Here’s a simple and fun, epigram-like poetic form to try your hand at during National Poetry Month… the Burmese Than-bauk.

The Than-bauk is a Burmese poetic form with simple rules:
– Three-line poem (Tercet), but you can string together multiple stanzas to form a longer poem
– Four syllables per line
– The final syllable of the first line rhymes with the third syllable of the second line and second syllable of the third line.

Here’s a visual representation of rhyming syllables for each line:

xxxa
xxax
xaxx

The poem is written traditionally like an epigram, so it is sometimes a clever or witty poem.

My example, posted as part of the Poetic Asides April Poem-A-Day challenge, can be found here. It is more like a horror/thriller poem rather than a lighthearted epigram.

– Jason