The ''klon'', also spelled ''glawn'' or ''gaun'' ( th, กลอน, ; lo, ກອນ, ), is a

Thai Thai or THAI may refer to: * Of or from Thailand, a country in Southeast Asia ** Thai people, the dominant ethnic group of Thailand ** Thai language, a Tai-Kadai language spoken mainly in and around Thailand *** Thai script *** Thai (Unicode block ...

/ Lao term referring to either poetic verse in general, or a specific prosodic form in

and Lao poetry.

Thai

In the narrow meaning of the term, the ''klon'' is a more recently developed form of Thai poetry where a stanza has four ''wak'' (lines), each with the same number of syllables. It became the most popular form during the

early Rattanakosin Early may refer to: History * The beginning or oldest part of a defined historical period, as opposed to middle or late periods, e.g.: ** Early Christianity ** Early modern Europe Places in the United States * Early, Iowa * Early, Texas * Early ...

period, and is usually considered an original Thai form, as opposed to older forms such as ''kap'' which originated from Indic or Cambodian poetry. Reproduced form The ''klon'' metres are named by the number of syllables in a ''wak'', e.g. ''klon hok'' (, ) has six syllables per ''wak'' (''hok'' means ''six''). All metres have the same

rhyming scheme A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhymes at the end of each line of a poem or song. It is usually referred to by using letters to indicate which lines rhyme; lines designated with the same letter all rhyme with each other. An example of the ABAB rh ...

, and there are also requirements on the tone of the final syllable of each ''wak''. The ''klon'' is also divided into several types according to their manner of composition, with ''klon suphap'' (, ) being the basic form. The following plan shows the structure of ''klon suphap'' (two stanzas) in the most common eight-syllable variety, which was employed extensively by Sunthorn Phu, and is the most common form of the Rattanakosin period. The letters in parentheses represent alternative rhyming syllables. In practice, occasional ''wak'' with seven or nine syllables are also acceptable.

Lao

In the Lao context, the ''glawn'' is commonly used in song, and is the most common text in traditional mor lam. It is made up of four-line stanzas, each with seven basic syllables (although sung ''glawn'' often includes extra, unstressed syllables). There is a set pattern for the

tone mark Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey emph ...

s to be used at various points in the stanza, plus

rhyme scheme A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhymes at the end of each line of a poem or song. It is usually referred to by using letters to indicate which lines rhyme; lines designated with the same letter all rhyme with each other. An example of the ABAB r ...

s to hold the unit together. Performances of glawn are typically memorised rather than improvised.

References

Thai poetry Lao language Stanzaic form {{poetry-stub