Pantoum is the name assigned to several poetic forms based on the Malay pantun. The schematic appearing at left indicates relationships existing between the lines of a poem composed in one of the several forms a pantoum may take.
Each square space containing a numeral and a letter represents a line of verse. There are four lines to each stanza. The line's number of words, syllables, its meter and the total number of stanzas may vary with each poem. (There are also some unique treatments of the lines of the final stanza regarding repetition that won't be discussed here in these comments.)
Each horizontal row represents a stanza of four lines. The form can employ as many stanzas as is necessary to complete the poem.
In the archetypical poem suggested by the schematic there are four lines in each stanza, five stanzas in the poem, six different rhymes (indicated by letters a through f), eight different verbatim repeats (2b, 4b, 5c, 6c, 7d, 8d, 9e and 10e), twelve unique lines (indicated by numerals 1 through 12) and twenty total lines. [4:5:6:8:12:20]
The thin arrows link lines which rhyme; the thicker arrows link lines which are identical. As the schematic indicates, the second line of each stanza is repeated verbatim as the first line of the stanza following, while the fourth line of each stanza is repeated verbatim as the third line of the stanza following.
The schematic below and to the right shows the different lines of the schematic above shifted one space to the right. The lines which are verbatim repeats share a color. An N notation indicates that this is the first time within the poem that line is heard -- i.e., that it is new. As noted above, there are twelve such lines. An R notation indicates that the line is being heard a second time -- i.e., that it is being repeated. Again as noted above, there are eight such lines.
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