The Couplet

A couplet is two lines that rhyme, usually sharing a metre. It is the smallest rhyming unit in English verse and the building block of many larger forms: the sonnet ends on one, a villanelle is made of tercets but closes in four lines, and whole poems have been written as chains of couplets. Two kinds are worth knowing. The closed couplet, often called the heroic couplet when it is in iambic pentameter, contains a complete thought in its two lines and ends with a full stop. The open couplet runs its sense into the next pair, so the rhyme is heard but the sentence keeps going. Pope and Dryden wrote closed heroic couplets by the hundred; a tetrameter couplet, sometimes called Hudibrastic, is the comic version and is often used to undercut what it says. Distinguishing characteristics - Two lines that rhyme, most often aa. - Usually a shared metre: iambic pentameter for the heroic couplet, tetrameter for the comic one. - Closed couplets complete a thought; open couplets continue into the next pair. - The closing couplet of a longer poem often lands the whole thing, as a judgement or a shrug. A brief original example, written for this platform The kettle sings its single note and stops; the street below is quiet between the shops. The letter that I did not send still lies beneath the lamp and will not close its eyes. I fold the sheet, I write a plainer line, and put the pen down where the window's shine can find it, and I let the morning show how much of what I carry I can let go. How the example works Four closed couplets, each in iambic pentameter, each finishing its own thought before the next begins: stops and shops, lies and eyes, line and shine, show and go. The last couplet does what a closing couplet is for, turning the poem's small act of tidying into a statement. Change the first line's full stop to a comma and the pair becomes an open couplet, which is how a longer poem keeps its sentences moving. Exercise to try Write six closed couplets in iambic pentameter about one hour of a day, then rewrite three of them as open couplets by letting the sentences run on. Read both versions aloud and decide which the material prefers. Revising it Check the rhyme is doing work and not deciding your meaning; if a couplet only exists to reach its rhyme, cut the couplet. Check that the two lines stay in the same metre, because a rhyme between lines of different lengths is heard as an accident. In a run of closed couplets, vary where the pause falls, or the poem will march. And if you end a longer poem on a couplet, make sure it says something the poem has not already said.