Art of the Septet - New Twists on an Old Form - with Wayne Lee: Sept 20, 2025
Saturday, September 20, 2025
10am -3 pm with Wayne Lee
Septets have been around since at least the 13th century when Goeffrey Chaucer used the rime royal form in his epic poem “Troilus and Criseyde.” Through the centuries, poets such as Byron, Dickinson, Poe, Shakespeare, Akhmatova and Alexie have added to the septet canon, bearing testimony to the enduring appeal of the various seven-line forms, and new variations are being invented all the time.
What is a septet?
7-line stanza
Sometimes 7 syllables per line
Sometimes one alliteration per line
Sometimes rhymed (aabbccd), sometimes not
May have two or three stanzas
Themes of love, loss, live event, praise, memory, celebration, cultural principles and more
Join us as we discuss the history of the septet form and study examples of various heptastich variations. Class time to write three different septets (one in free verse, one rhymed and one purely syllabic). Bring writing materials and your laptop (if you choose).
Wayne Lee’s collection Dining on Salt: Four Seasons of Septets, Cornerstone Press, is a hybrid memoir in verse that tells a story of love, loss and recovery entirely in heptastichs (seven-line forms). Among the book’s 80 poems are examples of 20 different septet forms, many of them centuries old.
Suggested reading: A Brief History of the Septet
Saturday, September 20, 2025
10am -3 pm with Wayne Lee
Septets have been around since at least the 13th century when Goeffrey Chaucer used the rime royal form in his epic poem “Troilus and Criseyde.” Through the centuries, poets such as Byron, Dickinson, Poe, Shakespeare, Akhmatova and Alexie have added to the septet canon, bearing testimony to the enduring appeal of the various seven-line forms, and new variations are being invented all the time.
What is a septet?
7-line stanza
Sometimes 7 syllables per line
Sometimes one alliteration per line
Sometimes rhymed (aabbccd), sometimes not
May have two or three stanzas
Themes of love, loss, live event, praise, memory, celebration, cultural principles and more
Join us as we discuss the history of the septet form and study examples of various heptastich variations. Class time to write three different septets (one in free verse, one rhymed and one purely syllabic). Bring writing materials and your laptop (if you choose).
Wayne Lee’s collection Dining on Salt: Four Seasons of Septets, Cornerstone Press, is a hybrid memoir in verse that tells a story of love, loss and recovery entirely in heptastichs (seven-line forms). Among the book’s 80 poems are examples of 20 different septet forms, many of them centuries old.
Suggested reading: A Brief History of the Septet
Saturday, September 20, 2025
10am -3 pm with Wayne Lee
Septets have been around since at least the 13th century when Goeffrey Chaucer used the rime royal form in his epic poem “Troilus and Criseyde.” Through the centuries, poets such as Byron, Dickinson, Poe, Shakespeare, Akhmatova and Alexie have added to the septet canon, bearing testimony to the enduring appeal of the various seven-line forms, and new variations are being invented all the time.
What is a septet?
7-line stanza
Sometimes 7 syllables per line
Sometimes one alliteration per line
Sometimes rhymed (aabbccd), sometimes not
May have two or three stanzas
Themes of love, loss, live event, praise, memory, celebration, cultural principles and more
Join us as we discuss the history of the septet form and study examples of various heptastich variations. Class time to write three different septets (one in free verse, one rhymed and one purely syllabic). Bring writing materials and your laptop (if you choose).
Wayne Lee’s collection Dining on Salt: Four Seasons of Septets, Cornerstone Press, is a hybrid memoir in verse that tells a story of love, loss and recovery entirely in heptastichs (seven-line forms). Among the book’s 80 poems are examples of 20 different septet forms, many of them centuries old.
Suggested reading: A Brief History of the Septet
Instructor: Wayne Lee
Hosts: Jules Nyquist & John Roche
in-person at Jules’ Poetry Playhouse - Placitas, New Mexico
10 am - 3 pm (with one hour on-site writing lunch break)
All materials included - handout emailed one week before class
Class limit 10 students.
Writing lunch break at noon at Jules Poetry Playhouse. Bring your own lunch if desired. Plentiful snacks and beverages provided (coffee, tea, water, scones and/or bagels, chips, salsa, cookies). Ample time to explore the grounds of Jules’ Poetry Playhouse and walk the labyrinth.
Bring writing materials, free wi-fi if needed.
Author books will be for sale, along with Poetry Playhouse Publications books and art.
Directions and contact info sent with registration. Questions? Email jules@poetryplayhouse.com.
This poem by Wayne Lee is the epigraph for his new collection Dining on Salt: Four Seasons of Septets, Cornerstone Press
To find the words for this
day as it unfolds, to hold this life
within one breath, to know this love
as it opens its eyes in tingle and pulse,
to wait for what must pass while passing by,
to crack the secret code scratched in sand,
to chant with the heart and sing
with the soul, to dance while still alive.
Sherman Alexie has also written a number of sevenlings. “Communion” is one of Wayne’s favorites:
This is the last poem I will write about salmon,
My tribe’s Jesus fish, our God fish, bedamning
And bedamned. I will no longer examine
And reexamine the sins that doomed our fish.
I will not weep. My pain and fear are banished.
This is my last lamentation, my last wish:
Let my people’s famine become our Eucharist.