicles have to take a round,  as shown in the picture.  If you have not seen a  roundabout like this in your lifetime and not even videos,  then there is a greater chance that you are an extra terrestial from another galaxy.  Roundabouts also refer to merry-go-rounds in playgrounds in which children can spin. 

Same goes to the roundabout poems.  Their rhyme scheme is inspired from the roundabouts we see in our daily life.  Interested to know?

Roundabout consists of 4 stanzas of 5 lines each.  It follows the rhyme scheme abccb/bcddc/cdaad/dabba.   But please wait let's first dive into the basics of poetry to make things clearer.

What is a foot in poetry? 

Foot is a unit of measurement. It refers to the arrangement of  stressed and unstressed syllables.  For example

Iamb is kind of foot that is a combination of unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.  So it will look like this : daDUM. Eg: sunset. Here 'sun' is unstressed syllable and 'set' is stressed syllable. 

 Trochee is a combination of stressed stllable followed by unstressed syllable . For example,  the word 'poet'.

Anapest is another combination consisting of two unstressed words followed by a stressed word.  For example,  the word 'understand'.  

These are a few combinations of foot explaining all of them here would make this article voluminous  and hence I am stopping here.  So I hope now you have a clear picture of what an iamb and foot are.  Our roundabout poems consist of iambs ie.,  an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable throughout and also the 5  lines in each stanza consist of 4 feet,  3 feet , 2 feet,  2 feet,  3 feet and 4 feet respectively. 

Let me explain with an example,  

Crash

by David Edwards

Around around the carousel(a) [ 4 iambs]

 across the circles face(b) [ 3 iambs] 

we cry we shout (c) [ 2 iambs]

we crash about (c)  [ 2 iambs]

across the circles face (b) [ 3 iambs ]

and ever always breakneck pace (b) [ 4 iambs]

by this unending route ( c)  [ 3 iambs]

and twists and turns ( d) [ 2 iambs]

and breaks and burns (d) [ 2 iambs]

by this unending route (c) [ 3 iambs]

of ever always in and out (c)  [4 iambs]

the yearling quickly learns (d) [3 iambs]

to run and yell (a) [2 iambs]

at ocean’s swell (a) [2 iambs]

the yearling quickly learns (d) [3 iambs]

to run and leap and then he earns (d)  [4 iambs]

but he will never tell (a) [3 iambs]

there’s not a chase (c)[2 iambs]  

that wins the race (c) [2 iambs] 

but he will never tell. ( a) [ 3 iambs ]

Here the bold syllables indicate the ones that are stressed. The rhyme scheme is enclosed in (  ) and the foot in [ ].

Roundabout forms were invented by Sarah Diane Doyle and her students . One of them wrote the above example . They are an example to the fact that we all could come up with our own forms of poetry.

So now that you have read this buckle up to venture in your own Roundabout. 

Note: None of the poems we present belong to us. We present an organized record and analysis of them. All copyrights are reserved to the original author and we are not using plagiarized work. The originality of the writes is verified to the fullest extent we can.

- Radhuga , member of team PoeTreeFoRest.