Although out of fashion, Stephen Vincent Benet has had a quatrain ringing in my ear for weeks, probably because it's good and probably because I grew up in NC:

Daniel Boone

When Daniel Boone goes by, at night,
the phantom deer arise,
and all lost, wild America
is burning in their eyes.


Anyone else for a quatrain gallery of American portraits? Go to my most recent posting below for rules.

An entry:

Audubon

When John J. Audubon looks up,
the blue jay does not blink,
and when he looks back down again,
the thief lies caught in ink.


Acknowledgements: I owe thanks to Wm Baer for sticking the Boone quatrain in my ear in the first place. The quatrain and the exercise that prompted this game appear in William Baer's Writing Metrical Poetry, Writer's Digest Books, 2006, along with exemplar poems by several Eratospherians and Erato guests: Jan Hodge, AE Stallings, Marion Shore, RS Gwynne, Robert Mezey and, of course, Richard Wilbur. The quatrain on Boone appears in a book I cannot find in our library: The Book of Americans, Benet & Benet, Holt Rinehart % Winston, 1933. It was reissued in 1987 with illustrations and may be in the children's section. It also appears in the Penguin edition of The Devil and Daniel Webster.



[This message has been edited by R E Bolick (edited June 01, 2006).]

When R E Bollick seeks quatrains
it's easy to comply;
you only have to rhyme two lines,
and slide from tet' to tri'.

One of my favorites, by Spike Milligan:

Rain

There are holes in the sky,
Where the rain gets in.
They're not very large,
So the rain is thin.

Hey, Mike --

Get the 'el out of there, there's only one!

Come on, both of you; portraits, gentlemen, portraits.

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif

As Edgar paddled down the Po,
a raven kept him on the go,
for every time he rowed to shore,
quoth the raven, "Never moor."

Thanks, Leslie, imp of the perverse!

The judges have debated and must rule that one very, very close but no Gold Bug. No Gold Bug because the Po River is in Italy, and their eminences are pretty sure Poe never went there. There may be Po rivers in the US, but it's the Italian Po we know, and the judges have spoken. Still the judges have ruled it "very, very close" because today the river has detectable levels of cocaine in it, and if Edgar were alive, he'd head for it. So you're still in the running. Another!

Cheers,
BobB

High on a pique in Darien,
R E Bolick dwells -
he can't recall when he began
dispelling double els.



[This message has been edited by Michael Cantor (edited May 29, 2006).]

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/tongue.gif For that I'm assigning you that great American: Spiro T. Agnew http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/biggrin.gif

Harbinger

Agnew was a man that most
Republicans adored;
sleek, corrupt and self assured,
and now, thank God, he's toast.

The panel of judges love it! Particularly your initiating lines 1 and 3 with a trochee and lines 2 and 4 with an iamb to parallel the abab rhyme scheme. Plus, they don't like Agnew.

Congratulations, you're still on the island.
Forty-seven more contributions from our colleagues, and we'll have a chapbook -- "A Portrait Gallery in Quatrains: Famous and Infamous Americans"!

New rule: For each quatrain accepted on the island, the judges will declare a categorical exclusion. So in the case of the Agnew quatrain, the judges declare no more vice presidents allowed. Greeks, crooks, etc., are still valid categories.

So do you think we can get Alicia to do Maria Callas (born in NY)?

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/biggrin.gif