The Ingenious Book is a poetic form intended to satirize a chosen subject, originating in The Liberty of Lieges. The rules of the form are applied by poets to produce individual poems which can be recited. The poem is a single tercet. Use of assonance and metaphor is characteristic of the form. A form of parallelism is common throughout the poem, in that certain lines often share an underlying meaning. Each line has seven syllables. The first line concerns the past. The second line concerns current events. The third line concerns the future.