A pantoum is a fixed form built on interlocking repetition: a series of quatrains in which the second and fourth lines of each stanza become the first and third lines of the next. In the final stanza, the first and third lines of the opening stanza return as the second and fourth lines, closing the loop.
The effect is recursive and incantatory. Lines appear in new contexts, acquiring new meanings each time they recur — the same words, shifted by their surroundings. This makes the pantoum suited to subjects of memory, obsession, return, and the way the past persists in the present.
The form derives from the Malay pantun, a traditional oral verse form of rhyming quatrains. French poets — notably Victor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire, and Leconte de Lisle — adapted the form in the nineteenth century, and it entered English-language poetry through this French mediation. The English pantoum typically does not preserve the Malay pantun’s requirement that the two halves of each quatrain address different subjects.
Related terms
- stanza — the quatrain unit from which the pantoum is built
- villanelle — another form built on refrain and repetition
- rhyme — the Malay pantun uses rhyme; the English pantoum may or may not
- sonnet — a fixed form with a different structural logic