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flowing tercet

Form
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A tercet whose rhythm, syntax, or imagery mimics the smooth, downward motion of flowing water, enhancing fluidity and grace.

Detailed Definition
A flowing tercet is a three-line stanza marked by seamless enjambment, soft consonance, and rhythmic continuity, creating a sense of unbroken movement or emotional current; its lines often blend syntactically and sonically to mimic the flow of thought, water, or time, making it ideal for meditative, lyrical, or narrative passages requiring fluid progression.
Example
Example in poetry:
Flowing tercet uses three-line stanzas with enjambment between; Dante’s Divine Comedy in terza rima flows stanza to stanza; Auden’s “In Memory of W.B. Yeats” uses flowing tercets; Lowell’s confessional poems often use tercets for narrative flow
Additional Notes
A flowing tercet is a three-line stanza where the rhythm is continuous and smooth, often achieved by using enjambment to carry the thought seamlessly from line to line and sometimes across the tercet boundary; this contrasts with tercets where each line is heavily end-stopped.
Also Known As
Tercet with flow fluid triplet smooth three-line stanza Cascading tercet
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