How to Compose English Jueju

The best way to learn how to write English Jueju Poetry is to follow the list of suggestions below: 1. Watch the following instructional videos through at least one time.

2. Use the Poetry Game Boards. Begin with scramble boards, followed by blank boards and word cards. Students should be eased into the form through group work or playing these games. 3. Use https://www.rhymezone.com to locate rhyming monosyllable words. 4. Follow the compositional rules (remember Classical Chinese Poetry resembles word games more than English poetry does, so learning the rules is best thought of as gameplay.

Rules:

1. Unregulated Jueju, a. Use only monosyllabic English words (in your resource links, I have provided all 4000+ English monosyllable words as game board cards broken up into their yin/yang vowel forms and categorized by their part of speech.) b. Jueju poems are 4 lines of five or seven monosyllable words. c. Horizontally, pair your words into groups 2+3 or 2+2+3 (Example white+stones/ cold+stream+flows. Or White+stones/ soft+breeze/cold+stream+flows.). words should connect together more within the group than between them. d. Follow the thematic progression: a. The first line introduces a scene of nature: (white stones/ soft breeze/ cold stream flows). b. The second line dives more deeply into or extends the scene (wet path/birds sing/tall grass blows c. Third line: Introduces an emotion, a human element, or a turn of one kind or another. “aged hands, cuts bait, casts clear line” d. Fourth line concludes the poem, brings it to a conclusion: “, , cold hands, hours pass, wide mind slows” Rhyme and Thematic Progression.

Moss Hair Soft Breeze Blows Dark Trees Grey Snow Sky

White Blooms Clear Stream Flows Black Bark Slate Clouds High

Hang Head Am I Here White Fur Warm Blood Howl

Raise Head No One Knows One Wolf’s Lone Long Cry

Meng Haoran “Spring Dawn”

Liu Zongyuan “River Snow”

Writing Your Own Unregulated Verse

There are several kinds of game boards you can download on the English Juejue website. These include scramble/puzzle boards for each level (unregulated, Regulated Meaning, Regulated Sound). Scramble/Puzzle Boards are completed poems that you can cut up, using the words as tiles/cards that can be shuffled and reapplied to a blank board. Blank Boards can be downloaded and placed on student desks with the shuffled cards. After students experience success with a puzzle baord, they can explore the larger monosyllable word cards, using the www.rhymezone.com website to find their rimes, they can quickly gain confidence writing unregualted or regulated jueju.

Class Exercise More details: (Level One): 1. Print off several blank boards and word card sheets to pass out to groups of students in the class (4-5 students per group would be ideal). 2. Have the students cut out the word cards from the sheets and ask each of them to draw a picture on the back of the cards that suggests the meaning of the word if they can. Have them set aside all the blank cards as these will be used to write in their own words. 3. Now have students begin trying out different words in in the grid focusing on the 2+2+3 unit of meaning first line. “Moon+Light” “star haze” “Cool calm breeze” 4. They should make their first line as evocative as possible. 5. Have them pay close attention to the sound of the final word. This sound will need to be rhymed in lines 2 and 4. They can check their rhyme word choices at www.rhymezone.com. Have them write their rhyme words on black cards. 6. Now have them think about how each line should follow the proper progression of lines thematically (intro, deepen, turn, close). Have fill in the remainder squares on the grid to fit this requirement making sure to get the rhyme. Reassure them that they should expect their poem to change radically several times before they are done. 7. In the K-8 levels of the competition, classes can choose their favorite poem and submit as a class (and if selected, the class will be awarded $500). Otherwise, students can submit their own poems to us directly or teachers can bundle them. In either case, each submission should be clearly identified with contact info.

Review Level One Rules Guidelines: 1. Only use Monosyllabic Words. 2. Each line has only five or seven syllables (or think of this as five monosyllabic words) 3. Use 2+2+3 word units 4. Observe Rhyme Scheme of AABA: June, moon, soon). 5. Observe Thematic progression Line One Introduce a scene (often a natural) Line Two: Extend and deepen the scene Line Three: Introduce a shift or turn (often revealing something of the poet’s inner feelings, or toward the human world more generally, but in this poem we see a shift in seasons from summer to winter revealing the poets feeling of aging or loss). Line Four: Conclusion, Ending, Landing. 6. Level 2-3 Difficulty: parallelism of meaning and parallelism of sound follow all of these rules in addition to those that follow.

2, Parallel Meaning Jueju All of the same rules above apply here. However, now words must be grouped into vertical patterns of parallel and anti-parallel meanings. Level 2 & Parallelism

Yin and Yang refers to the balance within and between all things. A natural balance between Yin and Yang leads to flourishing, while an imbalance can lead to stagnation, rupture, and discord. A classical Chinese poem brings language into balance both in terms of its meanings as well as its sound.

What is Parallelism in Regulated Chinese Poetry?

Definition: It is the word-for-word and syllable-for-syllable matching of grammar and of meaning and tones. While I prefer to add Chinese tones to these poems, we are not adding this element to the contest. Lines must relate to one another by matching nouns with nouns in the same position within the lines (for instance, grass and flowers), and adjective with adjectives, verbs to verbs, particles to particles. In the case of the first two lines the parallelism should reveal a similarity, Example:

The colors point to how words are stacked in columns of parallel meanings

Classical Chinese poetry reveals both the parallel and antiparallel or antithetical nature of the world. For Yin and Yang to be in balance, things/ideas must be viewed as being in relationship to one another. “Dark” and “grey” are not the same thing, but their similarity is revealed when related to “clear”. This additional line in the English Juejue was created to add a degree of competance in yin-yang relationality to the poetic form.

The colors point to how words are stacked in columns of antithetical or anitparallel meanings

Class Exercises (Meaning Parallelism) For those who wish to try their hand at the meaning parallelism, they should first print off and try the Meaning Parallelism Juejue puzzel boards. Given the extra degree of difficulty, these games will offer students an easier time learning the rules and tasting success. One can also practice the ancient game of “duilian” where one writes a couplet based on parallel meanings. choose a word or a group of words, and then choose their vertical correlatives.

warm

spring Now choose a contrastive word for the third line: Warm breeze Spring Air Cool Stream

1. Parallelism of Sound Jueju.

To write regulated Jueju following the parallelism rules for sound, one must learn to hear the difference between short and long vowels in English Jueju. Words that end in an unvoiced consonant like k, p, t, s, ch, sh have short vowels, while all other monosyllables have long vowels. I have provided a word bank that includes all 4,000 English monosyllable vowels broken into their long and short vowel sounds for your convenience.

Regulated Classical Chinese Jueju and English Jueju create a balance between the Yin and Yang elements of language. Thus one must learn to alternate the long and short (yang and yin) vowel sounds to produce a formal regulated style jueju.

Yin and Yang vowels

Yang Yin

Long and short English Monosyllable Vowels

Short English Monosyllabic Vowels

Once one can hear the difference, one can bring the English language into a balance of yin and yang vowels just as the Ancient Chinese poets did in Classical Chinese. But all 4000 English monosyllable words has been broken into yin and yang and are available online.

All of the same rules apply from above, however, poets no longer need to provide the anti- parallel line as now the vowel parallelism will provide the poem with its antithesis. After watching the video about Yin and Yang vowels, follow the patterns below. All 4000 English monosyllable words have been broken into yin and yang vowels and categorized by their part of speech. Now that one can hear the difference between English yin and yang vowels, we can follow the exact patterns as the Ancients.

The vowel symbols are below:

l Short Yin Vowels ¡ Long Yang Vowels ¤ Indicates that either vowel is possible

Seven-Syllable Jueju Vowel Pattern 1 ¤ l ¤ ¡ ¤ l ¡ Rhyme ¤ ¡ ¤ l l ¡ ¡Rhyme ¤ ¡ ¤ l ¡ ¡ l ¤ l ¡ ¡ ¤ l ¡Rhyme

Seven-Syllable Jueju Vowel Pattern 2 ¤ ¡ ¤ l l ¡ ¡ Rhyme ¤ l ¡ ¡ ¤ l ¡Rhyme ¤ l ¤ ¡ ¡ l l ¤ ¡ ¤ l l ¡ ¡Rhyme

Five-Syllable Jueju Vowel Pattern 1 (AABA rhyme)

¤ l l ¡ ¡ Rhyme ¡ ¡ l l ¡Rhyme ¤ ¡ ¡ l l ¤ l l ¡ ¡Rhyme

Five-Syllable Juejue Vowel Pattern 2 (ABCB rhyme) ¤ l ¡ ¡ l ¡ ¡ l l ¡Rhyme ¤ ¡ ¡ l l ¤ l l ¡ ¡Rhyme

¤ ¡ ¤ l l ¡ ¡ white stones soft moss fast stream flows

¤ l ¡ ¡ ¤ l ¡ Clear path bent reeds quick gust blows

¤ l ¤ ¡ ¡ l l aged eyes vast sky dawn white frost

¤ ¡ ¤ l l ¡ ¡ Cold hands breathe out tense mind slows