Pantun/Pantoum
In Vince Gotera’s analysis of the pantoum, he makes a great effort to include the origin of the form. It comes from Malay, and its postcolonial history is both fascinating and critical to understanding this form of poetry. In its original Malaysian form, “a pantun is a quatrain with an abab rhyme. Each line contains between 8 and 12 syllables.” (Salleh, pg 254) Another important component of this definition is that the prefatory couplet, also known as the pembayang, prepares the reader in image. These images usually depict scenes from common Malay life. The closing couplet is called the maksud, and these final lines clarify the meaning of the poem. For the people of Malay, the pantun is a popular form that encapsulates their civilization and traditions.
In contemporary Anglo-American verse we call it the pantoum, which is the french spelling of the word. A pantoum “is comprised of quatrains wherein the second and fourth lines of any stanza return as the first and third lines of the subsequent stanza.” (Gotera, pg 255) It has an abab bcbc cdcd rhyme scheme, and the first and third lines of the first stanza are repeated in reverse order in the last stanza. This style of writing allows the poem to come full circle, and gives writers the opportunity to make identical lines have completely different meanings.
I enjoyed reading Peter Meinke’s “Atomic Pantoum”, because even though it had no rhyme scheme, it displayed the repetitive pattern of the form. I also thought it stayed true to the Malay pantun, because the opening quatrain produces an image of an atomic bomb, and the final quatrain reveals a deeper meaning about human’s fascination for death and destruction by saying:
“Blind to the end
split up like nuclei
we sing to Jesus
in a chain reaction”
(Meinke 1983, pg 259)
The two main themes of this pantoum are nuclear weapons and humans desire for chaos and destruction. The form of the pantoum allows these two themes to dance with one another, by having them occur over and over again in alternating lines. The repetition of the lines from the first quatrain in the final quatrain of the pantoum helps readers experience the feeling of coming full circle, and realize that having a desire to cause so much destruction and pain is unethical.
Gotera, Vince. “The Pantoum’s Postcolonial Pedigree.” An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art. Eds. Annie Finch & Katherine Varnes. Ann Arbor: U. of Michigan Press, 2002.
