Write an article based on this "Practice writing a single quatrain in meter. Experiment with rhyme schemes. Develop a full thought in your quatrain. Read and study poems written in quatrains."
A quatrain is just a stanza made of four lines with some kind of metrical and rhyme pattern. A metrical pattern means that each line has the same length and rhythmic stress pattern. For example, in an iambic pentameter poem, each line has five (pent) iambic feet (ta-TUM) that add up to ten syllables. Shakespeare's "Sonnet 18" is written in iambic pentameter: "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" Tennyson's "In Memoriam A.H.H." is written in iambic tetrameter: 4 iambic feet that add up to 8 syllables per line. "Thou madest Life in man and brute" Rework your practice quatrain using different rhyme schemes. This exercise will help you figure out what sound you like best. Later, you can apply that rhyme scheme to the poem you want to write. There are no rules about the rhyme scheme of a quatrain poem, so you can run wild with it! Rhyme schemes are usually labeled with letters (ABCD). Every time a line of the poem ends in a new sound, assign a letter to that sound. So, if the last word of Line 1 is "smoke," it becomes an "A" and so does every other line that rhymes with "-oke" ("joke," "baroque," etc.). The next unique sound (and all its rhymes) would be "B," the next would be a "C," and so on. Some common quatrain rhyme schemes include: ABBA: We call this an "envelope quatrain" because the A rhyme envelopes the B rhyme. The result is a dense rhyme in the middle with a comforting envelope rhyme around it. When you write an envelope quatrain in iambic pentameter, we call it an Italian quatrain. When you write an envelope quatrain in iambic tetrameter, we call it an In Memoriam stanza. The name comes from Tennyson's poem "In Memoriam A.H.H." ABAB: We call this scheme an alternate or interlaced quatrain because of how the rhyme sounds alternate. AABB: The double couplet has two very strong rhymes. If you use this kind of scheme throughout a long poem, the rhyme might start sounding too sing-songy. Be careful! You can also insert a third sound into the quatrain, even if it remains unrhymed: ABCB, ABCA, ABAC, etc. A quatrain poem has two or more quatrain stanzas. Each stanza should serve as its own little thought bubble, like paragraphs in a story or essay. Practice developing a single quatrain before sitting down to write a whole poem. Don't worry about writing something that will develop into a full poem; this is just practice. Try to develop a full thought in four lines of metered writing. Some rhyme schemes have a long tradition that you should research, but you don't have to follow any "rules." Learn the history of the pattern, but feel free to make it your own. Tennyson said that his grief took the form of the In Memoriam stanza after his friend Arthur Hallam died. That's why "In Memoriam A.H.H." has that metrical pattern. The tetrameter (4 feet) feels like unfinished pentameter (5 feet). The A sound comes early, then returns at the end of each stanza. This resembles the poem and poet's inability to move past Arthur's death. Thomas Gray's wrote "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" in Sicilian quatrains. A.E. Housman used double couplets in his "To an Athlete Dying Young" to mimic the upbeat tone of a cheering crowd. This contrasts the death that closes the poem. An example of a repeating ABCD rhyme scheme (where none of the first four lines rhyme with one another but instead rhyme with the lines of the next quatrain) can be found in the first two quatrains of John Allan Wyeth's Souilly: Hospital:Fever, and crowds---and light that cuts your eyes--AMen waiting in a long slow-shuffling lineBwith silent private faces, white and bleak.CLong rows of lumpy stretchers on the floor.DMy helmet drops---a head jerks up and criesAwide-eyed and settles in a quivering whine.BThe air is rank with touching human reek.CA troop of Germans clatters through the door.D