Quatrain Poetry

This subsection of Monday Morning Writers Group starts with quatrain poetry. Quatrain poetry is a structured poetic form, often, but not always, very funny poetry. It is just the right length to fit in a tweet at Twitter.

Quatrain poems are imminently "twotable." (sorry, the pun just slipped out).

These are all iambic, however some are abab rhyme, others aabb. Most follow the example of Robert Burns (Our Rabbie) such that lines one and three are tetrameter and lines 2 and 4, trimeter. One (about Ogden Nash) is straight iambic tetrameter. There's a set here about family poems in quatrain form as well.

Quatrain to the Limerick

Around the English-speaking world
The hallowed lim'rick reigns
But here-just room for verse more terse
-The humblest of quatrains.

Quatrain Poetry for Writers, Agents, and Publishers

They say iambic’s Homer’s thing
I wish I did as well
Tetrameter is not so tough
Pentameter is hell.

I'm writing jingles when I find
An interstitial time
If you are in the market, please
Consider one of mine.

Enjambment happens when you run
One line into the next
And doing this amuses me
In my poetic text.

If you haven't had enough of the fashionable new twitpoem,
here's another full page of them.

Twittering allows no room
For limerick refrain
For tweets, I write a shorter form
The playful, terse quatrain.

Here's set #6 that even explains some of the rules of the game.

You’re getting sick of getting pennies for
The massive work you do
And if you find a better way
We doff our hats to you.

They say there is a tipping point
Beyond which starts a buzz
I hope my book gets sold before
Forgetting what it was.

I wish that I earned half the cash
Of light verse guru, Ogden Nash
I, too, could quote Joyce Kilmer’s tree
To agencies contacting me.

A Quatrain Poem to Writers' Group

So now I’m off to writers’ group
These Mondays - sacrosanct.
And should my novel get to press
It’s they who should be thanked.

By the way, I "roasted" my writing group friends as quatrain poetry on this page (gently, of course) for my own amusement. That was so much fun that I roasted the Twitter Whale, too. And for a rollicking good time check out the Gilbert and Sullivan page.

Human Condition Tweets

I have no more to give today
I’m pretty much washed out
I’ll nurse my summer cold and go
To bed to whine and pout.

At first, conjunctivitis struck
And then, a summer cold
And when I thought that all was well
Came allergies to mold.

Here's some more poetry from "twotes."

Just for fun, here's a sample of Robert Burn's quatrain poetry, and my parody of it.

If you're looking for something a bit more off-the-wall, check out this page on the Pet Peeves List. You'll probably laugh at something about modern life that ticks you off!

From Robert Burns' "A Red, Red Rose"

O, my luve's like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June:
O, my luve's like the melodie
That's sweetly played in tune.

Parody on "A Red, Red Rose"

My cold has made a red, red nose,
Like allergies in June
My cold is making me a grouch
Who cannot hum a tune.

Housework

The dishes will not do themselves
Nor laundry fall in folds
There are no helpful little elves
Who pity summer colds.

Grandkid Tweets

The kids are going to the coast
I’ll miss the little grands
But I won’t miss their plastic stuff
And germy little hands.

Never talk to strangers if
You value safety first
Privacy’s your only friend
Against the very worst.

Here's a fun list of time management skills you might wish to cultivate.

So, at any rate, here's some Friday the Thirteenth quatrains - a theme ripe for lambasting if ever there was one.

Jeannette LOVES quatrain poetry. And lots of other short forms. Follow her here.

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