Quads and The Reluctant Blogger

Ok, time to admit that I'm not really keeping this blog up and running.  It is more like up and snailing. There are reasons for this beyond my basically lazy nature. I'll go over them when I've got it straight in my head.

In the mean time, here is an old exercise I did for fun. You write four line poems ending in four letter words (most of the time) revolving around four consonants. I call them Quads.

You take a four letter word that can be reversed with similar consonant and vowel sounds. You also need to be able to set another pair up by only changing the vowel sounds. This gives you a set of four words to use as end rhymelikeness: time, mite, mate, and tame.  You can also use longer words that end in the proper sounds, like stime, smite, estimate, and, um, tame.  Exact sound matches are not necessary, but I think it works better when you keep it close.

Here are some examples, my better ones.  I won't show you the really bad ones.

If I could be an act of love

I'd be the naked vole

who under darkness of the vale

builds a root enclave.

A newsprint kite

waddles behind a tike.

The wind will take

them soon, Kate.

The bird was male

and not lame,

but the act sublime.

I followed him a mile.

It is a very limiting form, and that is the beauty of it.  You end up with junk, or ideas you would have never come up with if you were writing without constraints.