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Brooklyn Crane's avatar

I actually quite enjoy the fact you bent the form to fit what you had in mind while style retaining the rhyme, spirit and length of quatrains. Then you made it use anaphora (repeating a word on every first line or clause) and came up with something truly yours.

Tony Burkinshaw's avatar

‘Anaphora’ that’s a new addition to my armoury. I knew there’d be a word for it.

Is it still a quatrain if I bend the rules so that it reads like a quatrain but the written poem mixes 3, 4, 5 line stanzas in order to do the Anaphora’ bit?

Now there’s a technical puzzle, (at least it is for me).

Brooklyn Crane's avatar

Well, technically, it’s not a quatrain. French for 4, but who cares about the French? 🤷🏻‍♂️ We’re making art here!

Tony Burkinshaw's avatar

That’s what I suspected but hoped there’d be a technical term for a quatrain that only isn’t a quatrain because the ‘four’ lines have been reordered in order to create the ‘Anaphora’. If it were read out loud, it would sound exactly like a quatrain…

If there isn’t such a term, perhaps we should create one

Gary L Taylor's avatar

I love the way it builds, using all the 'nevers' to tell its tale.

Flows and reads nicely, too.

Tony Burkinshaw's avatar

It was sitting as a vague idea for a couple of days, just the ‘never’ and a rhythm.

When I sat down to write, it flowed fairly well and only needed a little tweaking at the end to tickle a couple of rhymes into place and re ordered a couple of stanzas to get the ending better. I think that helped it build up to a finale.

The last line was going to be ‘Yet still he lies here dead’ but I thought it'd be better to keep the ‘never’ going right through - Anaphora, according to Brooklyn Crane. (The second line of the stanza was changed as well to keep the rhyming pattern)