A Paint Chip Quintilla or Two

This week I decided to move on to the Q section of the poetry dictionary. We will certainly return to the P section for some of the other wonderful options there before the year is through. But for now, I wanted to give us a short and sweet poetry form to write.

Today we’ll be writing one or more quintillas. John Drury defines quintilla as follows:

QUINTILLA (quin-teé-yuh) Spanish five-line stanza containing eight syllables per line and rhyming ababa, abbab, abaab, aabab, or aabba. Each stanza must have two rhymes (a and b) and the last two lines may not be a couplet. Originally the quintilla was called a redondilla.

the poetry dictionary, pg 235

The Challenge

Your challenge is to write at least one stanza in the quintilla form. You can certainly write more if you like, but one well-crafted quintilla is all I’m asking.

I was inspired by the requirement of five lines to only give you five paint chip words and phrases to work with.

Those words and phrases are robin’s egg, jade, The Scarlet Letter, slow, and goldfish. I would like you to use at least two of these in your quintilla. If you can use them as your rhyme words, all the better. But you could also pick one to be your title but not use it in the actual poem. The possibilities aren’t endless, but there are more than a few.

My Poem

I have decided to write a single stanza this week. Hopefully I can make it a good one. And maybe I’ll come back some time and add more quintilla stanzas.

Finding Peace

One stormy night I felt afraid
I knelt beside my bed and prayed
The peace that came was swift, not slow
Not from a statue made of jade
But my Jesus I dearly know

Your Turn

Okay, now it’s your turn to write one or more quintilla stanzas using the paint chip words and phrases. You can write your poem in the comments, or you can post it to your blog and drop a link in the comments. Remember to link back here so your readers can come join the fun.

Wouldn’t it be neat if we have fifty people each write a single-stanza quintilla, then we’d have 500 lines of verse! I know that might not seem likely, but a gal can dream, can’t she?