CHUEH-CHU

(Chinese "severed sentence,") Pinyin jueju a Chinese verse form that was popular during the Tang dynasty (618-907). An outgrowth of the l-shih (Pinyin lshi), it is a four-line poem, each line of which consists of five or seven words; it omits either the first four lines, the last four lines, the first two and the last two lines, or the middle four lines of the l-shih. Thus, it retains the tonal quality of the l-shih, but the antithetical structure is optional. Much like the Persian robai and the Japanese haiku, cheh-ch are judged by suggestiveness and economy.