The pantoum is probably my favorite poetic form of all time. It’s a form with any number of four-line stanzas where each stanza after repeat lines from the previous stanza. So, the second and fourth lines of the first stanza become the first and third lines of the second stanza, respectively, and this pattern continues throughout the poem. On the final stanza, the first and third lines of the first stanza become the fourth and second (or second and fourth, either way works) lines of the final stanza respectively. If that sounds confusing, here’s a chart, with letters representing specific lines.
a
b
c
d
b
e
d
f
e
g
f
h
g
c (or a)
h
a (or c)
I personally prefer ending a pantoum with the first line (a), but that’s just my preference. Either way appears to be acceptable. Other than that, anything goes for this poem. There are no meter requirements; no rhyme scheme is necessary. The trick is to write lines that can have double meanings in the right context.
Having the same lines repeat over and over can make your poem feel like a metronome without some changes, so the difficulty in this poetic form is finding the right ways to change certain lines slightly in order to make them work in context.
Nimbus in a Bottle 