Poetry other variations of "shi" poetry, generally either a four line (quatrain, or "jueju") or else an eight line poem is normal; either way with the even numbered lines rhyming. The line length is scanned by according number of characters (according to the convention that one character equals one syllable), and are predominantly either five or seven characters long, with a caesura before the final three syllables. The lines are generally end-stopped, considered as a series of couplets, and exhibit verbal parallelism as a key poetic device. The "old style" verse ("gushi") is less formally strict than the "jintishi", or regulated
Flow Chart (poem) Flow Chart (poem) Flow Chart is a long poem by the American writer John Ashbery, published in its own volume in 1991. "Flow Chart" is a work of 4,794 lines, divided into six numbered chapters or parts, each of which is further divided into sections or verse-paragraphs, varying in number from seven to 42. The sections vary in length from one or two lines, to seven pages. Scott Mahler wrote in the "Los Angeles Times": "Ashbery's poetry has been called mysterious, original, difficult, dream-like, Romantic, a part of the continuum of American poetry that includes Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Wallace