Chinese Poem Types

Jintishi, or regulated verse, is a group of Chinese poem forms that rely heavily on tonality and rhyme, traditionally written in couplets. This particular form is so entrenched in tonality that there is no true English equivalent, since the English language has a limited relationship with tone compared to Chinese.

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Jueju is a Chinese poem form consisting of a quatrain with exactly 20 or 28 Chinese characters in total. The form is often likened to a ‘shortened sonnet’ but this seems to mostly refer to a specific adaptation of the form proposed by Robin Skelton in The Shapes of Our Singing.

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