88 Quatrain Verse on Poetics
written by: C.R. Daugherty
I just may be a Master Poet,
Master of these Ceremonies,
Tending learn to others to breed
Genuflective magistery.
‘Master’ is slang for Magister.
Double toil trouble, Monsieur.
Imbroglio or curative,
I highlight rightly positive.
Stringing together sentences
And singing in tones intense is
A wordplay form of artistry–
Colloquially: poetry.
Can’t spell slaughter without laughter?
Happily forever after…
Keeling, kneeling, reeling feeling–
Wherein lie your grand revealing?!
I sit on cars and watch the stars,
No time for bars, that form of Mars.
I prefer apostate Venus,
Lucifer without a penis.
Poems written any manner–
They shall fly emblazoned banners
With right angle orthogonal
Or metric diametrical.
A first lesson to intimate
Is poetry, so reprobate,
Incorporates more prosody
Than prosaic hack/slash writing.
A second lesson be rhyme works
Either by perfect type or quarks–
Feminine rhyme beginning quail,
Masculine there last syllable.
Within each word, it be this way
To ways of rhyming poetry…
The types of rhyme range: slip; slide; slant;
Perfect, even in assonance.
Alliteration is the term
For rhyme and sounds so similar,
Like assonance and consonance,
Elaborate nuance in dance.
Pink and punk are one example.
Here shall follow sundry ample:
Toast; ghost; king; ring; orange; poor range;
Estrange; derange; outrange; arrange…
And merciful shall perceive all,
While crocodile sidle wild,
So old Joe Blow can overblow,
Over the rainbow undertow.
As opposed to the assonance,
One more device is consonance,
Crossing over definition
In the stanzas aforementioned.
Stanzaic writing leaves a space
In between the verses to place,
And there are names for uniform
Placement of spaces by the norm.
Two lines separated by spaces
Are a couplet iterated.
Three line stanzas forming verses
Are like Jet aisles known as tercet.
A four line verse, as with this one,
Quattrain by name, one space alone.
Prior list be common stanza
Common for extravaganza.
Less common types of metered verse–
That old school name poetic curse–
Five line stanzaic formation–
Quintain be the nomenclature.
Similarly known as quintet,
Six line posits itself sestet.
Septet serpentine persuasion–
Seven line even privation.
Eight lines form a hearty octave,
August eve October conclave…
Nine shot swish of nothing but net
Will spell you out a prime nonet.
Preach now while placing decimals,
As I change theme with decima,
A block of ten syllabled joy
Which Espinal often employ.
Onto meter from form we dive,
Into primary types alive.
It is all in how you combine
The stressing, flow, and type of rhyme.
Iamb; trochee; dactyl; spondee;
Anapest; two unstressed to see.
These comprise the most popular
Stressed syllables as regular.
There are many less known meters
Even hid from us forever,
Yet there is amphabrach, Sapphic,
And accentual-syllabic.
Keep in mind a catalexis,
Blind on page in its existence,
For hanging on a left out foot,
A syllable with special root.
Power here reside in absence–
Phone to foot at endgame presence.
Of a terminated stanza,
Line, or even full bonanza.
As far as stress on each word goes,
It varies in the meter’s tone.
It varies, too, in reader’s eyes.
Perspectives arrayed down the lines.
Iamb sounds like itself pronounced,
As trochee and dactylic bounced.
Anapest, whence the stress, relies
On stressing the masculine rhyme.
First syllable of errant dactyl
Placed as in here: pterodactyl
Leaves us with the careful spondee,
Like icecream, Crowley, and Tonya.
A Pyrric victory means defeat
For self as well as enemy,
However here with pyrric stress,
Now we outcast of the useless.
A poem in the shape or structure
Is a shape, concrete, or pattern
Form of epic gift poetic
Sunlit natives dub heretic.
A sonnet is a common write
Known both ignobly and by knight
Poem by zeugmatic right
I chisel on this misty night.
Originally, Italian
Brilliance from an ardent stallion
Fawning for a lover’s desire,
Wrote her three hundred, kindling a fire.
It consists usually each
To each their own whence metered feet
Be listed respectively cast
To hull below or mizzenmast.
However, sonnets have their rules:
Eight plus six lines; space optional;
Octave; sestet; meaning changing
Maybe between, rearranging.
Rhyme scheme in an English sonnet
Bears an ABAB on it
Until anent inning the ninth,
Which nigh may be column or plinth.
The second portion of the rhyme,
These formal sonnets romance styled,
Is commonly an ABC
Repeated once, elegantly.
Another form of famous sonnet
Is brought to us by Petrarchan,
Great Italian premiere leader
Loving play from ampitheatre.
Taboo it was on Petrarch’s watch
To ABCABC thatch
An end of poem sonnet style,
So alternate rhyme was the rule.
There has been cuppa contention
On the topic repetition
And where around the rhyme scheme wrap,
Stanza ending or final nap.
I say rotate ‘least forty verse
Before, mistaken, you at first
Don’t save the author’s ingenious
Choice of diction mint just for us.
A literary device is
Saying something prescious, priceles–,
By not saying it straight as prose,
But going where the poet goes.
Idioms also metaphor
You’ve met here and there heretofore
Like saying a clan is a snake
Without using words as, than, or like
Simile is as familiar
As given two things similar
Such as saying like a wedding,
Dry as rust, softer than bedding.
Personification be mean
Like calculus questions obscene,
Bestowing personalities
Of critters human qualities.
Caesura is pause in the flow
Of a word, line, or other show,
By means of space, punctuation,
Even this period placement.
Nodding is when you reference
Another’s work in deference.
Allusion is a roundabout
Address to anything, no doubt.
If you said he alludes wisely
Hollywood is whitey titey,
You may see many fallacy
Within the author’s stylus, see?
Another literary tool
Lie within vocabulary school,
Using words like fangoria
Dun, and phantasmagoria.
Imagery is a crowd fave:
Scent of a rose; strike of a blade;
A wedding day; a picket strike;
Perfect sunrise with perfect wife.
Oh, don’t let me leave out the feet
In writing metered poesy.
Metrical feet I shall dissert,
Better or so awfully worse.
Starting off with monometer,
This type has rung like a ladder,
Plenty fanfare for the gifted,
Downtrodden, mad, and uplifted.
Two feet given stressful value
Constitute a useful imbue-
Ment of dimeter down the line,
Three feet trimeter right on time.
Quadrameter, tetrameter,
Pick your poison parameter
Of term for four feet listed well,
Pentameter five feet to swell.
And sell we more, hexameter,
Seven on top septameter
Octameter our final foot,
The page no room for words to boot.
Zeugma is instead of saying
She was kind and she was playing
Abbreviating here with wit
She was kind and playing like this.
Rhyme scheme or pattern–ascertain
When end of lines have rhymes the same.
The pattern here AABB,
Is used in songs most commonly.
When alternating end line rhyme,
Well met with poetry sublime,
For many choose to ABAB,
Their choice however it may be.
Perhaps that last one be the most
Be published via profession,
A tense which verses deliver
Baskets down the Delta River.
One example: Blue Oyster Cult’s
ABBA for end result–
Song Burning for You–BOC
Released round back 1980.
Common meter: to alternate
Six syllables come after eight,
As brevity persuasion meets,
Dumped here integrity.
I will repeat this meter here,
The common meter crave
For selling cokes and jingles clear,
Although Jesus, Lord save.
I have not penned out metrical
Feet in poetic madrigal
Here within this boon instruction–
Poetry and its construction.
Sacrificing stunted rhythm,
Bringing back the mighty diphthong.
Words like file and fire and mire
Can be a diphthong burning pyre.
Now we entreat metonymy
And after that synecdoche,
Metaphor easily confused
If snooze you lose come time to choose.
Implementing a word in place
Like sable night for outer space
Utilizes metonymy
And thinking conceptually.
Lesser parts of greater things
Like sceptre, crown, or throne for king
Can represent an artful jump,
Synecdoche a careful ump.
Now I have love of poetry:
Iamb; dactyl; trochee; spondee,
Listed as our metrical feet
Set however necessary.
Generalization grammar:
Diction jail instead of slammer;
Punctuation quite important;
Slant rhyme sometimes importunate.
Usage be a good term for our
Literary devices more
Vital to my poetic hand
Than herb of field and glass of sand.
Now to make an honorable
Mention incorrigible
Oval nodal opal sublime
With in-line rhyme might right divine.
For a general audience,
You may wish for tad prescience
To wish to know what they’re thinking,
If contraction’s welcome, winking.
Oftentimes slang is just no good,
Like mini portions served for food.
Themes of strife are mostly welcome.
Serve the veal; deliver vellum.
Poems will convey emotions:
Lyric lover; keening ocean;
Hearth and home and health and handsome
Topics over coffee ransom.
I say personally per se
Poems not easily relayed
Via oration by bardism
Merit kindly criticism.
Mind too much alliteration
Bring you down a rung by station
Look ascendant of tongue twisters,
Brain bogglers a litter sister.
Be mindful words thought average,
Commonplace here of many age.
Big words wearing listeners down
Could soon keep them from coming ’round.
Syntax also very vital,
Please beware your own initial
Combinations of phones schismed
By spaces throughout yet stinted.
Puns are a dangerous venture,
One manner double entendre.
Careful, megalomaniac
These contronym puns biting back.
Have I forgotten sonorant
Sonancy, or lack inherent
Phones and letters duly combined
With alliteration in mind?
I think not, as more easily
The poem is recited freely
The better you read it aloud
Yourself alone without the crowd.
Always double check your word usage
If you are at all uncertain.
We could all be Magister poets,
Ever alive, and we know it.
There are dozens more devices.
Each to own shall find their priceless
Literary quip of hectic
Personal poetic metric.
An allegory type of tale
A story, when delivered well,
Relates a moral if able
As well does the righteous fable.
Tones, throughout the course of poem,
Maintain or change with emotion.
Examples be: alacrity;
sadness; soulful intimacy.
One’s choice of style is how one writes;
Each poet has their sacred rites.
Some compose like e.e. cummings,
On their own base drum a-drumming.
Some, like myself, choose many styles,
Always improving through trials.
Self deprecating, lacking flow
In this poem, lessons I pose.
Humor is great in poetry
May audience be openly
Aware your timbre comedy
So all may laugh in harmony.
Keep a look out–irreverence
Can lose you much the deference
We all who work so hard on words
Do feel we all well now deserve.
- 88 Quatrain Verse on Poetics - February 20, 2023
- Why Bye Color - October 14, 2022
- Ariel, Bless Us - April 22, 2022
