This is a Lento: “Producing Perfection”

PRODUCING PERFECTION

Smile when you listen to that cool line
while the beats run on in perfect time,
and the hook repeats in notes that echo
sand through the hourglass of the demo.

In the vox track, a pulsating chorus
intoxicates in four-four rhythms.
Two minutes fifty seconds long -
You have just made the perfect song.

“Producing Perfection”, from Soul Collective, by Marthe Bijman, 2nd ed. 2025, p. 24. Painting: “#79 First Block It In”, acrylic on canvas ©Image and text 2025 Marthe Bijman – ℗ 2025 Marthe Bijman

Producing Perfection” is a Lento. A Lento consists of couplets (pairs of lines) of which the first two words and the last two words must rhyme, in other words, it has beginning as well as end rhymes.

Though the name, Lento, makes you think it has something to do with Spring (Lent, and so on), it’s actually named after the person who invented the form, Lencio. Poet Lencio Dominic Rodrigues invented it in 2005, for a poetry competition.

A Lento has to have two quatrains. Then, every second line has the same end rhyme (a couplet with end rhymes.) This is called a Double Lento. But to make it even tougher, the first words of all four lines also have to rhyme, in other words, a mono-rhyme. That makes it a Triple Lento.

I could not quite get this into a Triple Lento, but call it a Double-and-a-half Lento, since the first and last words of every couplet rhymes. Honestly, I just sometimes do this for fun. But in “Producing Perfection” I used the Lento form to emphasize the rigid forms and criteria, and the mind-boggling complexity, of modern EDM and House tracks.

So, a complex form to describe a complex form.

And here’s another Lento – for Spring

A FLOWER THINGY

That's a tulip planted there,
it's not a "thingy" as you said.
Slow it grew under ice and snow,
though, from the cold, it should be dead.

Whose robes does it remind you of,
those petals of vermilion red?
It is the king of flowers with
his gold crown on his velvet head.

Video clip: A tulip in my garden today, with a bit of one of my songs. “A Flower Thingy”, by Marthe Bijman