Free poetry magnets and décimas with a syllable counter

What a décima is and how it’s measured

The décima espinela is the stanza of Spanish and Mexican troubadours and of son jarocho: ten eight-syllable lines rhyming ABBAACCDDC. In Spanish, syllables are counted as they sound: when a word ends in a vowel and the next one starts with a vowel or h, they merge into one (sinalefa). A line ending in a word stressed on its last syllable, like canción, adds one; one stressed on the third-to-last, like lágrima, takes one away.

In English, the counter counts the syllables as you say them, and a rhyme has to match from the last vowel sound to the end, like night and light; since English spelling is unpredictable, that count is approximate. Either way, you see how many lines have their eight syllables and how many rhyme; with all ten right, it’s a perfect décima.

The magnets and the Bestiary

The fifty magnets of the day are the same for everyone using the same language, and they change at midnight, Mexico City time: fifteen linking words, thirteen nouns, eleven verbs, eight adjectives or adverbs and three add-ons, like -ing, -ly or re-, that join the word next to them. In the Bestiary, a name in red means nobody has written its story yet: tap it and write it yourself.