Folks, it looks like I sort have messed up with my last post about the tennet poetry form, which I believed I was the sole imventor. I was definitely mistaken there! On a whim, I decided to do a search on the internet for “tennet poetry form” (something I should have done before I posted), and to my chagrin, discovered someone else also invented another version of the form with the same name. It seems that Md. Ziaul Haque, a poet from Bangladesh (who is also known as ” King of Words”) first published two different tennets with the rules on how to write one on both the PostPoems and Poem Hunter sites in November 2018. Although I can’t definitely determine who first invented the form or coined the name (I know originally wrote my version over 10 years ago with my poem “In Praise of Those Tackling ‘The Bambi Factor ‘…” , but I didn’t bother to name the form until August of last year) ,Mr. Haque was certainly the first to publish it. Therefore I feel he is entitled to both the rights to the name and credit as the creator.

That leaves me in a dilemma: what to do with my version of the form? i mean we can’t have two different tennets out there, that would cause confusion among poets if one of the forms would catch on. The most easiest and logical solution is just to rename it. So after much consideration, I decided to redub it “the Decemnet”, which is derived from the Latin word “decem” meaning the number ten, and (like the “tennet”) “net” the last three words of sonnet. So from now on, I will refer to the form I created as a decemnet and the one invented by Mr. Haque as a tennet.

Although the decemnet and the tennet are both poetry forms that are somewhat based on a sonnet and have ten lines ( which may be either metered or unmetered and can vary in length), there are several differences. While the decemnet consists of a quatrain (four lines) and a sestet (six lines), the tennet is composed of two quatrains and a couplet (two lines). Mr. Haque has created two variations of the tennet: one patterned on an Italian or Petrarchan sonnet with a rhyme scheme of abba abba cc, and another one similar to the English or Shakespearean sonnet which follows a rhyme scheme of abab cdcd ee.

I think most poets will find the tennet both an elegant and challenging form to write. Why don’t you try writing one today? For inspiration, here are two examples I have written myself, one in each variation:

 

Relinquishing the Tennet

Please believe me. I honestly didn’t know it,
but someone else may have an equal claim
upon the “tennet” name.
The form might have been first created by another poet.

I am so embarrassed (does my red face show it?).
A!though our poetry forms are not quite the same,
I still feel tremendous guilt and shame.
Yet I have a shot at redemption and I won’t blow it.

I will do the honorable thing and testify before the U.S. Senate
that “King of Words” may just be the true inventor of the tennet.

 

Obsolete Gods

But what about the discarded ancient gods,
the ones that no one ever prays to anymore,
one time sacred, now considered merely myths and frauds
like Dionysus, Quetzalcoatl, and Thor?

So is that the fate of all deities through out the ages?
Do these immortals simply dissipate, truly die,
or be reduced to being characters in comic book pages?
Were they ever real or their existence always just a lie?

Does even a once almighty god, drained of our belief,
becomes as pointless as a piranha without any teeth?

 

You can also read Mr. Haque’s original two tennets at the following links:
https://www.postpoems.org/authors/kingofwords/poem/1070007
https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/tennet