Home › Glossary › Letter R

Recursive tercet

Structure
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

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 that contains a smaller iteration of its own form or pattern, creating self-similar or fractal-like poetic structure.

Detailed Definition
Recursive tercet is a three-line stanza that folds back on itself through repeated motifs, inverted syntax, or self-referential imagery, creating a closed loop that embodies themes of memory, fate, or eternal recurrence within its compact, cyclical architecture.
Example
Example in poetry:
Recursive tercet in Dante’s “Divine Comedy” where each tercet echoes and advances prior logic; In Jorie Graham: “as if as if as if” structures recursive thought; Recursive tercet by Anne Carson: each stanza rephrases the last with slight variation; Contemporary: “I said I said I said” – layered self-reference in Claudia Rankine
Additional Notes
Three-line stanza that refers back to or modifies itself. Creates nested, self-reflecting pattern. Related to recursive verse. Study self-referential techniques.
Also Known As
Returning tercet Self-referential triplet Loop three-line Recursive trio
Skip to main content