Curtailed Verse

Curtailed Verse is a traditional poetic style, believed to originate in the Shogunate Era. A Curtailed Verse poem is a difficult composition, being made up of two rhyming quatrains (four lines, of which the second and fourth rhyme), each line containing the same number of syllables: the highest form is pentasyllabic with five syllables in a line, while a lesser form allows seven syllables in a line (colloquially called ‘Childrens’ Curtailed Verse’, though it remains respected as a difficult form).

Though not a requirement of the form, Curtailed Verses tend to follow the principle ‘See the Great within the Small’, where the greatest expression of skill is to use the meagre twenty syllables to express deep and expansive concepts: descriptions of landscape vistas, philosophy, theology, and depths of emotion.

Unlike many short styles (such as Blossom Verse), Curtailed Verses are rarely composed spontaneously, and tend to be recited with a musical voice, halfway between recitation and song.