Literature | mysite-1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Baba

The most commonly recurring characters outside of the Earwicker family are the four old men known collectively as "Mamalujo" (a conflation of their names: Matt Gregory, Marcus Lyons, Luke Tarpey and Johnny Mac Dougall). These four most commonly serve as narrators, but they also play a number of active roles in the text, such as when they serve as the judges in the court case of I.4, or as the inquisitors who question Yawn in III.4. Tindall summarises the roles that these old men play as those of the Four Masters, the Four Evangelists, and the four Provinces of Ireland ( "Matthew, from the north, is Ulster; Mark, from the south, is Munster; Luke, from the east, is Leinster; and John, from the west, is Connaught").[163] According to Finn Fordham, Joyce related to his daughter-in-law Helen Fleischmann that "Mamalujo" also represented Joyce's own family, namely his wife Nora (mama), daughter Lucia (lu), and son Giorgio (jo).[164]

FORTY

Ali Baba (Arabic: علي بابا‎‎ ʿAlī Bābā ) is a character from the folk tale Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (علي بابا والأربعون لصا). This story is included in many versions of the One Thousand and One Nights, to which it was added by Antoine Galland in the 18th century. It is one of the most familiar of the "Arabian Nights" tales, and has been widely retold and performed in many media, especially for children, where the more violent aspects of the story are often suppressed.

16 POEMS AND 16 SALTIRES

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juvenal

Juvenal wrote at least 16 poems in the verse form dactylic hexameter. These poems cover a range of Roman topics. This follows Lucilius—the originator of the Roman satire genre, and it fits within a poetic tradition that also includes Horace and Persius. The Satires are a vital source for the study of ancient Rome from a number of perspectives, though their comic mode of expression makes it problematic to accept the content as strictly factual. At first glance the Satires could be read as a critique of pagan Rome. That critique may have ensured their survival in the Christian monastic scriptoria. The majority of ancient texts did not survive.

Juvenal is credited with sixteen known poems divided between five books; all are in the Roman genre of Satire, which, at its most basic in the time of the author, comprised a wide-ranging discussion of society and social mores in dactylic hexameter.[4] In Satire I, concerning the scope and content of his work, Juvenal says:

Book I: Satires 1–5

Book II: Satire 6

Book III: Satires 7–9

Book IV: Satires 10–12

Book V: Satires 13–16 (Satire 16 is incompletely preserved)

FOUR NOTEBOOKS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Notebook

The Golden Notebook is the story of writer Anna Wulf, the four notebooks in which she records her life, and her attempt to tie them together in a fifth, gold-coloured, notebook. The book intersperses segments of an ostensibly realistic narrative of the lives of Molly and Anna, and their children, ex-husbands and lovers—entitled Free Women—with excerpts from Anna's four notebooks, coloured black (of Anna's experience in Southern Rhodesia, before and during World War II, which inspired her own best-selling novel), red (of her experience as a member of the Communist Party), yellow (an ongoing novel that is being written based on the painful ending of Anna's own love affair), and blue (Anna's personal journal where she records her memories, dreams, and emotional life). Each notebook is returned to four times, interspersed with episodes from Free Women, creating non-chronological, overlapping sections that interact with one another. This post-modern styling, with its space for "play" engaging the characters and readers, is among the most famous features of the book, although Lessing insisted that readers and reviewers pay attention to the serious themes in the novel.[citation needed]

FOUR GREAT IRISH CYCLES

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Irish_literature

The principal saga cycles[edit]

Main article: Irish mythology

There are four great cycles in Irish story-telling, not all of which fully survive.

THE PEARL POET FOUR MANUSCRIPTS FOUND TOGETHER ONE WAS GAWAIN- I HAD TO READ GAWAIN IN HIGH SCHOOL ENGLISH CLASS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Gawain_and_the_Green_Knight

The three other works found in the same manuscript as Gawain (commonly known as Pearl, Patience, and Purity or Cleanliness) are often considered to be written by the same author. However, the manuscript containing these poems was transcribed by a copyist and not by the original poet. Although nothing explicitly suggests that all four poems are by the same poet, comparative analysis of dialect, verse form, and diction have pointed towards single authorship.[10]

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/44886

Edgar Allan Poe 4 by 4 quadrant model 16 line poem

Follow 3

A Dream

In visions of the dark night

I have dreamed of joy departed-

But a waking dream of life and light

Hath left me broken-hearted.

Ah! what is not a dream by day

To him whose eyes are cast

On things around him with a ray

Turned back upon the past?

That holy dream- that holy dream,

While all the world were chiding,

Hath cheered me as a lovely beam

A lonely spirit guiding.

What though that light, thro' storm and night,

So trembled from afar-

What could there be more purely bright

In Truth's day-star?

TETRA IS FOUR- RUBIYAT QUATRAIN

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stopping_by_Woods_on_a_Snowy_Evening

The poem is written in iambic tetrameter in the Rubaiyat stanza created by Edward Fitzgerald. Each verse (save the last) follows an a-a-b-a rhyming scheme, with the following verse's a's rhyming with that verse's b, which is a chain rhyme (another example is the terza rima used in Dante's Inferno.) Overall, the rhyme scheme is AABA-BBCB-CCDC-DDDD.[3]

quatrains

https://youtu.be/njxd_oP7X10

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tale_of_the_Four_Dervishes

The Tale of the Four Dervishes (Persian: قصه چهار درویش Ghesseh-ye Chahār Darvīsh; known in Urdu as Bagh-o Bahar (باغ و بہار, "Garden and Spring")) is a collection of allegorical stories by Amir Khusro written in Persian in the late 13th century.

Legend has it that Amir Khusro's master and Sufi saint Nizamuddin Auliya had fallen ill. To cheer him up, Amir Khusro started telling him a series of stories in One Thousand and One Nights style. By the end of the stories, Nizamuddin Auliya had recovered, and prayed that anyone who listened to these stories would also be cured.

Contents [hide]

1 Style

2 Translations

3 See also

4 External links

Style[edit]

The book is in some ways similar to the Thousand and One Nights in its method of framing and linking unfinished stories within each other. The central character is a king, Azad Bakht, who falls into depression after thinking about his own mortality, and so sets out from his palace seeking wise men. He comes upon four dervishes in a cemetery, and listens to their fantastical stories.

Translations[edit]

These stories were originally written in Persian by Amir Khusro as "Ghasseh-e Chahar Darvesh" (The Tale of the Four Dervishes). It was initially translated by Mir Husain Ata Tehseen into Urdu as Nau Tarz-e-Murassa but the language was a highly literate one and was not understood by general public to enjoy. In 1801, College of Fort William in Calcutta started a project translating Indian literature. Mr. John Borthwick Gilchrist, a famous scholar of literature, asked Mir Amman, an employee of the college, to translate it into the Urdu language. Mir Amman translated it from Persian into everyday Urdu, under the title Bagh o Bahar (The Garden and the Spring Season). Later, in 1857, Duncan Forbes retranslated it into English. The translation of Mir Amman is still enjoyed as a classical work of Urdu Literature for the common daily language of its time.

FAMOUS FOUR PART BOOK

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_the_Feet_of_the_Master

The original edition's front cover features an illustration (in gold on blue background), of a path leading to an Egyptian-style gateway; in the frontispiece there is a contemporary photograph of Alcyone.[7] The book includes a preface by Besant, and a dedication page with the inscription, "To those who knock". Following, is an additional full-page photograph of Alcyone (uncaptioned), a page with a short, unattributed quote in Sanskrit and English, and a foreword by Alcyone. The body of the work is then laid out in four parts, corresponding to its proclaimed requirements for disciples on the spiritual path: [8]

Discrimination

Desirelessness

Good conduct

Love

ORIGINALLY THREE BOOK SERIES A FOURTH WAS ADDED THAT WAS DIFFERENT

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_(novel_series)

Millennium is a series of best-selling and award-winning Swedish crime novels, created by Stieg Larsson. The two primary characters in the saga are Lisbeth Salander, a woman in her twenties with a photographic memory and poor social skills, and Mikael Blomkvist, an investigative journalist and publisher of a magazine called Millennium.

Larsson planned the series as having ten installments, but due to his sudden death in 2004, only three were completed and published.[1][2] All of them were published posthumously: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in 2005, The Girl Who Played with Fire in 2006, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest in 2007.

The series was originally printed in Swedish by Norstedts Förlag, with English editions by Quercus in the United Kingdom and Alfred A. Knopf in the United States. The books have since been translated and published by many publishers in over fifty countries. As of March 2015, 80 million copies of the three books have been sold worldwide.

A fourth book, The Girl in the Spider's Web, commissioned by the publisher Norstedts to continue the series, was published in August 2015. The book is based on Larsson's characters and was written by the Swedish author and crime journalist David Lagercrantz.

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https://quadriformisratio.wordpress.com/tag/quadriregio/

From the website quadriformisratio

The period of renewed attention of the virtues took place in the Roman cultural presence during the first half of the first century BC. It found in Cicero (106 – 43 BC) its most important representative. The three books of the ‘De officiis‘ were inspired by the work of the Stoic Panaetius, living in the second century BC. The cardinal virtues were summed up as follows (MILLER, 1921; Book I, V):

1. The full perception and intelligent development of the true (wisdom);

2. The conservation of organized society, with rendering to every man his due, and with the faithful discharge of obligations assumed (justice);

3. The greatness and strength of a noble and invincible spirit (fortitude/ courage);

4. The orderliness and moderation of everything that is said and done, wherein consist temperance and self-control (temperance).

It can be noted that, the sequence of the virtues does not follow the Greek/Zenonian succession. Cicero placed the courage in the Third Quadrant, and it became therefore the most ‘visible’ of the four virtues. Compared to the ‘classical’ sequence: (1) Prudence – (2) Fortitude – (3) Temperance – (4) Justice is the ‘Ciceronian’ order given as: 1 – 4 – 2 – 3. It is hard to prove that Cicero employed such a succession on purpose, but in the light of his position in the Roman cultural history – living in the (interpreted) third part of the Third Quadrant (III,3) – such a choice would be understandable.

The theme of the virtues was further elaborated by the Church Fathers. Ambrosius (c. 340 – 397 AD) used – in his book ‘De officiis ministrorum‘ – the Platonic-Stoic quadripartite scheme of virtues, which was directly taken from Cicero (including the title). Ambrosius was, in his writings ‘In Lucam’ and ‘De Paradiso’, heavily indebted to Philo of Alexandria, by connecting the Rivers of Paradise with the four main virtues: ‘The Cardinal Virtues could also be set in a wider and more flexible context (..) by correlating them with other groups of four, such as the four Rivers of Paradise, the horns of the altar (horns of consecretation; fig. 344/345), the Evangelists, major prophets, early Fathers.’

From the website quadriformisratio

https://quadriformisratio.wordpress.com/…/the-tetramorph-a…/
The Canon-tables gave an index to the concordance of the Gospels. The numbers in the columns refer to the numbering of the individual verses in the four gospels. 1. A grid canon-table, Canon X (with references in only one gospel) from the Echternach Gospels, f. 12v. HENDERSON (1987); 2. Canons VI, VII en VIII from the Book of Kells, f. 5. HENDERSON (1987); 3. Four-parted canon-table. Evangelarium of Flavigny. Autun, Bibliotheque Municipale. Ms 4, fol. 4r.; 4. Cod. 847, fol. 5r. Bibliotheque National, Vienna, sixth century. STERN, Henri (1953).
The first canon (I) consisted of four columns with verses, which occur in all four gospels. Canon II – IV contained verses, which occur in three gospels, canon V – IX comprised verses, which can be found in two gospels and, finally, the last canon (X) contained verses, which only occur in one gospel.
The canon-tables were frequently used in manuscripts in the sixth century (STERN, 1953). He gave many examples of canon-tables in his article on the ‘Le calendrier de 326‘. The arches were a classical means to divide the numbers (of the concordant verses) into rows.
The ‘Book of Kells’, written around 800, opened with ten canon-tables (and two blank pages (FRIEND, 1939; NORDENFALK, 1977; HENDERSON, 1987) (fig. 318). The manuscript, in the Trinity College, Dublin (MS. A.1.6 or MS. 58), opens with a list of ‘in quo quattuor’ texts (occurring in four gospels) with a continuation on folio 2. Folio 2v. opens with Canon II (‘in quo tres‘, Matthew, Mark and Luke). This is continued on folio 3. A change in format takes place. The short Canon III is written on folio 3v, without illustrations. Folio 4 gives Canon IV (‘in quo tres‘, Matthew, Mark and John): left the angel and to the right the eagle. Canon V is given on folio 4v (‘in quo duo’, Matthew and Luke) and means a new change in style: two great arches and a single arch over those two indicate a ‘duality’ of the table. The same design is used in folio 5, which provides in Canon VI the texts of Matthew and Mark, in Canon VII texts from Matthew and John and in Canon VIII verses from Mark and Luke (fig. 318 – 2).
Canon IX, on folio 5v, compares passages from St. Luke and St. John, and the copyist employed a grid-system, together with folio 6 (Canon X). This is the third change of style within the Canon-tables at the beginning of the Book of Kells. The grid illustration indicates, according to HENDERSON (1987), a possible archaic representation of the IXth and Xth Canon, like it also featured in the Echternach Gospels (fig. 318 – 1). FRIEND (1939) was of the opinion that the use of the grid was a sign of degeneration, in which the Book of Kells ‘was completed in some inferior scriptorium after the marvellous artist of the earlier pages was no longer available.’ HENDERSON (1987), pointing to other archaic forms, does not agree with that conclusion.

https://quadriformisratio.wordpress.com/2013/07/01/886/

The early nineteenth century was searching for new spiritual ground. The poem of William Blake, titled ‘The Four Zoas‘ (written between 1796 and Blake’s death in 1827) was such an effort. The poem described his own mythology in eleven parts (Night I – XI)(WILKIE & JOHNSON, 1978).

Blake devised a universe of four Zoas (spheres), being representative of the primordial human qualities (fig. 217). The Four Zoas were gathered around the throne of Albion (the archetypal human being). Within the ‘Mundane Egg‘ (the white part in fig. 217) there is a clash between Urizen (Ratio), Luvah (Passion) and Tharmas (Instinct), which is reconciled by the forces of Imagination in Urthona (the capacity to be creative and imaginative).

Four Mighty Ones are in every Man: a Perfect Unity

Cannot Exist. but from the Universal Brotherhood of Eden

The Universal Man. To Whom be Glory Evermore Amen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_in_the_Middle_Ages

The Four Great Medieval Allegories were

Le Roman de la Rose. A major allegorical work, it had many lasting influences on western literature, creating entire new genres and development of vernacular languages.

The Divine Comedy. Ranked amongst the greatest medieval works, both allegorically and as a work of literature; was (and remains) hugely popular.

Piers Plowman. An encyclopedic array of allegorical devices. Dream-vision; pilgrimage; personification; satire; typological story structure (the dreamer's progress mirrors the progress of biblical history from the Fall of Adam to Apocalypse).

Pearl. A plot based on an anagogical allegory; a dreamer is introduced to heavenly Jerusalem. Focus on the meaning of death. A religious response to Consolation of Philosophy.

ALL THIS STUFF IS IN MY OVER 50 QMR BOOKS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fee-fi-fo-fum

A quatrain is four lines

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fee-fi-fo-fum

"Fee-fi-fo-fum" is the first line of a historical quatrain (or sometimes couplet) famous for its use in the classic English fairy tale Jack and the Beanstalk. The poem, as given in Joseph Jacobs's 1890 rendition, is as follows:

Jack and the Beanstalk Giant - Project Gutenberg eText 17034.jpg
Fee-fi-fo-fum,
I smell the blood of an Englishman,
Be he alive, or be he dead
I'll grind his bones to make my bread.[1]

Though the rhyme is tetrametric, it follows no consistent metrical foot; however, the respective verses correspond roughly to monosyllabic tetrameter, dactylic tetrameter, trochaic tetrameter, and iambic tetrameter. The poem has historically made use of assonant half rhyme.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Botany_of_Desire

The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World is a 2001 nonfiction book by journalist Michael Pollan. Pollan presents case studies that mirror four types of human desires that are reflected in the way that we selectively grow, breed, and genetically engineer our plants. The tulip beauty, marijuana intoxication, the apple sweetness and the potato control.

The stories range from the true story of Johnny Appleseed to Pollan's first-hand research with sophisticated marijuana hybrids in Amsterdam to the paradigm-shifting possibilities of genetically engineered potatoes. Pollan also discusses the limitations of monoculture agriculture: specifically, the adoption in Ireland of a single breed of potato (the Lumper) made the Irish vulnerable to a fungus to which it had no resistance, resulting in the Irish Potato Famine. The Peruvians from whom the Irish had gotten the potato grew hundreds of varieties, so their exposure to any given pest was slight.

https://quadriformisratio.wordpress.com/…/the-tetramorph-a…/

It is recorded in the nursery rhyme (song in a four-poster bed):
.
fourposter
———— Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,
———— Bless the bed that I lie on.
———— Two to foot and two to head,
———— Four to carry me when I’m dead.
Like

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Branches_of_the_Mabinogi

The Four Branches of the Mabinogi or Y Pedair Cainc Mabinogi are the earliest prose literature of Britain. Originally written in Wales in Middle Welsh, but widely available in translations, the Mabinogi is generally agreed to be a single work in four parts, or "Branches." The interrelated tales can be read as mythology, political themes, romances, or magical fantasies. They appeal to a wide range of readers, from young children to the most sophisticated adult. The tales are popular today in book format, as storytelling or theatre performances; they appear in recordings and on film, and continue to inspire many reinterpretations in artwork and modern fiction.

Each Branch contains several tale episodes in a sequence, and each Branch is titled with the name of a leading protagonist. These titles are Pwyll, Branwen, Manawydan and Math, but this is a modern custom: the Branches are not titled in the mediaeval manuscripts. Only one character appears in all four Branches, Pryderi, though he is never dominant or central to any of the Branches.

Square 1: Pwyll Prince of Dyfed tells of the heroic and magical sojourn of Pwyll in Annwfn, his shapeshifting, chastity and a duel, which all establish a mighty alliance. The formidable Rhiannon courts him, and he helps her win her freedom to marry him. The strange abduction at birth of their baby son follows, with his rescue, fostering and restoration by the good lord Teyrnon of Gwent. The child is named Pryderi.

Square 2: Branwen Daughter of Llŷr follows Branwen's marriage to the King of Ireland, who abuses her due to insult by her half brother Efnisien. A tragically genocidal war develops fomented by Efnisien, in which a Cauldron which resurrects the dead figures, and the giant king Bran's head survives his death in an enchanted idyll. Pryderi is merely named as a war survivor, and Branwen dies heartbroken.

Square 3: Manawydan Son of Llŷr brother of Branwen, heir to the throne of Britain, becomes Pryderi's good friend during the war. Pryderi arranges his friend's marriage to Rhiannon. The land of Dyfed is devastated. Journeys in England setting up craft businesses follow. An enchanted trap removes Pryderi and Rhiannon: Manawydan becomes a farmer. He cannily negotiates their release, as well as the restoration of the land, by confronting the villain behind it all.

Square 4: Math Son of Mathonwy is a dark sequence of deception and treachery: war with Dyfed, the death of Pryderi, the double rape of a virgin girl, and the rejection of an unwanted hero son by proud Arianrhod. Gwydion her magician brother is the architect of all these destinies. He adds an artificially incubated pregnancy, and a synthetic woman. She, Blodeuedd, creates a treacherous love triangle, murder in a peculiar manner. Gwydion makes a shamanic journey of redemption.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Roses_are_red_1_-_WW_Denslow_-_Project_Gutenberg_etext_18546.jpg

William Wallace Denslow's illustrations for "Roses are red", from a 1901 edition of Mother Goose

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roses_Are_Red

Four part poem

Roses are red 1 - WW Denslow - Project Gutenberg etext 18546.jpg

William Wallace Denslow's illustrations for "Roses are red", from a 1901 edition of Mother Goose

Song

Written England

Published 1784

Form Nursery rhyme

Writer(s) Traditional

Language English

"Roses Are Red" can refer to a specific poem, or a class of poems inspired by that poem. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19798.[1] It is most commonly used as a love poem.

Lyrics Edit

The most common modern form of the poem is:

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

Sugar is sweet,

And so are you.

Origins Edit

The origins of the poem may be traced at least as far back as to the following lines written in 1590 by Sir Edmund Spenser from his epic The Faerie Queene (Book Three, Canto 6, Stanza 6):[2]

It was upon a Sommers shynie day,

When Titan faire his beames did display,

In a fresh fountaine, farre from all mens vew,

She bath'd her brest, the boyling heat t'allay;

She bath'd with roses red, and violets blew,

And all the sweetest flowres, that in the forrest grew.

A nursery rhyme significantly closer to the modern cliché Valentine's Day poem can be found in Gammer Gurton's Garland, a 1784 collection of English nursery rhymes:

The rose is red, the violet's blue,

The honey's sweet, and so are you.

Thou are my love and I am thine;

I drew thee to my Valentine:

The lot was cast and then I drew,

And Fortune said it shou'd be you.[3]

Victor Hugo was likely familiar with Spenser, but may not have known the English nursery rhyme when, in 1862, he published the novel Les Misérables. Hugo was a poet as well as a novelist, and within the text of the novel are many songs. One sung by the character, Fantine, contains this refrain, in the 1862 English translation:

We will buy very pretty things

A-walking through the faubourgs.

Violets are blue, roses are red,

Violets are blue, I love my loves.

The last two lines in the original French are:

Les bleuets sont bleus, les roses sont roses,

Les bleuets sont bleus, j'aime mes amours.

(Les Misérables, Fantine, Book Seven, Chapter Six)[4]

Folklore Edit

Numerous satirical versions have long circulated in children's lore.[5] Among them:

Roses are red.

Violets are blue.

Onions stink.

And so do you.[6]

The Marx Brothers' film Horse Feathers has Chico Marx describing the symptoms of cirrhosis thus:-

Cirrhosis are red,

so violets are blue,

so sugar is sweet,

so so are you.[7]

Benny Hill version:-

Roses are reddish

Violets are bluish

If it weren't for Christmas

We'd all be Jewish[8]

Notes

FOUR CHARACTER IDIOMS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yojijukugo

There exists a very large number — perhaps tens of thousands — of four-character compounds. A great majority of them are those whose meanings can be easily deduced from the literal definition of their parts. These compounds may be called non-idiomatic yojijukugo.

For example, the compound word 屋内禁煙 okunaikin'en "no smoking indoors" is a non-idiomatic yojijukugo. It is made up of four characters: 屋 oku building, 内 nai inside, 禁 kin prohibited, and 煙 en smoking. Alternatively, it can be regarded as consisting of two common two-character compounds: 屋内 okunai indoors, and 禁煙 kin'en prohibition of smoking. Either way, the meaning of the compound is clear; there are no idiomatic meanings beyond the literal meanings of its components. Below are a few more examples of non-idiomatic yojijukugo:

大学教育 daigakukyōiku (daigaku university + kyōiku education)

環境悪化 kankyōakka (kankyō environment + akka deterioration)

日米関係 nichibeikankei (nichi Japan + bei U.S. + kankei relations)

歴史小説 rekishishōsetsu (rekishi history + shōsetsu novel)

宣伝効果 sendenkōka (senden advertisement + kōka effect).

Note that 四字熟語 is itself a non-idiomatic four-character phrase.

Idiomatic yojijukugo

By contrast, several thousands of these four-character compounds are true idioms in the sense that they have a particular meaning that may not be deducted from the literal meanings of the component words. An example of the highly idiomatic compound is:

海千山千 umisenyamasen (umi ocean + sen thousand + yama mountain + sen thousand)

"Ocean-thousand, mountain-thousand" means "a sly old fox" or someone who has had all sorts of experience in life so that s/he can handle, or wiggle out of, any difficult situations through cunning alone. This meaning derives from an old saying that a snake lives in the ocean for a thousand years and in the mountains for another thousand years before it turns into a dragon. Hence a sly, worldly-wise person is referred to as one who has spent "a thousand years in the ocean and another thousand in the mountain".

Many idiomatic yojijukugo were adopted from classical Chinese literature. Other four-character idioms are derived from Buddhist literature and scriptures, old Japanese customs and proverbs, and historical and contemporary Japanese life and social experience. The entries in the published dictionaries of yojijukugo are typically limited to these idiomatic compounds of various origins.

Chinese and Japanese origins of idiomatic yojijukugo

The Japanese yojijukugo are closely related to the Chinese chengyu in that a great many of the former are adopted from the latter and have the same or similar meaning as in Chinese. Many other yojijukugo, however, are Japanese in origin. Some examples of these indigenous Japanese four-character idioms are:

合縁奇縁 aienkien (uncanny relationship formed by a quirk of fate)

一期一会 ichigoichie (once-in-a-lifetime experience)

海千山千 umisenyamasen (sly old dog of much worldly wisdom)

色恋沙汰 irokoizata (romantic entanglement; love affair)

傍目八目 okamehachimoku (a bystander's vantage point)

手前味噌 temaemiso (singing one's own praises; tooting one's own horn)

二股膏薬 futamatagōyaku (double-dealer; timeserver)

Examples of idiomatic yojijukugo

一攫千金 ikkakusenkin (ichi one + kaku grasp + sen thousand + kin gold)

making a fortune at a stroke. (Origin: Chinese classics)

美人薄命 bijinhakumei (bi beauty + jin person + haku thin + mei life)

A beautiful woman is destined to die young.; Beauty and fortune seldom go together. (Origin: Chinese classics)

酔生夢死 suiseimushi (sui drunken + sei life + mu dreamy + shi death)

idling one's life away; dreaming away one's life accomplishing nothing significant (Origin: Chinese classics)

羊頭狗肉 yōtōkuniku (yō sheep + tō head + ku dog + niku meat)

crying wine and selling vinegar; extravagant advertisement (Origin: Chinese classics)

悪因悪果 akuin'akka (aku bad/evil + in cause + aku bad/evil + ka effect)

An evil cause produces an evil effect; Sow evil and reap evil. (Origin: Buddhist scriptures)

会者定離 eshajōri (e meeting + sha person + jō always + ri be separated)

Every meeting must involve a parting; Those who meet must part. (Origin: Buddhist scriptures)

一期一会 ichigoichie (ichi one + go life + ichi one + e encounter)

(Every encounter is a) once-in-a-lifetime encounter (Origin: Japanese tea ceremony)

一石二鳥 issekinichō (ichi one + seki stone + ni two + chō bird)

killing two birds with one stone (Origin: English proverb)

異体同心 itaidōshin (i different + tai body + dō same + shin mind)

Harmony of mind between two persons; two persons acting in perfect accord　

順風満帆 junpūmanpan (jun gentle/favorable + pū wind + man full + pan sails）

smooth sailing with all sails set; everything going smoothly

十人十色 jūnintoiro (jū ten + nin person + to ten + iro color)

to each their own; So many people, so many minds.

自画自賛 jigajisan (ji own/self + ga painting + ji self/own + san praise/an inscription written on a painting)

a painting with an inscription or poem written by the artist themselves (as a non-idiomatic compound)

singing one's own praises; blowing one's own horn; self-admiration (as an idiomatic compound)

我田引水 gaden'insui (ga own/self + den field + in draw + sui water)

self-seeking; feathering one's own nest

唯我独尊 yuigadokuson (yui only + ga self + doku alone + son respect/honor)

I alone am honored; holier-than-thou; Holy am I alone (Origin: Buddhist scriptures)

電光石火 denkōsekka (den electricity + kō light + seki stone + ka fire)

as fast as lightning

THIS AUSTRIAN MYSTICIST TRIED TO REVIVE RUNES AND MADE 18 SYMBOLS --- BORROWING FROM THE 16 RUNES OF THE VIKINGS (16 squares of the quadrant model) AND ADDING TWO MORE- ONE A CROSS AND ONE A CURVED CROSS/SWASTIKA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armanen_runes

List noted in his book, The Secret of the Runes, that the "runic futharkh (= runic ABC) consisted of sixteen symbols in ancient times."[4] He also referred to the Armanen runes as the 'Armanen Futharkh' of which Stephen E. Flowers notes in his 1988 English translation of Lists 1907/08 'Das Geheimnis der Runen', that "The designation “futharkh” is based on the first seven runes, namely F U T A R K H (or H) it is for this reason that the proper name is not futhark - as it is generally and incorrectly written – but rather “futharkh”, with the “h” at the end.[5]

The first sixteen of von List's runes correspond to the sixteen Younger Futhark runes, with slight modifications in names (and partly mirrored shapes). The two additional runes are loosely inspired by the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc.

Fa (an inverted Fe) - F

Ur - U

Thurs (as Anglo-Saxon Thorn) (also known as 'Dorn') - Th

Os (a mirrored Younger Futhark As/Oss) - A(O). In Armanic writings, the Othala rune is generally seen as a variation / extension of Os.[6]

Rit (as Reidh) - R

Ka (as in Younger Futhark) - K

Hagal/Hag (as Younger Futhark Hagall) - H

Nauth/Not (as Younger Futhark Naud) - N

Is (as in Younger Futhark) - I

Ar (similar to short-twig Younger Futhark) - A

Sig/Sol (as Anglo-Saxon Sigel) - S

Tyr - T

Bar (as Younger Futhark Bjarkan) - B

Laf (as Younger Futhark Logr) - L

Man (as Younger Futhark Madr); - M

Yr (as in Younger Futhark, but with a sound value [i]) - Y

Eh (the name is from Anglo-Saxon Futhork, the shape like Younger Futhark Ar) - E

Gibor/Ge/Gi (the name similar to Anglo-Saxon Futhork Gyfu) - G

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Four_Diamonds

The Four Diamonds is a fantasy themed, allegorical short story written by Chris Millard in 1972 shortly before succumbing to cancer at the age of 14. After returning from summer vacation, his teacher told Chris' class to write a story about what they did during their vacation. Chris had spent the summer being treated for his illness, and asked his teacher if he could write something else, to which she agreed. He wrote about adventures and struggle of an aspiring knight, also named Millard, to conquer Raptenahad (a play on "rhabdomyosarcoma," the cancer Chris had), a magic-wielding evil queen who symbolized his illness. To defeat her, the story's Millard has to complete four difficult tasks.[1][2]

The story gave its name to the Four Diamonds Fund, a childhood cancer-centered charitable organization established in 1972 by Chris' parents Charles and Irma. The story was also turned into a Disney TV movie in 1995.

FOUR PARTS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streets_of_Rage

A graphic novel compilation of the original 4-part "Streets of Rage" strip was released as a book called "Streets of Rage: Bad City Fighters" in the UK in 1994.

NOTICE HOW ONE OF THE TRIBES OF OZ FROM WIZARD OF OZ IS THE QUADLINGS- QUAD IS FOUR- ALSO WIZARD OF OZ HAS THE FAMOUS FOURSOME OF DOROTHY AND THE LION THE TIN MAN AND THE SCARECROW- AND OZ WAS A QUADRANT WITH THE WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST BUT ALSO WICKED WITCH OF THE OTHER DIRECTIONS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle-earth

I DESCRIBED LORD OF THE RINGS ACCORDING TO A LECTURE I WATCHED ON IT IS A QUADRANT WITH THE HUMANS ELVES DWARVES AND HOBBITS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle-earth

In The Silmarillion the history of Arda is divided into four great time periods, known as the Ainulindalë, the Years of the Lamps, the Years of the Trees (the Valian years) and the Years of the Sun. In Middle-earth recorded history did not begin until the First Age and the Awakening of the Elves during the Years of the Trees - the time prior to that is simply known as the Beginning of Days. During the First Age the awakening of Men coincided with the first rising of the Sun and the beginning of The Years of the Sun, which have lasted from the First Age, through the Second, Third and Fourth Ages to the present day.

https://youtu.be/lEjwH-aoPb0

At 17 minutes the whirling dervishes arms are crosses

NOSTRADAUMUS WROTE QUATRAINS- QUATRAIN IS FOUR LINES

https://youtu.be/EKdLMo0vWCk

https://youtu.be/f-cnE4mx3lA

Rubaiyat are quatrains- of OMAR KHAYYAM

RUMI'S FOUR QUATRAINS- quatrain is four lines

https://youtu.be/ws6iGaclRhM

FOUR BOOKS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Domination

The Domination of the Draka is a dystopian alternate history series by S. M. Stirling. It comprises a main trilogy of novels as well as one crossover novel set after the original and a book of short stories. This series is also called the Draka series or Draka Saga.

CHIASMA IS CROSS- ITS LITERARY DEVICE IN BEOWULF BIBLE QURAN BOOK OF MORMON

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiastic_structure

Chiastic structure, or chiastic pattern, is a literary technique in narrative motifs and other textual passages. An example of chiastic structure would be two ideas, A and B, together with variants A' and B', being presented as A,B,B',A'. Alternative names[citation needed] include ring structure, because the opening and closing 'A' can be viewed as completing a circle, palistrophe,[1] or symmetric structure. It may be regarded as chiasmus scaled up from clauses to larger units of text.

These often symmetrical patterns are commonly found in ancient literature such as the epic poetry of the Odyssey and the Iliad. Various chiastic structures are also seen in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, where biblical writers used it to illustrate or highlight details of particular importance.

Contents [hide]

1 Etymology

2 Mnemonic device

3 Use in Hebrew Bible

4 Use in the Qurʾān

5 ABC…CBA pattern

5.1 Beowulf

5.2 Paradise Lost

6 See also

7 Footnotes

8 References

9 Further reading

Etymology[edit]

When read left to right, up to down, the first topic (A) is reiterated as the last, and the middle concept (B) appears twice in succession. (Also, the middle concept could appear just once.)

The term chiastic derives from the mid-17th century term chiasmus, which refers to a crosswise arrangement of concepts or words that are repeated in reverse order. Chiasmus derives from the Greek word khiasmos, a word that is khiazein, marked with the letter khi. From khi comes chi.[2]

Chi is made up of two lines crossing each other as in the shape of an X. The line that starts leftmost on top, comes down, and is rightmost on the bottom, and vice versa. If one thinks of the lines as concepts, one sees that concept A, which comes first, is also last, and concept B, which comes after A, comes before A. If one adds in more lines representing other concepts, one gets a chiastic structure with more concepts. See Proverbs 1:20-33; vs 20-21=A, v 22=B, v 23=C, vs 24-25=D, vs 26-28=E, vs 29-30=D', v 31=C', v 32=B', v 33=A' [3]

Mnemonic device[edit]

Oral literature is especially rich in chiastic structure, possibly as an aid to memorization. In his study of the Iliad and the Odyssey, Cedric Whitman, for instance, finds a chiastic structure "of the most amazing virtuosity" that simultaneously performed both aesthetic and mnemonic functions, permitting the oral poet to easily recall the basic formulae of the composition during performances.[4]

Use in Hebrew Bible[edit]

Main article: Book of Daniel § Chiasm in the Aramaic section

In 1986, William H. Shea proposed that the Book of Daniel is composed of a double-chiasm. He argued that the chiastic structure is emphasized by the two languages that the book is written in: Aramaic and Hebrew. The first chiasm is written in Aramaic from chapters 2-7 following an ABC...CBA pattern. The second chiasm is in Hebrew from chapters 8-12, also using the ABC...CBA pattern. However, Shea represents Daniel 9:26 as "D", a break in the center of the pattern.[5]

Gordon Wenham has analyzed the Genesis Flood narrative and has shown that it is essentially an elaborate chiasm.[6] Based on the earlier study of grammatical structure by F. I. Andersen,[7] Wenham illustrated a chiastic structure as displayed in the following two tables.

Chiastic structure of the Genesis Flood Narrative

A: Noah and his sons (Gen 6:10)

B: All life on earth (6:13:a)

C: Curse on earth (6:13:b)

D: Flood announced (6:7)

E: Ark (6:14-16)

F: All living creatures (6:17–20 )

G: Food (6:21)

H: Animals in man’s hands (7:2–3)

I: Entering the Ark (7:13–16)

J: Waters increase (7:17–20)

X: God remembers Noah (8:1)

J: Waters decrease (8:13–14)

I': Exiting the Ark (8:15–19)

H': Animals (9:2,3)

G': Food (9:3,4)

F': All living creatures (9:10a)

E': Ark (9:10b)

D’:No flood in future (9:11)

C': Blessing on earth (9:12–17)

B': All life on earth (9:16)

A: Noah and his sons (9:18,19a)

Within this overall structure, there is a numerical mini-chiasm of 7s, 40s, and 150s:

Chiasm of the numbers 7, 40, and 150

α: Seven days waiting to enter Ark (7:4)

β: Second mention of seven days waiting (7:10)

γ: 40 days (7:17)

δ: 150 days (7:24)

χ: God remembers Noah (8:1)

δ': 150 days (8:3)

γ': 40 days (8:6)

β': Seven days waiting for dove (8:10)

α': Second seven days waiting for dove (8:12)

The two mentions of the 150 days refer to the same period, and the first 40 days (7:13,17) are part of the 150 days. All this is consistent with the date in 8:4. There was no compelling reason to repeat the first 7-day figure of waiting to enter the Ark except for the corresponding two 7-day figures for the dove. The second mention of the 150 days was also because of the chiasmus. The chiastic structure explains the repetition of these figures. Before these ancient literary conventions were recognized, followers of the Documentary Hypothesis explained the repetition by hypothesizing two different authors or redactors (J or Jahwist and P or Priestly sources). The repetition may also show the literary artistry of a single author or editor, either working from one tradition or weaving together the J and P sources in chiastic fashion.

Use in the Qurʾān[edit]

The themes in the Pedestal Verse and the story of Joseph are presented in a chiastic structure. Several other passages exist in a type of ring symmetry, or symmetrical structure.[8]

ABC…CBA pattern[edit]

Beowulf[edit]

In literary texts with a possible oral origin, such as Beowulf, chiastic or ring structures are often found on an intermediate level, that is, between the (verbal and/or grammatical) level of chiasmus and the higher level of chiastic structure such as noted in the Torah. John D. Niles provides examples of chiastic figures on all three levels.[9] He notes that for the instances of ll. 12–19, the announcement of the birth of (Danish) Beowulf, are chiastic, more or less on the verbal level, that of chiasmus.[10] Then, each of the three main fights are organized chiastically, a chiastic structure on the level of verse paragraphs and shorter passages. For instance, the simplest of these three, the fight with Grendel, is schematized as follows:

A: Preliminaries

Grendel approaching

Grendel rejoicing

Grendel devouring Handscioh

B: Grendel's wish to flee ("fingers cracked")

C: Uproar in hall; Danes stricken with terror

HEOROT IN DANGER OF FALLING

C': Uproar in hall; Danes stricken with terror

B': "Joints burst"; Grendel forced to flee

A': Aftermath

Grendel slinking back toward fens

Beowulf rejoicing

Beowulf left with Grendel's arm[11]

Finally, Niles provides a diagram of the highest level of chiastic structure, the organization of the poem as a whole, in an introduction, three major fights with interludes before and after the second fight (with Grendel's mother), and an epilogue. To illustrate, he analyzes Prologue and Epilogue as follows:

Prologue

A: Panegyric for Scyld

B: Scyld's funeral

C: History of Danes before Hrothgar

D: Hrothgar's order to build Heorot

Epilogue

D': Beowulf's order to build his barrow

C': History of Geats after Beowulf ("messenger's prophecy")

B': Beowulf's funeral

A': Eulogy for Beowulf[12]

Paradise Lost[edit]

The overall chiastic structure of Milton's Paradise Lost is also of the ABC…CBA type:

A: Satan's sinful actions (Books 1–3)

B: Entry into Paradise (Book 4)

C: War in heaven (destruction) (Books 5–6)

C': Creation of the world (Books 7–8)

B': Loss of paradise (Book 9)

A': Humankind's sinful actions (Books 10–12)[13]:141

CICEROS' FOUR ROLES

http://people.wku.edu/jan.garrett/302/4persona.htm

The Four "Roles" We Play:

Cicero's On Duties 1.107-115

by Dr. Jan Garrett

Posted August 10, 2003

In his On Duties (De Officiis), the Roman orator-politician-philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero provides the following moral guidance to a young person starting out on adult life. He makes reference to four "personae," roles or morally relevant descriptions. They are

the universal;

the individual;

the accidental or situational;

and the self-chosen.

It may be worth our time to try to understand each of these and how they fit together in Cicero's general moral advice.

1. "One of the personae [or morally relevant descriptions "with which nature has clothed us"] is universal, deriving from the fact that we all participate in the intelligence and superiority by which we [humans] surpass other animals." (1.107)

Cicero is here speaking of the faculty of rationality or reason, the common possession of which among humans requires us to observe duties of justice toward other humans as well as to do appropriate acts roughly corresponding to admirable qualities such as courage, generosity, and moderation.

2. "The [second persona] is the [set of natural tendencies and talents] bestowed separately on each individual." (1.107)

To illustrate what he has in mind, Cicero remarks (107-109) how some are endowed with quickness, others with strength, some have an imposing presence, others are attractive; some are mentally brilliant, others are mentally slow; some are very serious, others disposed to gaiety; some are witty and indirect in conversation, others get to the point without humor, some are clever and devious, some are ruthless in pursuit of whatever goals they have, others are of open disposition.

Of these diverse individual natural tendencies Cicero says that "each man should retain his particular qualities, though not the harmful ones. We have the obligation to act in such a way that we do not put ourselves in opposition to nature in general" (110), that is, we should not do anything that would be inappropriate or reasonably judged as unjust, cowardly, greedy, or immoderate.

Cicero maintains that this "individual nature" can give concrete shape to one's duty. Thus, he claims (111) that Marcus Cato, the severe, incorruptible (and Stoic) defender of the Roman Republic was probably correct to commit suicide rather than submit to the dictator Caesar, whose armies had defeated Cato's forces in battle. (This event occurred about ten years before On Duties was composed.) Cato's ending his life in this way was appropriate, Cicero implies, given how he had shaped his life up to that point. By contrast, other opponents of Caesar whose individual qualities and prior history were different, were not necessarily wrong in surrendering to Caesar when it became clear that Caesar was likely to be victorious and taking the chance that he would spare them, giving them a chance to perform services to their country and humanity in the future.

"Let each man come to know his own ability," writes Cicero (114). "If we have a choice we shall work faithfully at those things that are most suitable to us. If necessity pushes us into affairs . . . alien to our [individual nature], complete care, forethought, and application must be brought to bear . . . we should act with as much fitness as possible."

3. "A third role [is that which] chance or opportunity thrusts upon the individual . . . when it comes to kingdoms and commands, nobility and high offices, wealth and property, chance governs all and accidents rule the world." (115)

4. "A fourth [role is] that [which] we freely adopt for ourselves by a personal decision." (115) Cicero has in mind a selection of a career or the education and training corresponding to such a long-term activity. He mentions as examples paths familiar to educated Romans: philosophy, civil law, oratory, and military affairs. His point is that those who can should seek "stability within themselves for the whole duration life and no failure in any [morally appropriate action] whatever."

Cicero does not discuss in this passage more traditional roles such as son, daughter, brother, father, mother, husband, wife, friend, fellow-citizen, etc. No doubt he believes that there are appropriate actions associated with each. They partly derive from universal human nature: humans are such as to have some such relationships. But they also partly depend upon events beyond one's control, i.e. "chance." Who one has for a father or brother does not depend upon his own individual nature or his choice, much less his universal nature. While a Roman male of Cicero's time might choose to ask a woman's father to give her in marriage, the availability of the potential spouse and the consent of the woman's father to the arrangement were not in the asker's power.

It appears that our universal (human) nature then sets (strict moral) limits to what we may do: We may not rob or cheat or assault or give false witness about our neighbors. We must do our part to support the communities of which we are part. We must return favors so long as doing so does not involve anything inappropriate. We must follow the law of the state so long as it is not radically contrary to moral principle.

But there is more to choice than this: we must also try to harmonize our universal nature, our individual nature, the external events that chance (or, as the Stoics would say, Fate) dishes out, with our chosen arena of work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Perfect_Day

Uniformity is the defining feature; there is only one language and all ethnic groups have been eugenically merged into one race called "The Family". There are only four personal names for men (Bob, Jesus, Karl and Li) and four for women (Anna, Mary, Peace and Yin)

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/four-word-lines

Four-Word Lines

May Swenson, 1913 - 1989

Your eyes are just

like bees, and I

feel like a flower.

Their brown power makes

a breeze go over

my skin. When your

lashes ride down and

rise like brown bees’

legs, your pronged gaze

makes my eyes gauze.

I wish we were

in some shade and

no swarm of other

eyes to know that

I’m a flower breathing

bare, laid open to

your bees’ warm stare.

I’d let you wade

in me and seize

with your eager brown

bees’ power a sweet

glistening at my core.

Niggun of Four Stanzas

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niggun_of_Four_Stanzas

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Niggun of Four Stanzas or the Niggun of Daled Bavos ("Niggun of Four Gates"), is a wordless tune of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidim. It is known to haven been composed by the first Rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi.[1]

The Niggun of Four Stanzas is of a slower tempo and in a minor key, characteristic of meditative "dveikus niggunim." However, while serious in nature, it is not necessarily intended to be a sad song.[2] Rather, the niggun is intended to lift the singer and the listener to each of the four spiritual worlds of Asiyah, Yetzirah, Beriah and Atzilus, and in fact, the four sections of the niggun correspond to these four worlds. It holds a special place among Chabad niggunim, and is only sung at special occasions, such as during the High Holidays, Yud-Tes Kislev and weddings.[3]

FOUR TYPES OF RIDDLES

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon_riddles

Nigel F. Barley. distinguishes four types:[26]

metaphorical riddle

joke-riddle

riddle of generalisation

riddle of negation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_poem

Four lines of the poem survive,[a] preserved in Hephaestion's Enchiridion, a treatise on meters in Greek poetry

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_story_cycle

Rolf Lundén has suggested four types of cycles, in order of decreasing unity: the cycle, in which the ending resolves the conflicts brought up at the beginning (e.g., The Bridge of San Luis Rey); the sequence, in which each story is linked to the ones before it but without a cumulative story that ties everything together (e.g., The Unvanquished); the cluster, in which the links between stories are not always made obvious and in which the discontinuity between them is more significant than their unity (e.g., Go Down, Moses); and the novella, in the classical sense of a collection of unrelated stories brought together by a frame story and a narrator(s) (e.g., Winesburg, Ohio).[All examples are Lundén's][7]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_dimension_in_literature

The idea of a fourth dimension has been a factor in the evolution of modern art, but use of concepts relating to higher dimensions has been little discussed by academics in the literary world.[1] From the late 1800s onwards, many writers began to make use of possibilities opened up by the exploration of such concepts as hypercubes and non-Euclidean geometry. While many writers took the fourth dimension to be one of time (as it is commonly considered today), others preferred to think of it in spatial terms, and some associated the new mathematics with wider changes in modern culture.

Contents [hide]

1 Early influence

2 Other works

3 See also

4 References

5 Further reading

6 External links

Early influence[edit]

Edgar Allan Poe wrote an essay on cosmology titled Eureka (1848) which said that "space and duration are one". This is the first known instance of suggesting space and time to be different perceptions of one thing. Poe arrived at this conclusion after approximately 90 pages of reasoning but employed no mathematics.[2]

Theoretical physicist James Clerk Maxwell is best known for his work in formulating the equations of electromagnetism. He was also a prize-winning poet,[3] and in his last poem Paradoxical Ode; Maxwell muses on connections between science, religion and nature, touching upon higher-dimensions along the way:[4]

Since all the tools for my untying

In four-dimensioned space are lying,

Where playful fancy intersperses

Whole avenues of universes..

Excerpt from Maxwell's Paradoxical Ode of 1878[5]

In the Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky's last work completed in 1880, the fourth dimension is used to signify that which is ungraspable to someone with earthly (or three-dimensional) concerns.[6] In the book, Ivan Karamazov laments to his younger brother:

"..I have a Euclidean earthly mind, and how could I solve problems that are not of this world? And I advise you never to think about it either, my dear Alyosha, especially about God, whether He exists or not. All such questions are utterly inappropriate for a mind created with an idea of only three dimensions."[7]

In the 1884 satirical novella Flatland by Edwin Abbott Abbott, the two-dimensional protagonist (a square) is introduced to the concept of the third-dimension by his mentor (a sphere). After initially struggling with the idea, the square starts to speculate upon yet higher dimensions. After envisioning a tesseract, the square asks:

"..shall we stay our upward course? In that blessed region of Four Dimensions, shall we linger at the threshold of the Fifth, and not enter therein? Ah, no! Let us rather resolve that our ambition shall soar with our corporal ascent. Then, yielding to our intellectual onset, the gates of the Six Dimension shall fly open; after that a Seventh, and then an Eighth.."[8]

Oscar Wilde's The Canterville Ghost (A Hylo-Idealistic Romance) published in 1887 was Wilde's parody of a "haunted-house" story. The tale uses the higher spatial dimension as a handy plot device allowing a magical exit for the ghost:[9]

"There was evidently no time to be lost, so, hastily adopting the Fourth Dimension of Space as a means of escape, he vanished through the wainscoting, and the house became quite quiet."[10]

H.G. Wells famously employed the concept of a higher temporal dimension in his 1895 book The Time Machine. Wells had already covered the subject seven years previously in his tale of The Chronic Argonauts. In this 1888 short story, inventor Dr. Nebogipfel asks the Reverend Cook:

"Has it never glimmered upon your consciousness that nothing stood between men and a geometry of four dimensions - length, breadth, thickness, and duration - but the inertia of opinion? ..When we take up this new light of a fourth dimension and reexamine our physical science in its illumination.. ..we find ourselves no longer limited by hopeless restriction to a certain beat of time."[11]

In Wells’ 1895 short story The Remarkable Case of Davidson's Eyes, the main character sees visions of a ship – only to find out later that the ship in question was on the opposite side of the globe at the time. A doctor tries to explain how this might have happened through higher dimensions, though the narrator struggles with the concept.

"..his explanation invokes the Fourth Dimension, and a dissertation on theoretical kinds of space. To talk of there being "a kink in space" seems mere nonsense to me; it may be because I am no mathematician. When I said that nothing would alter the fact that the place is eight thousand miles away, he answered that two points might be a yard away on a sheet of paper, and yet be brought together by bending the paper round. The reader may grasp his argument, but I certainly do not."[12]

Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford's 1901 work The Inheritors : An Extravagant Story uses the "fourth dimension" as a metaphor to explain a shift in society away from traditional values towards modern expediency and callous use of political power. The "inheritors" are a breed of materialists, who call themselves "Fourth Dimensionists", tasked with occupying the earth. The narrator tells how, "I heard the nature of the Fourth Dimension – heard that it was invisible to our eyes, but omnipresent.."[13]

In the first volume of In Search of Lost Time (or Remembrance of Things Past) published in 1913, Marcel Proust envisioned the extra dimension as a temporal one. The narrator describes a church at Combray being "..for me something entirely different from the rest of the town; an edifice occupying, so to speak, a four-dimensional space – the name of the fourth being time."[14]

Artist Max Weber's Cubist Poems, is a collection of prose first published in 1914.

Cubes, cubes, cubes, cubes,

High, low and high, and higher, higher,

Far, far out, out, far..

Billions of things upon things

This for the eye, the eye of being,

At the edge of the Hudson,

Flowing timeless, endless,

On, on, on, on....

Excerpt from The Eye Moment, a Weber poem published in 1914[15]

Poet Ezra Pound finishes his 1937 Canto 49 (often known as "the Seven Lakes") with these lines:

The fourth; the dimension of stillness.

And the power over wild beasts.[16]

Other works[edit]

The architect in Robert A. Heinlein's "—And He Built a Crooked House—" constructs a home resembling this tesseract net.

Science Fiction author Robert A. Heinlein used ideas derived from multi-dimensional geometry in some of his stories. "—And He Built a Crooked House—" was first published in Astounding Science Fiction magazine in February 1941. In the story, a recently graduated architect constructs an eight-room home for his friend based on an "unfolded tesseract". An earthquake collapses or "folds" the structure, leading to all eight rooms being contained within just one. The stairs appear to form a closed loop, and there seems to be no way of leaving, as all the doors and even the windows lead directly into other rooms.[17] Heinlein's 1963 fantasy novel Glory Road (originally serialized in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction) features a device called a fold box which is bigger on the inside than the outside.[18] In his 1980 novel The Number of the Beast, a "continua device" formulated using "theories on n-dimensional non-euclidean geometry" gives the protagonists the ability to time-travel and to visit fictional universes.[19]

Published in 1962,[20] Madeleine L'Engle's award-winning[21] A Wrinkle in Time revolves around a girl called Meg whose scientist father disappears after working on a mysterious project. In a chapter entitled "The Tesseract", Mrs Whatsit and Mrs Who (both immortals) use the analogy of small insect making a long journey across a length of material in order to explain instantaneous travel across the universe: "Swiftly Mrs Who brought her hands, still holding the skirt, together. 'Now you see.. ..he would be there.. ..that is how we travel.'"[22] Meg declares herself to be a "moron" for not understanding the concept (known in the book as "tessering"). Luckily, her telepathic younger brother clarifies the matter, by telling Meg that the fourth dimension of time and the fifth of the tesseract combine, enabling Euclidean geometry-contravening short-cuts to be taken through space.[22]

In Kurt Vonnegut's 1969 work Slaughterhouse-Five, recurring character Kilgore Trout writes a book called Maniacs in the Fourth Dimension which relates how "three-dimensional Earthling doctors" were unable to cure people with mental diseases, "as the causes.. ..were all in the fourth dimension."[23] Trout also explains how "..vampires and werewolves and goblins and angels" reside in this alternative plane, alongside poet William Blake.[23]

FOUR PART PATTERN AND FOUR MANUSCRIPTS- IT IS THE FOURTH DIFFERENT WORK IN THE PEARL COLLECTION MANUSCRIPT

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patience_(poem)

The manuscript, Cotton Nero A.x is in the British Museum. The first published edition was in Early English Alliterative Poems in the West Midland Dialect of the fourteenth century, printed by the Early English Text Society. Of Patience, considered the slightest of the four poems, its only manifest source is the Vulgate Bible. It also resembles Latin poems by Tertullian and Bishop Marbod. There are certain mannerisms found in Patience that Pearl does not have. For instance, both homilies clearly follow the same pattern: 1. statement of theme, 2. announcement of the text from the New Testament, 3. discussion of another passage from the New Testament in elucidation of that text, 4. and elaborate paraphrase of exemplum or exempla, from the Old Testament.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Freedoms_(Norman_Rockwell)

The Four Freedoms is a series of four 1943 oil paintings by the American artist Norman Rockwell. The paintings—Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear—are each approximately 45.75 inches (116.2 cm) × 35.5 inches (90 cm),[1] and are now in the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. The four freedoms refer to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's January 1941 Four Freedoms State of the Union address in which he identified essential human rights that should be universally protected.[2][3] The theme was incorporated into the Atlantic Charter,[4][5] and became part of the charter of the United Nations.[6] The paintings were reproduced in The Saturday Evening Post over four consecutive weeks in 1943, alongside essays by prominent thinkers of the day. They became the highlight of a touring exhibition sponsored by The Post and the U.S. Department of the Treasury. The exhibition and accompanying sales drives of war bonds raised over $132 million.[7]

Four canvas series displayed by date of publication

History

http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Jack_Kirby%27s_Fourth_World

Jack Kirby's Fourth World is a turn of phrase commonly attributed to a family of titles created in the 1970s by writer/illustrator Jack Kirby.

Jack Kirby

NOSTRADAMUS WROTE QUATRAINS- QUATRAIN IS FOUR LINES

https://youtu.be/EKdLMo0vWCk

QUATRAINF FOUR LINES

https://youtu.be/NoSZoLfDJSw

quadrant

FOUR STORIES

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Contract_with_God

A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories is a graphic novel by American cartoonist Will Eisner published in 1978. The book's short story cycle revolves around poor Jewish characters who live in a tenement in New York City. Eisner produced two sequels set in the same tenement: A Life Force in 1988, and Dropsie Avenue in 1995. Though the term "graphic novel" did not originate with Eisner, the book is credited with popularizing its use.

Four stand-alone stories make up the book: in "A Contract with God" a religious man gives up his faith after the death of his young adopted daughter; in "The Street Singer" a has-been diva tries to seduce a poor, young street singer, who tries to take advantage of her in turn; a bullying racist is led to suicide after false accusations of pedophilia in "The Super"; and "Cookalein" intertwines the stories of several characters vacationing in the Catskill Mountains. The stories are thematically linked with motifs of frustration, disillusionment, violence, and issues of ethnic identity. Eisner uses large, monochromatic images in dramatic perspective, and emphasizes the caricatured characters' facial expressions; few panels or captions have traditional borders around them.

A Contract with God mixes melodrama with social realism.[1] Following an author's introduction, "A Tenement in the Bronx",[2] the book contains four stories set in a tenement building;[3] they derive in part from Eisner's personal memories growing up in a tenement in the Bronx.[4] With A Contract with God he aimed to explore an area of Jewish-American history that he felt was underdocumented, while showing that comics was capable of mature literary expression, at a time when it received little such regard as an artistic medium. In the preface he stated his aim to keep the exaggeration in his cartooning within realistic limits.[5]

On July 24, 2010, at the San Diego Comic-Con International, producers Darren Dean, Tommy Oliver, Bob Schreck, Mike Ruggerio, and Mark Rabinowitz announced plans for a film adaptation of A Contract with God. Darren Dean was hired to script it, with plans to have a different director for each of the four stories.[84]

The four species of Diapente

https://books.google.com/books?id=l74k5DF0fSQC&pg=PA8&lpg=PA8&dq=pythagoras+tetrachord&source=bl&ots=ctDIfckndj&sig=qqKROz7MyEaqfuihoInRkwmLSxw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiTkY_G0NTSAhVT2WMKHXK7Brg4ChDoAQgkMAI#v=onepage&q=pythagoras%20tetrachord&f=false

Buffy and Angel's theme four note motifs

https://books.google.com/books?id=OvcsAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA130&lpg=PA130&dq=four+species+of+diapente&source=bl&ots=jQ_f12ECa8&sig=b4BkhljCqo0Cwcr3WzVVGccBx_U&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiPlYvC0dTSAhXpllQKHZcwBe8Q6AEIMTAG#v=onepage&q=four%20species%20of%20diapente&f=false

FOUR COACHES
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…/Hallelujah_(Leonard_Cohen_song)
On the third season of the American version of The Voice, contestant Nicole Nelson sang "Hallelujah" in the "Blind Audition" stages, and all four coaches selected Nelson for their team. Later in the season, the show recorded a shortened version in honor of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. All four coaches — Adam Levine, Blake Shelton, CeeLo Green and Christina Aguilera — performed, with hosts Carson Daly and Christina Milian along with the show contestants singing background vocals. Each person in the ensemble held up a card that displayed the name and age of one of the people lost in the tragedy.[139]

https://quadriformisratio.wordpress.com/…/the-tetramorph-a…/

From the website quadriformisratio
The symbols of the four evangelists in the Book of Kells (f. 290v). Early ninth century AD. The quaternion is a central theme in the early-European visibility of which the Gospel books provided spectacular evidence

64 is the isotropic vector equilibrium Merkaba--- 64 is four quadrant models

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Welsh_literature

It is believed that the earliest written Welsh is a marginal note of some sixty-four words in Llyfr Teilo (The Book of St. Teilo), a gospel book originating in Llandeilo but now in the library of St. Chad's Cathedral, Lichfield, and also known as the Lichfield Gospels, or, The Book of St. Chad. The marginal note, known from its opening (Latin) word as The Surexit memorandum, dates from the ninth century, or even earlier, and is a record of a legal case over land.

https://www.littlethings.com/fourth-times-a-charm/

The local news station was interviewing an 80-year-old lady because she had just gotten married - for the fourth time.

The interviewer asked her questions about her life, about what it felt like to be marrying again at 80, and then about her new husband's occupation.

"He's a funeral director," she answered.

"Interesting," the newsman thought. He then asked her if she wouldn't mind telling him a little about her first three husbands and what they did for a living.

She paused for a few moments, needing time to reflect on all those years. After a short time, a smile came to her face and she answered proudly, explaining that she'd first married a banker when she was in her early 20s, then a circus ringmaster when in her 40s, later on a preacher when in her 60s, and now in her 80s, a funeral director.

The interviewer looked at her, quite astonished, and asked why she had married four men with such diverse careers.

She smiled and explained, "I married one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, and four to go."

FINNEGANS WAKE

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Canterbury_Tales

Joyce referred to Part III's four chapters as "The Four Watches of Shaun", and characterised them as "a description of a postman travelling backwards in the night through the events already narrated. It is narrated in the form of a via crucis of 14 stations but in reality is only a barrel rolling down the river Liffey." Joyce, Letters, 1, p.214

Jump up ^

FOUR STORIES PER PILGRIM

The Canterbury Tales is generally thought to have been incomplete at the end of Chaucer's life. In the General Prologue,[4] some thirty pilgrims are introduced. According to the Prologue, Chaucer's intention was to write two stories from the perspective of each pilgrim on the way to and from their ultimate destination, St. Thomas Becket's shrine (making for a total of four stories per pilgrim). Although perhaps incomplete, The Canterbury Tales is revered as one of the most important works in English literature. Not only do readers find it entertaining, but it is also open to a wide range of interpretations.[5]

http://www.anvari.org/shortjoke/Sex_Humor/723_q-whats-the-speed-limit-on-sex-a1-68-at-69-shell-blow-a-rod.html

Q: Whats 69 and 69?

A: Dinner for 4.

http://www.anvari.org/shortjoke/Nuns/131_four-nuns-were-standing-in-line-at-the-gates-of-heaven.html

Four nuns were standing in line at the gates of heaven. Peter asks the first if she has ever sinned. "Well, once I looked at a man's penis," she said.

"Put some of this holy water on your eyes and you may enter heaven," Peter told her.

Peter then asked the second nun if she had ever sinned. "Well, once I held a man's penis," she replied.

"Put your hand in this holy water and you may enter heaven," he said.

Just then the fourth nun pushed ahead of the third nun. Peter asked her, "Why did you push ahead in line?"

She said, "Because I want to gargle before she sits in it!"

THERE ARE FOUR MARKETS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_market

Fourth market

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fourth market trading is direct institution-to-institution trading without using the service of broker-dealers. Trades are usually done in blocks. It is impossible to estimate the volume of fourth market activity because trades are not subject to reporting requirements. Studies have suggested that several million shares are traded per day and trading commissions can be avoided.[1][2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiasmus

CHIASMUS MEANS CROSS- THE BIBLE THE QURAN THE ODYSSEY ALL THESE HOLY TEXTS ARE FULL OF CHIASMUS

In rhetoric, chiasmus (Latin term from Greek χίασμα, "crossing", from the Greek χιάζω, chiázō, "to shape like the letter Χ") is the figure of speech in which two or more clauses are related to each other through a reversal of structures in order to make a larger point; that is, the clauses display inverted parallelism. Chiasmus was particularly popular in the literature of the ancient world, including Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, where it was used to articulate the balance of order within the text. As a popular example, many long and complex chiasmi have been found in Shakespeare and the Greek and Hebrew texts of the Bible.[1][2] It is also found throughout the Quran[3] and the Book of Mormon.[4][5]

Today, chiasmus is applied fairly broadly to any "criss-cross" structure, although in classical rhetoric it was distinguished from other similar devices, such as the antimetabole.[citation needed] In its classical application, chiasmus would have been used for structures that do not repeat the same words and phrases, but invert a sentence's grammatical structure or ideas. The concept of chiasmus on a higher level, applied to motifs, turns of phrase, or whole passages, is called chiastic structure.

The elements of simple chiasmus are often labelled in the form A B B A, where the letters correspond to grammar, words, or meaning. For example John F. Kennedy said, "ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country".

https://www.amazon.com/Crocodile-tales-interconnected-saltwater-crocodiles/dp/0958833605

Crocodile tales: Four interconnected stories about saltwater crocodiles Hardcover – 1986

four lines

http://www.awakeningstate.com/…/om-sai-namo-namah-shirdi-s…/

https://youtu.be/q170lKnbfF0

Shirdi Sai Baba mantra – Om Sai Namo Namah mantra: lyrics and meaning:

„Om Sai Namo Namah
Shri Sai Namo Namah
Jai Jai Sai Namo Namah
Sadguru Sai Namo Namah.”

https://youtu.be/he_lxFaYwAA

He discusses at 9 minutes how in Shakespearean sonnets the third quatrain is a "turn" where things start to change and are bad/surprising, the third square is always bad and action)-- THE FOURTH PART IS DIFFERENT IT IS A COUPLET-- THERE ARE FOUR PARTS TO A SHAKESPEAREAN SONNET

16 LINES 16 SQUARES QUADRANT MODEL

http://poetscollective.org/poetryforms/tag/16-lines/page/2/

This is a form invented by MystiqueWizzard, aka Alberto Jose Alvarez Gonzalez

The Time Coupletnelle is a 16-line poem conformed by 8 couplets

with a rhyme scheme AabbccddccddaA*AA*,

The syllabic progression is: 9/8/7/6/7/8/9/9

The first 3 couplets represent a “plea”

the 4th couplet is an assertion that portrays what the plea evokes;

the last 3 couplets are the conclusion based on the first 4 couplets.

The themes may vary but basically they´re centered in love, sadness, hope or another strong

emotion worth exploring. It was named “Time Coupletnelle “because it isset in a progression of time and the visual shape is like an hour glass.

The structure should always be centered for visual effect.

Example Poem:

I Must Ask

I can’t carry on without your love.

I go through the actions, just kind of.

I think you like me but how much?

I daydream thinking of your touch.

I wait all week to date you

I’m bewitched is my friends’ view.

Action now is required,

waiting time has expired.

This week, waiting time is thru.

A diamond makes its debut.

You’ll see how much you are desired,

how much you’re treasured and admired.

I’ll bring a rose and a turtle dove.

I’ll be your hand, if you’ll be my glove.

I cannot carry without your love.

I’ll be your hand, if you’ll be my glove.

Visual Template

"Four O'Clock" is episode 94 (season 3, number 29) of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_O%27Clock_(The_Twilight_Zone)

Contents [hide]

1 Opening narration

2 Plot

3 Closing narration

4 References

5 External links

Opening narration[edit]

“ That's Oliver Crangle, a dealer in petulance and poison. He's rather arbitrarily chosen four o'clock as his personal Götterdämmerung, and we are about to watch the metamorphosis of a twisted fanatic, poisoned by the gangrene of prejudice, to the status of an avenging angel, upright and omniscient, dedicated and fearsome. Whatever your clocks say, it's four o'clock, and wherever you are it happens to be the Twilight Zone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Four_(novel)

The Big Four is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by William Collins & Sons on 27 January 1927[1] and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. It features Hercule Poirot, Arthur Hastings, and Inspector (later, Chief Inspector) Japp. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6)and the US edition at $2.00.
The structure of the novel is different from other Poirot stories, as it began from twelve short stories (eleven in the US) that had been separately published. This is a tale of international intrigue and espionage, therefore opening up the possibility of more spy fiction from Christie.
In the storyPoirot's agents return from their work of identifying Number 4 and produce four names. A Mr Claud Darrell looks suspicious as he has visited both China and America. Very soon, Darrell's friend, Florence Monro, calls Poirot for information about Darrell. She mentions one important point, that when he eats he always picks up a piece of bread and dabs up the crumbs with it. She promises to send him a photo of Darrell. Twenty minutes later Miss Monro is hit by a car and killed, and Number Four has stolen the photograph.
Poirot, Hastings and Ingles meet with the Home Secretary and his client. Ingles leaves for China, and Poirot reveals an odd fact – he has a twin brother. The two arrive home to a nurse who says that her employer, Mr Templeton, often has gastric attacks after eating. When a sample of soup is tested and found to contain antimony, they set off again. The arrival of Templeton's adopted son causes a disturbance; he tells Poirot that he thinks his mother is trying to poison his father. Poirot pretends to have stomach cramps, and when he is alone with Hastings, he quickly tells him that Templeton's son is Number Four, as he dabbed up the crumbs with a small slice of bread at the table. The two climb down the ivy and arrive at their flat. The two are caught by a trap; a matchbox filled with a chemical explodes knocking Hastings unconscious and killing Poirot.The fourth is always different and does not seem to belong
A Multiethnic gang of four persons working towards world domination.[7] They have a secret hideaway in a quarry of the Dolomites. It is owned by an Italian company which is a front company for Abe Ryland. The quarry conceals a vast subterranean base, hollowed out in the heart of the mountain. From there they use the wireless to transfer orders to thousands of their followers across many countries. The characters comprise typical ethnic and national stereotypess of 1920s British fiction. They are:
Abe Ryland, the so-called American Soap King. He is stated to be richer than John D. Rockefeller and being the richest man in the world. Early in the novel, Ryland attempts to hire Poirot and invites him to Rio de Janeiro, allegedly to investigate the goings-on in a big company there. Poirot is offered a fortune and is tempted to accept. He eventually declines and the plot point is no longer elaborated. Presumably Ryland intended to recruit him for the organization. He dies when the hidden base of the Four explodes. He represents the power of wealth.
Madame Olivier, a French woman scientist. She is stated to be a famous Nuclear physicist and analytical chemist. Poirot suspects that she has kept secret the true extent of her research with nuclear power. He believes that she has "succeeded in liberating atomic energy and harnessing it to her purpose." She is said to have used gamma rays emitted by radium to perfect a lethal weapon. She is a widow. She used to work with her husband, conducting their research in common until his death. She is said to look more like a priestess out of the past than a modern woman. She dies when the hidden base of the Four explodes. She represents scientific research devoted to political goals.
Li Chang Yen, the Chinese leader and mastermind of the group. He is an unseen character who never steps foot out of China, but is discussed often by other characters. He is driven by his own lust for power and the need to establish his personal supremacy. He lacks the military force to pursue conquest by traditional means, but the 20th century is stated to be a century of unrest which offers him other means towards him goal. He is said to have unlimited money to finance operations. His methods include bribery and propaganda. He controls a "scientific force more powerful than the world has dreamed of. It is said that "the men who loom most largely in the public eye are men of little or no personality. They are marionettes who dance to the wires pulled by a master hand, and that hand is Li Chang Yen's". He is the power behind the throne of the East. He is the embodiment of Yellow Peril. His plots are said to include worldwide unrest, labor disputes in every nation, and revolutions in some of them. Elsewhere it is explained that he is a mandarin and lives in a palace of his own in Peking. He oversees human subject research on coolies, with no regard for the death and suffering of his research subjects. He commits suicide at the end.
Claude Darrell, known as the Destroyer. He is an obscure English actor and a master of disguise. He is the chief assassin of the group, said to have the finest criminal brain ever known. He appears with ever-changing faces and multiple identities throughout the novel. He can totally transform his physical appearance and his persona. Many of the novel's characters are known or suspected to be among the roles Darrell plays. Darrell is described as being around 33 years old, brown-haired, having a fair complexion, gray-eyed. His height is given at 5 ft. 10 in (1.78 meters). His origins are mysterious. He played at music halls, and also in Repertory plays. He has no known intimate friends. He was in China in 1919. Returned to the United Kingdom by way of the United States. Played a few parts in New York. Did not appear on the stage one night, and has never been heard of since. New York police say his is a most mysterious disappearance. Darnell has one weakness that can give his real identity away. When he dines, Darnell habitually rolls pieces of bread into little balls. He dies when the hidden base of the Four explodes. He is also effectively a spy and represents the secret services and intelligence agencies.
The Big Four was released by HarperCollins as a graphic novel adaptation on 3 December 2007, adapted and illustrated by Alain Paillou (ISBN 0-00-725065-7). This was translated from the edition first published in France by Emmanuel Proust éditions in 2006 under the title of Les Quatre.

The Four Immigrants Manga : A Japanese Experience in San Francisco, 1904-1924
Gph Edition

North Korea fires four missiles toward Japan, angering Tokyo and South Korea

The Asian Influence on Hollywood Action ...
https://books.google.com › books
Barna William Donovan - 2008 - ‎Performing Arts
driven. The story involves a thief recruited to be a warlord's double. ... viewers to a four-part story ofa British sailor's experiences in feudal Japan.

http://www.tofugu.com/japanese/japanese-argument-structure/

Oh, never mind, maybe we are! The Kishoutenketsu style is distinctly Japanese and was born out of classical art forms just like Jo-Ha-Kyuu. However, this style has almost no Western equivalent. Kishoutenketsu was derived from traditional Chinese four-line poetry. The "Ki" refers to the introduction or kiku 起句きく, the next section is development or shouku 承句しょうく , the third is the twist or tenku 転句てんく, and we end with the kekku 結句けっく or conclusion. The poet Sanyo Rai gave an elegant example of how this structure functions in a poem:

Ki 起き: The characters are daughters of Itoya in Osaka.
Shou 承しょう: The eldest daughter is sixteen and the younger one is fourteen.
Ten 転てん: Historically in Japan, warriors have killed their enemy with bows and arrows.
Ketsu 結けつ: However, the daughters of Itoya kill only with their eyes
In the Ki section the main players are established, in the Shou section the information from the Ki section is is elaborated upon and more information is provided. The Ten section brings out an entirely new piece of information that contextualizes the conclusion. Finally, in the Ketsu section the connection between the Ten and the Ki is drawn. This is used to great comedic effect in yonkoma, Japanese four-panel comics, as the additional context can often lead to humorous exaggerations.

The reason this style draws such ire from the Western writing community is because the concluding Ketsu section tends to introduce a new element. In Western rhetoric the conclusion is a place to tie old knowledge together, wrap a little bow around it, and call it quits. It is inadvisable to add a new piece of information in the conclusion of a typical Western piece of writing. This style, however, because it is based on poetry introduces a final, dramatic element in the last section. Because of the fact that the Ki, Ten, and Ketsu sections all introduce new elements, this writing style can be particularly confusing to a Western audience. Western, especially academic, writing is often used to tackle one major topic in a piece of prose and really can't process scaling to three topics—especially if they are given equal weight.

Of course with the trend towards internalization in Japan, Western-style deductive and direct argument is becoming more widespread and widely taught in Japan. Not only that, but just like with Western writing there are probably dozens if not hundreds of other constructions people use, but it is still very interesting to look at a few of the ways writing styles differ around the world. This is just a cursory analysis and I hope to do more articles about writing, and rhetoric in Japan but I desire feedback. In your own experiences have you seen these types of writing styles be prevalent in Japan? Does Hinds' work hold up? Let me know, and thanks a lot for reading.

http://www.eurogamer.net/…/2015-03-17-how-nintendos-best-ma…

Nintendo designed many of its recent 3D Mario levels using the four-part structure of Chinese poetry and Japanese comics.

ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW

1
The technique was originally detailed in a Gamasutra interview with Super Mario 3D Land director Koichi Hayashida, and can be seen in action in journalist Mark Brown's latest Game Maker's Toolkit video.

Hayashida explained how he refined his level design process over the course of his career at Nintendo, starting with Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii.

"You would be going through a galaxy, and every time you get to a new planet, there would be some new thing to play with there - some new concept. You would end up with lots of different gameplay concepts in a single stage.

"Whereas, when I moved onto Super Mario Galaxy 2, I was starting to get a little clearer idea of how this level design philosophy should work: that is, we would start with a very clear concept on a stage and it would be maintained through, I think, the rest of the galaxy more consistently."

This concept was then crystallised in the levels of Super Mario 3D Land for 3DS and Super Mario 3D World for Wii U, where the four-part structure named kishōtenketsu is clearly evident.

Kishōtenketsu originated in Chinese poetry, but was adopted by Japanese and Korean writing, too. It teaches how in four sections you can introduce a topic, develop it, give it an unexpected twist, then bring it to a conclusion.

ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW

This structure of introduction, development, twist and wrap-up was fundamental in many Super Mario 3D Land and World levels, and allowed Hayashida to focus areas on exploring specific concepts.

KHAJIIT HAS ARTICLE, IF YOU HAVE CLICK
:: Zelda: Breath of the Wild already up and running on PC
:: Zelda: Breath of the Wild speedrunner finds surprising new way to travel
"This is something that Mr. Miyamoto talks about," Hayashida concluded. "He drew comics as a kid, and so he would always talk about how you have to think about, what is that denouement going to be? What is that third step? That ten [twist] that really surprises people. That's something that has always been very close to our philosophy of level design, is trying to think of that surprise."

See it in action in the video below:

https://mythicscribes.com/plot/kishotenketsu/

Kishōtenketsu for Beginners – An Introduction to Four Act Story Structure
by Nils Ödlund • 11 Comments
chinese-writing

Recently we presented a series of articles on three-act structure here on Mythic Scribes. This inspired me to try and write an article about a kind of four act structure known as Kishōtenketsu. It’s used in classical Chinese, Korean, and Japanese narratives, and is often mentioned as an example of a story structure without conflict.

Now, I’m not well versed in narrative theory. I find it interesting, but I’m far from an expert, and most of what I know of writing I have figured out myself (though the forums here on Mythic Scribes have been invaluable in doing just that). As such, this article will really only scratch the surface of Kishōtenketsu.

I’ll begin by explaining the word itself and the basic principles behind the story structure. I’ll then show two examples of stories told in this way, and finally I’ll give a few tips I’ve found useful for wrapping my head around this whole concept.

That’s not all though. Like I mentioned, this will be very basic, so I have included a list of links to further reading for those of you who are interested in digging a little deeper into this.

Sounds good? Okay, here we go!

Kishōtenketsu

Let’s start with the word itself. It’s made up of the names of the four different acts of the structure:

Ki : Introduction
Shō : Development
Ten : Twist (complication)
Ketsu : Conclusion (reconciliation)
The first act is self explanatory. It’s where we’re introduced to the story and we get to know the characters taking part and the world they live in.

Similarly, the second act also doesn’t require much explanation. This is where we get to know the characters a little better. We learn about their relation to each other and their place in the world. This is where we develop an emotional connection to the characters.

The third act however, the twist, is where things get a bit complicated. I’ve seen this act referred to as complication, and while I don’t think that’s technically correct, I feel it’s a better name. Calling it a twist brings with it associations to plot-twists as we know them from more traditional western narratives.

This isn’t necessarily the case here. It can be, but it doesn’t have to. However, it’s often something unexpected, and usually unrelated to what’s happened in the first two acts.

Finally, the fourth act is about the impact of the third act on the first two acts. This is why I like the term reconciliation. The third act will affect the situation presented in the first and second act, and in the fourth act the state of the world in first and second act is reconciled with the events of the the third.

No Conflict?

I mentioned earlier that Kishōtenketsu is a story structure without conflict. This doesn’t mean there isn’t any conflict in stories told through this kind of story structure, only that it’s not built into the structure by default.

Let’s compare it with the three act structure:

In the first act, a conflict is introduced. In the second act the conflict is escalated, and in the third it is resolved. As we see, the conflict is an integral part of the structure as a whole. That’s not the case in Kishōtenketsu. In none of the four acts is a conflict a requirement.

This holds true even for the third act. The complication doesn’t have be something that the character struggles against – but it can be.

Examples

Let’s look at two examples. First one I’ve made up myself just for this article, and then a favorite movie of mine: Kiki’s Delivery Service.

Example 1 – A Made Up Story

This is the story of a fisherman and his family.

Ki: In act one we see the fisherman in his boat out to sea. He’s sitting around fishing and waiting for a catch. It’s a long day and he hasn’t had much of a catch.
Shō: In the second act the fisherman decides it’s time for him to return home. It’s late and he longs to be reunited with his wife and children. He loves the sea, but he loves his family more.
Ten: The third act is about a woman hiding in the forest with two crying children. She’s the fisherman’s wife, and she’s hiding because their village got attacked by brigands.
Ketsu: The fourth act is about how the fisherman reunites with his family in the ruins of the burned-down village. Then they all set off in his boat to find another village.
The introduction is where we first meet the fisherman. In the second act we get to know him a little better. We learn about his relation to the sea, and to his family, and we learn about his life and struggles. Perhaps it’s been a bad year and food supplies are low.

In the third act, we have no idea what happened with the fisherman. We see his wife hiding, and perhaps we don’t even know it’s his wife at first. We don’t know if she’ll make it, and we don’t know if the fisherman will come home while the brigands are still ransacking the town. What will happen?

This is the complication.

It’s not a conflict though. The woman and her children are hiding. Perhaps the kids are crying and the woman is struggling to keep them quiet, but then again, there may not even be any brigands nearby. The woman and her children may be perfectly safe.

But even then there is still tension, and it comes from the contrast between what we’ve seen in the past (the fisherman on his way home after a day on the sea), and what we’re seeing at the moment (the village being ransacked).

Finally, the first two acts are reconciled with the third one. The fisherman reunites with his family, but as their village is no more they have to find somewhere else to live.

Example 2 – Kiki’s Delivery Service

Kiki’s Delivery Service (IMDb Page) is a Japanese animated movie directed by Hayao Miyazaki. The synopsis on IMDB reads:

A young witch, on her mandatory year of independent life, finds fitting into a new community difficult while she supports herself by running an air courier service.

Kishōtenketsu for Beginners – An Introduction to Four Act Story Structure
by Nils Ödlund • 11 Comments
chinese-writing

That’s not all though. Like I mentioned, this will be very basic, so I have included a list of links to further reading for those of you who are interested in digging a little deeper into this.

Sounds good? Okay, here we go!

Kishōtenketsu

Let’s start with the word itself. It’s made up of the names of the four different acts of the structure:

This isn’t necessarily the case here. It can be, but it doesn’t have to. However, it’s often something unexpected, and usually unrelated to what’s happened in the first two acts.

No Conflict?

Let’s compare it with the three act structure:

This holds true even for the third act. The complication doesn’t have be something that the character struggles against – but it can be.

Examples

Let’s look at two examples. First one I’ve made up myself just for this article, and then a favorite movie of mine: Kiki’s Delivery Service.

Example 1 – A Made Up Story

This is the story of a fisherman and his family.

This is the complication.

Finally, the first two acts are reconciled with the third one. The fisherman reunites with his family, but as their village is no more they have to find somewhere else to live.

Example 2 – Kiki’s Delivery Service

Kiki’s Delivery Service (IMDb Page) is a Japanese animated movie directed by Hayao Miyazaki. The synopsis on IMDB reads:

A young witch, on her mandatory year of independent life, finds fitting into a new community difficult while she supports herself by running an air courier service.

Here is the official trailer:

The movie is from 1989, and the plot isn’t built on any major surprise, but don’t worry, I’m going to leave out a lot of details to try and avoid spoilers.

In the first act we’re introduced to Kiki. It shows how she bids her friends and family farewell and sets off into the world on her flying broomstick. Eventually she ends up in a big city where she decides to stay. Among the people she meets is a friendly woman who runs a bakery and who lets Kiki stay in a spare room.

Kiki doesn’t quite feel at home in the big city which is very different from her own little village.

Shō

In order to get by and to pay for her accommodation, Kiki starts a delivery service. In this way she ends up meeting a lot of new people, some of them friendly, some of them less pleasant. Among them is the boy Tombo who’s an avid fan of all things aviation, and he falls for Kiki like a pile of bricks.

Kiki is beginning to doubt whether a witch can be accepted in such a big city.

Ten

Tombo gets an opportunity to ride on a big dirigible that’s visiting the city. Having dreamt all his life about flying he’s really excited about it and can’t wait to go. When he finally gets there, something happens and poor Tombo ends up hanging from the dirigible in a rope while the dirigible drifts across the town without anyone being able to control it.

Tombo gets into trouble and Kiki saves the day.

Ketsu

Life goes back to normal again. Only now, Kiki is an accepted part of the city. She’s good friends with Tombo. Her delivery service is doing well, and she feels like she’s found her place in life.

Everything works out well in the end.

Comments

If you’ve seen the movie you’ll have noticed that I left out a lot. This is to avoid spoilers and to try and make the example as clear as possible. If you haven’t seen the movie, I strongly recommend it. There’s a lot more to it than what I’ve mentioned above.

Tips and Tricks

If you’ve not come across Kishōtenketsu before this may all seem a little bit weird to you. I know it did to me when I first heard about it.

One thing that might help is to think about it, not as a different way of telling a story, but as focusing on different aspects of the story.

Let’s have a look at A New Hope, which was analysed in the article series about Three Act Structure. How would you go about telling that through Kishōtenketsu? Perhaps, you could tell the story from Han Solo’s perspective? Let’s see how that goes:

Ki: You introduced Han and Chewie – a smuggler and his sidekick. They’re just kicking around in Mos Eisley, not doing very much.
Sho: Some old guy shows up and wants transport for himself and his friend, and their robots. You introduce the new characters, and Han’s ship, and you show your audience how Han’s a down to earth guy who doesn’t believe in hokey religions. You show that Chewie is a bit of a grumpy fella who doesn’t like losing.
Ten: This is where things go weird and all of a sudden Han finds himself all dressed up in imperial armor, arguing with some kind of princess while trying not to get squished by a garbage compactor. This was not part of the plan, but eventually he gets through it, gets his pay and takes his leave.
Ketsu: Everything’s back to normal. Let’s go pay back that old debt and then see if some nice easy way of making some fast bucks show up. Only, something’s not quite right. The recent event has changed Han in some way, and he decides to head back and see what that princess is up to…
Something like that, maybe? How would you have done it?

Another thing you can do when planning out a Kishōtenketsu story is to make a list of what you need each of the four acts to achieve. In that way, you’re dividing up the story into smaller goals that are easier to achieve, and which will eventually combine into a greater whole.

When building these lists I found it helpful to give each act a specific kind of task – similar to the names of the acts. The words I use for these tasks are introduce, establish, reveal, and conclude. Some examples could be:

Ki: Introduce Han Solo.
Sho: Establish that Han Solo doesn’t believe in hokey religions.
Ten: Reveal that the empire blew up the planet Han’s passengers wanted to go to.
Ketsu: Conclude that Han has his good sides too.
Of course, the list for each act would include a whole lot of other items as well, this is just to illustrate the principle. I hope it helps you come to grips a little better with Kishōtenketsu, especially if you haven’t encountered the concept before at all.

If you have any questions, feel free to post them in the comments section here, or on the forums.

Resources

Finally, I would like to direct you to some further reading on this topic. Like I mentioned at the start, I’ve really only scratched the surface of what Kishōtenketsu is, and there’s plenty more to learn.

The Significance of Plot Without Conflict

When researching this article, I found that a lot of the blog posts and texts I read referred back to this post. It contains a good explanation as well as two pictures to explain the difference between Kishōtenketsu and traditional western three act structure.

The second half of the post gets rather philosophical, and to be perfectly honest, it’s a little above my head. Still, it’s a good resource to learning more about Kishōtenketsu and I do recommend having a look.

Wikipedia

Of course wikipedia has a post about Kishōtenketsu. Here, you’ll find a little bit more about the name, including the symbols for how it’s originally written.

Kishōtenketsu in Game Design

This article on Eurogamer.net explains how nintendo used the philosophy behind Kishōtenketsu when designing levels for Super Mario. There’s a video at the end which shows the end result of how they employed the ideas to introduce new mechanics into the game.

Strictly speaking, this isn’t storytelling, but I still found it interesting as it illustrates the principles really well.

The Skeletal Structure of Japanese Horror Fiction

This is an article about the structure of Japanese horror stories. It’s not exclusively about Kishōtenketsu, but there’s a section specifically about it, and there are some nice examples towards the end to illustrate how four act structure can be used effectively in horror stories.

Why Japanese and English Speakers Argue So Differently

Kishotenketsu isn’t necessarily just about stories, it’s also a way of thinking, and of handling and presenting information in general. This article discusses how speakers of English and of Japanese argue differently, and why. It also presents four different Asian types of story structure as examples.

Summary

You should now have a slightly better idea of what Kishōtenketsu is, but let’s repeat it one last time. There are four acts:

Ki for introduction.
Shō for development.
Ten for complication.
Ketsu for reconciliation.
In this way, the story structure provides a way to write a story without inherent conflict.

Further Discussion

Have you read any stories, or seen any movies/shows, based on this type of story structure? Which ones, and would you recommend them? I found only a few examples listed when researching this article – none of which I was familiar with.

Have you written any stories using this kind of story structure? What was your experience of that?

How would you structure a famous story if you were to retell it using Kishōtenketsu? What about Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones? Can it be done?

http://stilleatingoranges.tumblr.com/…/the-significance-of-…

In the West, plot is commonly thought to revolve around conflict: a confrontation between two or more elements, in which one ultimately dominates the other. The standard three- and five-act plot structures–which permeate Western media–have conflict written into their very foundations. A “problem” appears near the end of the first act; and, in the second act, the conflict generated by this problem takes center stage. Conflict is used to create reader involvement even by many post-modern writers, whose work otherwise defies traditional structure.
The necessity of conflict is preached as a kind of dogma by contemporary writers’ workshops and Internet “guides” to writing. A plot without conflict is considered dull; some even go so far as to call it impossible. This has influenced not only fiction, but writing in general–arguably even philosophy. Yet, is there any truth to this belief? Does plot necessarily hinge on conflict? No. Such claims are a product of the West’s insularity. For countless centuries, Chinese and Japanese writers have used a plot structure that does not have conflict “built in”, so to speak. Rather, it relies on exposition and contrast to generate interest. This structure is known as kishōtenketsu.
Kishōtenketsu contains four acts: introduction, development, twist and reconciliation. The basics of the story–characters, setting, etc.–are established in the first act and developed in the second. No major changes occur until the third act, in which a new, often surprising element is introduced. The third act is the core of the plot, and it may be thought of as a kind of structural non sequitur. The fourth act draws a conclusion from the contrast between the first two “straight” acts and the disconnected third, thereby reconciling them into a coherent whole. Kishōtenketsu is probably best known to Westerners as the structure of Japanese yonkoma (four-panel) manga; and, with this in mind, our artist has kindly provided a simple comic to illustrate the concept.
Each panel represents one of the four acts. The resulting plot–and it is a plot–contains no conflict. No problem impedes the protagonist; nothing is pitted against anything else. Despite this, the twist in panel three imparts a dynamism–a chaos, perhaps–that keeps the comic from depicting merely a series of events. Panel four reinstates order by showing us how the first two panels connect to the third, which allows for a satisfactory ending without the need for a quasi-gladiatorial victory. It could be said that the last panel unifies the first three. The Western structure, on the other hand, is a face-off–involving character, theme, setting–in which one element must prevail over another. Our artist refitted the above comic into the three-act structure to show this difference.

The first panel gives the reader a “default position” with which to compare later events; and the second panel depicts a conflict-generating problem with the vending machine. The third panel represents the climax of the story: the dramatic high point in which the heroine's second attempt "defeats" the machine and allows the can to drop. The story concludes by depicting the aftermath, wherein we find that something from the first act has changed as a result of the climax. In this case, our heroine sans beverage has become a heroine avec beverage.
What this shows is that the three-act plot, unlike kishōtenketsu, is fundamentally confrontational. It necessarily involves one thing winning out over another, even in a minor case like the one above. This conclusion has wide-ranging implications, since both formats are applied not just to narratives, but to all types of writing. Both may be found under the hood of everything from essays and arguments to paragraphs and single sentences. As an example, the reader might re-examine the first two paragraphs of this article, in which a “default position” is set up and then interrupted by a “problem” (namely, the existence of kishōtenketsu). The following paragraphs deal with the conflict between the two formats. This paragraph, which escalates that conflict by explaining the culture-wide influence of each system, is the beginning of the climax.
As this writer is already making self-referential, meta-textual remarks, it is only appropriate that the article’s climax take us into the realm of post-modern philosophy. It is a worldview obsessed with narrative and, perhaps unconsciously, with the central thesis of the three-act structure. Jacques Derrida, probably the best known post-modern philosopher, infamously declared that all of reality was a text–a series of narratives that could only be understood by appealing to other narratives, ad infinitum. What kinds of narratives, though? Perhaps a benign, kishōtenketsu-esque play between disconnection and reconnection, chaos and order? No; for Derrida, the only narrative was one of violence. As a Nietzschean, he believed that reality consisted, invariably, of one thing dominating and imposing on another, in a selfish exercise of its will to power. The “worst violence”, he thought, was when something was completely silenced and absorbed by another, its difference erased. Apparently, Derrida was uncontent with the three-act structure’s nearly complete control over Western writing: he had to project it onto the entire world. Eurocentrism has rarely had a more shining moment.
Kishōtenketsu contains no such violence. The events of the first, second and third acts need not harm one another. They can stand separately, with Derrida’s beloved difference intact. Although the fourth act unifies the work, by no means must it do violence to the first three acts; rather, it is free merely to draw a conclusion from their juxtaposition, as Derrida does when he interprets one narrative through the lens of another. A world understood from the kishōtenketsu perspective need never contain the worst violence that Derrida fears, which would make his call for deconstruction–the prevention of silence through the annihiliation of structure–unnecessary. Is it possible that deconstruction could never have been conceived in a world governed by kishōtenketsu, rather than by the three-act plot? Is the three-act structure one of the elements behind the very worldview that calls for its deconstruction? Can the Western narrative of the will to power remain coherent in the face of a rival narrative from the East? This writer would prefer to ask than to answer these questions.
Now, dear readers, comes the aftermath. The dust left over from the climax is settling. Kishōtenketsu has been shown to generate plot without conflict, which reveals as insular nonsense the West’s belief that they are inseparable. The repercussions of this extend to all writing; and, if this writer's conclusion is to be believed, to philosophy itself. Despite this, it should be noted that many of history’s greatest works have been built on the three- and five-act structures. By no means should they be discarded. Rather, they should be viewed as tools for telling certain types of stories. At the same time, this writer would like to end by calling for a renewed look at kishōtenketsu in the West. It offers writers the opportunity to explore plots with minimal or no conflict. Perhaps it could even change our worldview.

here it describes that all japanese stories even novels follow the four part structure

http://www.manga-audition.com/the-four-part-construction-k…/

http://blog.tewaters.com/…/on-narrative-structure-kishotenk…

The FOUR Part construction “Ki-Sho-Ten-Ketsu” – Japanese Manga 101 #049
Posted on 26/08/2016Sayuri KimizukaPosted in Japanese Manga 101

Today, we will talk about one subject, that great manga god Tezuka Osamu, as well as senseis like Tsukasa Hojo and Tetsuo Hara sensei,
ALL been telling over and over and over again.

jm101_49_01

The secret art:
MANGA is “Ki-Sho-Ten-Ketsu”
– “Introduction / Development / Turn / Conclusion”

jm101_49_03

In Japan, not only Manga, but any story or novels are constructed in 4 parts.
Pretty much everything here is written, drawn or presented this way!

Internationally, “Three-act structure” is more widely adapted in education and production.
For example, any English teacher would tell you to write using,
the basic paragraph structure.

Topic sentence
Supporting sentence
Concluding sentence

jm101_49_04

In film making, “Three-Act-Structure” is widely known as the standard:
Set-up
Confrontation
Resolution

In Spring one sleeps, unaware of dawn;
everywhere one hears crowing birds.
In the night came the sound of wind and rain;
who knows how many flowers fell?

jm101_49_05
This, is a very famous poem “Spring Dawn”, by Meng Haoran.
What does each of the 4 lines in poem tell us?

We’ll talk more about this mysterious 4 parts structure “Ki-Sho-Ten-Ketsu” next week.
Stay tuned!

http://www.rocklin.k12.ca.us/staff/aparker/WEB/Dantes%20Fourfold%20Method-Graphic%20with%20Explanations.pdf

One method to be used for in-depth literary analysis is Dante’s Fourfold method. Dante (full name Dante Allegheri, an Italian poet, 1265-1321) believed that texts can be interpreted on four different levels: the literal or historical level, the political level, the moral or psychological level, and the spiritual level.The literal or historical level examines what is actually happening in the story on a surface level. To completely understand the literal level, one must also understand the historical context of the story.Helpful questions: What events in the book make reference to how life really was in South Africa during apartheid? Find examples of the following: living conditions, education of natives, salary, unjust laws, typical jobs, political movement, and crime. As the novel progresses, consider the idea that the characters in this book symbolize different groups of South African people. Who might the following characters represent? Stephen, John, Gertrude, Gertrude’s son.The political level is the level on which human beings relate to others in a community and in the world.Helpful Questions: What evidence is there of the breakdown of the tribal community? What is being done in the cities to offset the breakdown of the tribal community? What is the relationship between Stephen Kumalo and his sister, his brother, and his son? Who has the power in South Africa? Using examples from the book, explain how it is possible for a minority group to maintain power.The moral or psychological level is the way in which the self relates to the realm of ethics – the struggle of one’s conscience.Helpful Questions: What internal struggles has Stephen Kumalo faced so far? Find evidence of John Kumalo’s struggle with his conscience. Find evidence of Gertrude’s struggle with her conscience. Find evidence that white citizens struggle with their conscience. Find evidence that black citizens struggle with their conscience.The spiritual level is the universal level on which a person relates to the cosmos, the way of the pilgrim soul – an examination of the human’s role in the grand scheme of things.Helpful Questions: Why does Paton continuously hint at the beauty of the South African land? How does Paton use the character of John Kumalo to show the corruption of the natives? Why is there a loss of faith by some natives? Are they justified in feeling this way? Is there any indication that Paton supports this point of view? What is the purpose of having Steven Kumalo, the protagonist of the story, be a reverend? Find examples of his faith. Find examples of his doubt.

From the website quadrisformisratio where the guy found a lot of fourfolds

https://quadriformisratio.wordpress.com/tag/victor-vasarely/

QMR

Dutch philosopher Frans Hemsterhuis (1721 – 1790) – who belongs together with Erasmus, Spinoza en Geulincx to the most important philosophers of the Low Countries – said the same thing in his recognition of the four fundamental powers of the soul (in: ‘Aristaios of over de Goddelijkheid’, 1779; PETRY, 1990):

———————— 1. imagination – unsorted collection of ideas;

———————— 2. reason – comparison of thoughts, their substance;

———————— 3. willpower – will and action;

——————– 4. moral principle – connection with other humans and the ability . to see the other as oneself.

https://quadriformisratio.wordpress.com/…/new-names-for-ol…/

From the website quadriformisratio
The synthesis was found in Eliot’s composition of the ‘Four Quartets’. According to PERL (1984, p. 96), ‘each quartet represents a mode, a season, of thought and sensibility, which repeats itself in the lives of nations, traditions, and individuals’. From ‘Burnt Norton’ to ‘Little Gidding’ was a journey through time, a process of return and reunion: ‘Romanticism and neo-classicism, sensation and reason, energy and style, spirit and letter, spirit and matter, the universal and particular, the abstract and the concrete, the poetic and the prosaic, the ultimate and the conventional, the fire and the rose are one.’
The distinction between opposites and their battle is, in the end (or beginning), the result from a mistake of perception. The over-emphasis of dualism, so typical for the Third Quadrant (or ‘Dry Salvages’ in Eliot’s nomenclature), leads to a false synthesis. This stage is, in Eliot’s words (The Use of Poetry, p. 81), ‘a period of apparent stabilization, which was shallow and premature’. Images of the nineteenth century, a childhood view of romanticism and Victorianism dominated the ‘Dry Salvages’. It was also a time of strangeness of reality, uncertainties and unpleasant facts.
The final part of the quartet (‘Little Gidding’) offered an understanding of the previous perceived opposition between the romantic intensity and neo-classical discipline: ‘In becoming the present, the past has come full circle with the future – this is the essence of the historical ‘process of return’, of the historical outlook that Eliot associates with the word ‘classicism’

There were four Sherlock Holmes novels. One had the number 4 as the title

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_of_Sherlock_Holmes

Novels[edit]

Here is the list of the four novels of the canon:

A Study in Scarlet (published 1887)

The Sign of the Four (published 1890)

The Hound of the Baskervilles (serialised 1901–1902 in The Strand)

The Valley of Fear (serialised 1914–1915)

I'm a paragraph. Click here to add your own text and edit me. It's easy.

http://www.infoplease.com/cig/grammar-style/sentence-structure-fab-four.html

We categorize sentences into four main types, depending on the number and type of clauses they contain:

Simple Sentence

It has one independent clause.

We drove from Connecticut to Tennessee in one day.

Compound Sentence

It has one more than one independent clause

We were exhausted, but we arrived in time for my father's birthday party.

Complex Sentence

It has one independent clause and at least one or more dependent clause

Although he is now 79 years old, he still claims to be 65.

Compound-complex Sentence

It has one more than one independent clause and at least one dependent clause

The types are elucidated by a auadrant woth two axes

Dichotomy one is one dependent vlause or many dependent clauses. Dichotomy 2 is one independent claise or many independent clauses. This yields four types

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Botany_of_Desire

http://www.flaxroots.com/flaxflower/four-interconnected-stories

As Bend With the Wind unfolds it becomes four distinct but interconnected stories. The anti-tour protest runs parallel to the tale of Joe and Sophie’s relationship. From the first chapter however there is also the 30-year jump forward in time to Joe’s untimely death and his tangi on the marae at Parihaka, while with ever-building tension we are taken a century back in time to colonial-era events in Parihaka. Dewing has skilfully created a unified fabric from these four threads. The intricate and poetic way in which she describes Joe’s death and tangi is deeply moving as is her telling of the tragedy at Parihaka in November 1881. Both these threads and descriptions of Sophie and Joe’s visits to his family are authenticated by frequent use of Maori, with English translations as footnotes.

http://schools-wikipedia.org/wp/c/Chinese_characters.htm

There are also some extremely complex characters which have understandably become rather rare. According to Joël Bellassen (1989), the most complex Chinese character is Zhé.svg/𪚥 (U+2A6A5) zhé About this sound listen (help·info), meaning "verbose" and containing sixty-four strokes; this character fell from use around the 5th century. It might be argued, however, that while containing the most strokes, it is not necessarily the most complex character (in terms of difficulty), as it simply requires writing the same sixteen-stroke character 龍 lóng (lit. "dragon") four times in the space for one. Another 64-stroke character is Zhèng.svg/𠔻 (U+2053B) zhèng composed of 興 xīng/xìng (lit. "flourish") four times.

A four-morpheme word, 社会主义 shèhuì zhǔyì 'socialism', is commonly written with a single character formed by combining the last character, 义, with the radical of the first, 社. This is not a recent phenomenon; in medieval manuscripts 菩薩 púsà 'bodhisattva' is sometimes written with a single character formed of four 十. In the Oracle Bone script, personal names and ritual items are commonly contracted into single characters, and although it is discouraged by language planners, in the modern language phrases such as 七十人 qīshí rén 'seventy people' and 受又(祐) shòu yòu 'receive blessings' are fused into single characters as well. There are elements here of true logographology, where characters represent whole words rather than syllable-morphemes, though some are phrases rather than words. They might be better seen as ligatures. (See Chinese ligatures.)

64 is four quadrant models.

https://kitkatworld.wordpress.com/tag/4-stanzas/

#74 Four Elements

“Four Elements”

Rain.

The comfort of all pain.

One that keeps us sane,

But is it an excuse for being lame?

Sun.

The one that makes things done.

Shedding sweat in front.

Its glare it regularly taunts.

Wind.

Knocks away our things.

Keeps all those wishes linked.

Cultivates those growing seeds.

Earth.

The foundation of birth.

The fortress of our turf.

Generations for it to convert.

Written on Thursday, December 8, 2011

Theme: Tranquility | Stanzas: 4 | Lines: 16

Rhyming sequence: AAAA | Syllabic range: Unordered

March 13, 2012Leave a reply

#73 Lying in Wait

“Lying in Wait”

Pretty little mademoiselle

Sits beside the window sill.

Looking at the celadon hills,

She sings a graceful hymn

That pulls the jays’ heartstrings.

Lassie can’t help feel anomie

When no one else can hear

The cries of hers that scream

A tale that serves to only dim

The chances of fulfilling her dream.

Her golden finely-curled locks

That no one dares to mock

Shines and leaves you starstruck,

Yet its sheens don’t seem to rock

Them out of their socks.

Pretty little mademoiselle

Sits beside the window sill.

Looking at the scarlet hills,

She sings a soulful hymn

That attracts a firefly team.

Written on Thursday, December 4, 2011

Theme: Tranquility | Stanzas: 4 | Lines: 20

Rhyming sequence: AAAAA | Syllabic range: Unordered

March 12, 2012Leave a reply

#68 Could This Be Love?

“Could This Be Love?”

And in there all my sorrows swing

A to and fro motion from things.

This placid land that I once dwelled

Now appears as a fairy tale.

All the things around colored blue

Show many diff’rent shades and hues.

Is my mind flying high above?

Maybe, perhaps, could this be love?

A reflection of you and me

On the clear river that I see.

I turned to my side to find out

That these are all illusive doubts.

Left alone to solve this puzzle

And to go through so much trouble,

Yet my heart’s as light as a dove’s.

The question stands, “Could this be love?”

Written on Sunday, November 27, 2011

Theme: Love | Stanzas: 4 | Lines: 12

Rhyming sequence: AABB | Syllabic range: All-8

March 8, 2012Leave a reply

#65 Four Seasons

“Four Seasons”

Sakura blossoms cov’ring the environment

Bring forth a beautiful cool spring temperament

Like the harmony of the placid crystal lake

That glitters rythmically upon the sun’s wake.

Giant verdant vegetable stalks cover my face

And hides me from the sun and from all the heat’s trace

Along with fields of pompous xanthous sunflowers

Dancing with swarms of butterflies each passing hour.

Maple leaves falling onto the tangerine ground

Produce some tender soft yet distinct rustling sounds

That brings with it some traces of the north wind

Blowing past the clouds and then across the sun’s sheen.

Not long until the snow arrives in a hurry

That later covers all things and makes me worry,

But it doesn’t bother my mood’s reasons

For enjoying the reoccurring four seasons.

Written on Saturday, October 22, 2011

Theme: Tranquility | Stanzas: 4 | Lines:16

Rhyming sequence: AABB | Syllabic range: All-12

February 21, 2012Leave a reply

#59 Animal Instinct

“Animal Instinct”

Born to be wild.

Just hiding it inside.

When the time is right,

Inner self comes out to fight.

Born with the skills

In order to chase and kill.

Among the entire hunting pack.

‘Tis one with vigor it not lacks.

Born to hunt down

With wisdom full profound.

Strategic mind it possesses

Against enemies that it messes.

Born with fate to die

Along with honor by its side.

Closing its eyes from reality,

Reaching the end of its destiny.

FOUR STANZAS IN FROST'S POEM AND SHAKESPEAREAN SONNETS FOUR PARTS- FROSTS MOST FAMOUS POEM HAS FOUR STANZAS

http://study.com/academy/lesson/poems-with-abab-rhyme-scheme-examples-lesson-quiz.html

http://study.com/…/poems-with-abab-rhyme-scheme-examples-le…

In this lesson, we will delve into the wonderful world of poetry. Specifically, we will analyze poems with the ABAB rhyme scheme. After a few examples, we will analyze how poets implement this type of rhyme scheme to create memorable poems. We will conclude our lesson with a brief quiz.

Introduction

One of the first choices a poet needs to make when writing a new poem involves the structure of the poem. Some poems are written in free verse or open form, which means that the poem does not have a particular structure. Other poems are written with non-rhyming structures that pay attention to the number of syllables. A haiku is an example of this type of form. Finally, other poems are written with a certain type of rhyming scheme.

Shakespearean Sonnets

Picture of Sonnet 18

Today we will examine the ABAB rhyme scheme. The ABAB rhyme scheme means that for every four lines, the first and third lines will rhyme with each other and the second and fourth lines will also rhyme with each other. There are many different types of rhymes that occur within lines, but for the purposes of this lesson, we will focus on the last word in each line only.

The most important thing to take away from the concept of the ABAB rhyme scheme is the fact that every other line rhymes. This is in contrast to the AABB rhyme scheme, where lines rhyme in consecutive pairs.

Examples

To get a better understanding of this format, it's best if we just dive into some examples. Let's look at two famous authors who wrote using the ABAB rhyming scheme in their poems: Robert Frost and William Shakespeare. Both Frost and Shakespeare's poems had a lasting impact on their audiences. Part of this impact was due to the way the rhymed lines create a rhythm that lingers in the minds of people who either read these poems or hear them out loud. Now, let's take a look at a few poems that employ the ABAB rhyme structure.

Robert Frost

We will begin with Robert Frost's famous poem, 'Neither Out Far Nor In Deep.'

'The people along the sand

All turn and look one way.

They turn their back on the land.

They look at the sea all day.

As long as it takes to pass

A ship keeps raising its hull;

The wetter ground like glass

Reflects a standing gull.

The land may vary more;

But wherever the truth may be---

The water comes ashore,

And the people look at the sea.

They cannot look out far.

They cannot look in deep.

But when was that ever a bar

To any watch they keep?'

There are four separate stanzas in the Robert Frost poem, but in each stanza the ABAB rhyme scheme applies. Take the first stanza, for example. 'Sand' rhymes with 'land,' and 'way' rhymes with 'day.' Sometimes in ABAB poems, the rhyme scheme will continue throughout the entire poem, but sometimes the exact rhyme will change between stanzas. If you wrote the rhyme scheme out for this poem, it would be 'ABAB CDCD EFEF GHGH.' In order for the poem to be written out 'ABAB ABAB ABAB ABAB,' the rhyme would have to stay consistent for all the 'A' lines and all the 'B' lines. All the odd lines would have to rhyme with 'sand,' and all the even lines would have to rhyme with 'way.'

Shakespeare

Our second example will be one of William Shakespeare's most famous sonnets, 'Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?' It is important to know that poems with ABAB rhyme schemes can also be organized with other types of structures, such as in the form of a sonnet. A sonnet is composed of three 4-line stanzas (in the ABAB rhyme scheme), followed by a couplet, which is in the AA rhyme scheme. The rhyme scheme of the entire sonnet would look like this: 'ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.' For our purposes, however, let's just focus on the alternating rhymes found in each of the first three stanzas.

First stanza

'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date:'

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FOURTH IS ALWAYS DIFFERENT

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warriors:_Omen_of_the_Stars

The Last Hope[edit]

The Last Hope

Publication date

21 March 2012 (Canada)

3 April 2012 (United States)

Media type Print (hardback and paperback), e-book

Pages 384

ISBN 978-0-06-155527-5

Preceded by The Forgotten Warrior

Followed by The Sun Trail

Jayfeather receives a prophecy informing him that there is actually a fourth cat in the prophecy. Jayfeather believes it may be Mothwing, medicine cat of RiverClan, divisions in StarClan and the medicine cats, due to the accusation that Jayfeather murdered Flametail in Night Whispers, makes it difficult to speak to Mothwing. Jayfeather is granted safe passage, however, and Mothwing shows him a reed that has been smoldering for days, even after heavy rainfall. Jayfeather takes this as an omen to find the spirit of Flametail, although the divisions in StarClan make it difficult. When he finds Flametail, he convinces Flametail to reveal the truth: that he had drowned and was not killed by Jayfeather. This revelation resolves the divisions among the medicine cats, who then unite StarClan in preparation for the final battle with the Dark Forest. Former ThunderClan leader Bluestar tells Jayfeather that the fourth cat is Firestar. The final battle between the Clans and the Dark Forest then begins, with both StarClan and Dark Forest cats taking on corporeal forms. The battle ends when Firestar kills Tigerstar's spirit, but he dies immediately afterward and loses his last life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_General_(C._S._Forester_novel)

As the novel says several times, he was eventually to command "four divisions .... something like a hundred thousand men in battle – as many men (or more men) than Wellington or Marlborough ever commanded in the field" He proves to be "one of the best generals of the new armies"

FOUR NOTEBOOKS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Notebook

Major themes[edit]

All four notebooks and the frame narrative testify to the above themes of Stalinism, the Cold War and the threat of nuclear conflagration, and women's struggles with the conflicts of work, sex, love, maternity, and politics.[citation needed] However, Lessing herself in the preface claimed that the most important theme in the novel is fragmentation; the mental breakdown that Anna suffers, perhaps from the compartmentalization of her life reflected in the division of the four notebooks, but also reflecting the fragmentation of society. Her relationship and attempt to draw everything together in the golden notebook at the end of the novel are both the final stage of Anna's intolerable mental breakdown, and her attempt to overcome the fragmentation and madness.

FINNEGANS WAKE

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_O.C._(season_4)

Part III[edit]

Part III concerns itself almost exclusively with Shaun, in his role as postman, having to deliver ALP's letter, which was referred to in Part I, but never seen.[71]

III.1 opens with the Four Masters' ass narrating how he thought, as he was "dropping asleep",[

FOUR CORE CHARACTERS OF THE OC

Due to the death of Marissa Cooper in the third-season finale, this was the first and only season without one of the "core four" characters of Marissa, Ryan Atwood, Seth Cohen, and Summer Roberts;[4] however, executive producer Stephanie Savage said that Marissa's death "set up a new direction for the show".[5

FOURSOME SHOW

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iK-5By2Wp2Q&t

MADE OF QUATRAINS

The pantoum is a poetic form derived from the pantun, a Malay verse form: specifically from the pantun berkait, a series of interwoven quatrains.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantoum

Contents [hide]

1 Structure

2 Verse forms

3 Poets

4 Music

5 See also

6 References

7 External links

Structure[edit]

The pantoum is a form of poetry similar to a villanelle in that there are repeating lines throughout the poem. It is composed of a series of quatrains; the second and fourth lines of each stanza are repeated as the first. The pattern continues for any number of stanzas, except for the final stanza, which differs in the repeating pattern. The first and third lines of the last stanza are the second and fourth of the penultimate; the first line of the poem is the last line of the final stanza, and the third line of the first stanza is the second of the final. Ideally, the meaning of lines shifts when they are repeated although the words remain exactly the same: this can be done by shifting punctuation, punning, or simply recontextualizing.

A four-stanza pantoum is common (although more may be used), and in the final stanza, lines one and three from the first stanza can be repeated, or new lines can be written. The pantoum form is as follows:[1]

Stanza 1

Stanza 2

Stanza 3

Stanza 4

I (or A or C)

J (or A or C)

Verse forms[edit]

The pantoum is derived from the pantun berkait, a series of interwoven quatrains. An English translation of such a pantun berkait appeared in William Marsden's A Dictionary and Grammar of the Malayan Language in 1812. Victor Hugo published an unrhymed French version by Ernest Fouinet of this poem in the notes to Les Orientales (1829) and subsequent French poets began to make their own attempts at composing original "pantoums".[2] Leconte de Lisle published five pantoums in his Poèmes tragiques (1884).

There is also the imperfect pantoum, in which the final stanza differs from the form stated above, and the second and fourth lines may be different from any preceding lines.

Baudelaire's famous poem "Harmonie du soir"[3] is usually cited as an example of the form, but it is irregular. The stanzas rhyme abba rather than the expected abab, and the last line, which is supposed to be the same as the first, is original.

Poets[edit]

American poets such as John Ashbery, Marilyn Hacker, Donald Justice ("Pantoum of the Great Depression"),[4] Carolyn Kizer,[5] and David Trinidad have done work in this form, as has Irish poet Caitriona O'Reilly. Stuart Dischell published a well-received pantoum, "She Put on Her Lipstick in the Dark," in the December, 2007 issue of The Atlantic.

The December 2015 issue of First Things featured a pantoum by James Matthew Wilson, "The Christmas Preface."[6]

Music[edit]

Claude Debussy set Charles Baudelaire's "Harmonie du soir" in his Cinq poèmes de Charles Baudelaire in the form of a pantoum. Perhaps inspired by this setting, Maurice Ravel entitled the second movement of his Trio for piano, violin and cello, "Pantoum (Assez vif)".[7] While Ravel never commented on the significance of the movement's title, Brian Newbould has suggested that the poetic form is reflected in the way the two themes are developed in alternation.[8]

Neil Peart used the form (with one difference from the format listed above) for the lyrics of "The Larger Bowl (A Pantoum)", the fourth track on Rush's 2007 album Snakes & Arrows, also released as a single.[9]

FOURTH BOOK OF FOUR HAD 16 POEMS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistulae_ex_Ponto

Epistulae ex Ponto (Letters from the Black Sea) is a work of Ovid, in four books.[1] It is especially important for our knowledge of Scythia Minor in his time.

Like the poems of books 3–5 of the Tristia, these describe the rigors of his exile and plead for leniency; they differ only by being addressed to individuals by name. Ovid's hopes rested largely on the genial character of Germanicus, nephew and adopted son of the emperor Tiberius, who is addressed or mentioned in several places.[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Four_Sons_of_Aymon

The Four Sons of Aymon (French: [Les] Quatre fils Aymon, Dutch: De Vier Heemskinderen, German: Die Vier Haimonskinder), sometimes also referred to as Renaud de Montauban (after its main character) is a medieval tale spun around the four sons of Duke Aymon: the knight Renaud de Montauban (also spelled Renaut, Renault, Italian: Rinaldo di Montalbano, Dutch: Reinout van Montalbaen), his brothers Guichard, Allard and Richardet, their magical horse Bayard (Italian: Bayardo), their adventures and revolt against the emperor Charlemagne. The story had a European success and echoes of the story are still found today in certain folklore traditions.

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From the website quadrisformisratio

QMR

https://quadriformisratio.wordpress.com/tag/victor-vasarely/

The world of painting was not an isolated case. It was the crowning point of a continuous development of the soul, which became visible as early as the eighth century. Isaac Ben Solomon Israeli (850 – 932) wrote his ‘Book of Definitions‘ and distinguished four types of questioning (SIRAT, 1985):

———————– 1. existence – if something exists

———————– 2. quiddity – what something is, the essential

———————– 3. quality – how something is

———————– 4. quarity – why something is

Israeli was considered the father of medieval Jewish Neoplatonism and was the foremost physician and philosopher of his time.

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16 is the squares of the quadrant model

Very famous novel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Joy_Luck_Club_(novel)

The Joy Luck Club is a 1989 novel written by Amy Tan. It focuses on four Chinese American immigrant families in San Francisco who start a club known as The Joy Luck Club, playing the Chinese game of mahjong for money while feasting on a variety of foods. The book is structured somewhat like a mahjong game, with four parts divided into four sections to create sixteen chapters. The three mothers and four daughters (one mother, Suyuan Woo, dies before the novel opens) share stories about their lives in the form of vignettes. Each part is preceded by a parable relating to the game.

Four line poems

http://www.funnysongsforkids.com/funny-poems-for-kids/category/four-line-poems

Short Counting Poems

2/17/2015 0 Comments

One, Two, Three, Four

One, two, three, four,

Mary at the cottage door.

Five, six, seven, eight,

Eating cherries off a plate.

Traditional

Six Apples

Six little apples

hanging on a tree

Johnny had a big stone

and down came three

Traditional

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Short Poems (Four Line Poems)

1/18/2015 1 Comment

Jack Hall

Jack Hall,

He is so small,

A mouse could eat him,

Hat and all.

Anon.

There was an old woman

Lived under a hill,

And if she’s not gone

She lives there still.

Anon.

The Man Who Wasn’t There

As I was going up the stair

I met a man who wasn’t there.

He wasn’t there again today –

Oh, how I wish he’d go away.

Anon.

Peter Prim

‘Peter Prim! Peter Prim!

Why do you in stockings swim?

Peter Prim gave this reply,

‘To make such fools as you ask why!’

Anon.

Epitaph

Here lies a greedy girl, Jane Bevan,

Whose breakfasts hardly ever stopped.

One morning at half past eleven

She snapped and crackled and then popped.

Anon.

I eat peas with honey

I eat peas with honey;

I’ve done it all my life.

It makes the peas taste funny,

But it keeps them on the knife

Anon.

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All of this is in my over 50 QMR books

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humpty_Dumpty

The humpty dumpty famous song is a quatrain (meaning four lines). It also interestingly originally said "four score horses and four score men"

The earliest known version was published in Samuel Arnold's Juvenile Amusements in 1797[7] with the lyrics:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

Four-score Men and Four-score more,

Could not make Humpty Dumpty where he was before.[8]

A manuscript addition to a copy of Mother Goose's Melody published in 1803 has the modern version with a different last line: "Could not set Humpty Dumpty up again".[8] It was published in 1810 in a version of Gammer Gurton's Garland as:

Humpty Dumpty sate [sic] on a wall,

Humpti Dumpti [sic] had a great fall;

Threescore men and threescore more,

Cannot place Humpty dumpty as he was before.[9]

In 1842, James Orchard Halliwell published a collected version as:

Humpty Dumpty lay in a beck.

With all his sinews around his neck;

Forty Doctors and forty wrights

Couldn't put Humpty Dumpty to rights![10]

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term "humpty dumpty" referred to a drink of brandy boiled with ale in the seventeenth century.[8] The riddle probably exploited, for misdirection, the fact that "humpty dumpty" was also eighteenth-century reduplicative slang for a short and clumsy person.[11] The riddle may depend upon the assumption that a clumsy person falling off a wall might not be irreparably damaged, whereas an egg would be. The rhyme is no longer posed as a riddle, since the answer is now so well known. Similar riddles have been recorded by folklorists in other languages, such as "Boule Boule" in French, "Lille Trille" in Swedish and Norwegian, and "Runtzelken-Puntzelken" or "Humpelken-Pumpelken" in different parts of Germany — although none is as widely known as Humpty Dumpty is in English.[8]

Quatrains

https://www.essentiallearningproducts.com/couplets-and-quatrains-lee-bennett-hopkins

The quatrain is a stanza of four lines that can be written in many different patterns. The easiest form to teach uses two, four or more couplets strung together to make a complete verse. An example is this anonymous verse:

I often wish that I

Could be a kite up in the sky,

And ride upon the breeze and go

Whichever way I choose to blow.

Many Mother Goose rhymes appear in the quatrain form, including "Humpty Dumpty."

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

All the King's horses and all the King's men

Couldn't put Humpty together again.

After introducing these basic forms, have students find examples in collections and anthologies of poetry. While searching, they'll be acquainting themselves with a host of poets and poetry. Kids can create their couplet or quatrain on any subject they choose. Finished poems can be illustrated and placed on a "We're Writing Poetry" bulletin board display.

Little Bo Peep is a quatrain. Three more quatrains are added to it, making 16 lines in all. There are 16 squares of the quadrant model

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Bo_Peep

"Little Bo Peep" or "Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep" is a popular English language nursery rhyme. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 6487.

Contents [hide]

1 Lyrics and melody

2 Additional verses

3 Origins and history

4 In popular culture

5 Notes

Lyrics and melody[edit]

As with most products of oral tradition, there are many variations to the rhyme. The most common modern version is:

Little Bo-Peep has lost her sheep,

and doesn't know where to find them;

leave them alone, And they'll come home,

wagging their tails behind them.[1]

Little Bo Peep, by Walter Crane c.1885. About this sound Play (help·info)

Common variations on second line include "And can't tell where to find them." The fourth line is frequently given as "Bringing their tails behind them",[2] or sometimes "Dragging their tails behind them". This alternative version is useful in the extended version, usually of four further stanzas. The melody commonly associated with the rhyme was first recorded in 1870 by the composer and nursery rhyme collector James William Elliott in his National Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Songs.[3]

Additional verses[edit]

19th century educational game

William Wallace Denslow's illustrations for the rhyme

The following additional verses are often added to the rhyme:

Little Bo-peep fell fast asleep,

and dreamt she heard them bleating;

but when she awoke, she found it a joke,

for they were still a-fleeting.

Then up she took her little crook,

determined for to find them;

she found them indeed, but it made her heart bleed,

for they'd left their tails behind them.

It happened one day, as Bo-peep did stray

into a meadow hard by,

there she espied their tails side by side,

all hung on a tree to dry.

She heaved a sigh and wiped her eye,

and over the hillocks went rambling,

and tried what she could, as a shepherdess should,

to tack each again to its lambkin.[1][2]

Origins and history[edit]

The earliest record of this rhyme is in a manuscript of around 1805, which contains only the first verse.[1] There are references to a children's game called "Bo-Peep", from the 16th century, including one in Shakespeare's King Lear (Act I Scene iv), but little evidence that the rhyme existed.[1] The additional verses are first recorded in the earliest printed version in a version of Gammer Gurton's Garland or The Nursery Parnassus in 1810.[1]

The phrase "to play bo peep" was in use from the 14th century to refer to the punishment of being stood in a pillory. For example, in 1364, an ale-wife, Alice Causton, was convicted of giving short measure, for which crime she had to "play bo pepe thorowe a pillery".[4] Andrew Boorde uses the same phrase in 1542, "And evyll bakers, the which doth nat make good breade of whete, but wyl myngle other corne with whete, or do nat order and seson hit, gyving good wegght, I would they myghte play bo pepe throwe a pyllery".[5]

In popular culture[edit]

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Illustration by Dorothy M. Wheeler

In O. Henry’s romantic story “Madame Bo-Peep, of the Ranches” Octavia Beaupree comes to the Rancho de las Sombras in Texas, the only real property she inherits after the bankruptcy and death of her husband, Colonel Beaupree. Her old friend and unsuccessful admirer Teddy Westlake who works at the ranch as a manager calls her by the name of Mother Goose's heroine, the Mexican workers call her “La Madama Bo-Peepy” and the ranch becomes known as “Madame Bo-Peep's ranch”. Finally, Octavia accepts Teddy’s proposal, he chants the first quatrain of the nursery rhyme, after the third line she draws his head down, whispers in his ear and the story ends with the words “But that is one of the tales they brought behind them.”

This section indiscriminately collects miscellaneous information. Please compress this material to remove any irrelevant or unimportant information. (March 2017)

Bo Peep is the female lead in the 1934 film Babes in Toyland. The character also appears in the 1961 film version, portrayed by a young Ann Jillian, but not as a leading character.

The character appears as "Bo Peep," a ceramic doll, in the animated film series Toy Story voiced by Annie Potts.

In the 1950s, comedian Johnny Standley recorded a line-by-line commentary on the original 4-line poem, titled "It's in the Book." He ridicules what he sees as the simplistic attitude of the person addressing Bo Peep, and ends his commentary with (poem quotes in italics) "They will come home, a-waggin' their tails. Pray tell me, what else could they wag? They will come home a-waggin' their tails... behind them. Behind them! Did we think they'd wag them in front? Of course, they might've come home in reverse."[6]

In the anime Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo she is given the name "Little Bobobo-Peep."

In the continuity of the Fables comic book from Vertigo, she is the wife of Peter Piper, and lives in Fabletown's northern branch, the "Farm." Her story, along with that of Peter and his evil brother Max (the future Pied Piper of Hamelin), is told in Bill Willingham's novel Peter & Max: A Fables Novel.

In the 1980s television series, The Dukes of Hazzard, the Daisy Duke character used the name, "Bo Peep" as her CB Radio handle.

In the 1986 Kidsongs video "A Day with the Animals" the Kidsongs Kids recorded their version of the song Little Bo Peep.

Little Bo Peep was one of the seven magical events to feature on the Teletubbies, whereby string puppets were used to illustrate the nursery rhyme. Little Bo Peep went in search of her sheep who hid themselves around Tellytubby Land.

In the 2000 TV miniseries The 10th Kingdom, the protagonists find themselves in a village in the fairytale kingdom where Bo Peep's descendants have diverted the magic water that was once used to bring prosperity to the village via the local wishing well; protagonist Tony Lewis learns this secret and uses the well to transform a sheep into a champion and restore Prince Wendell White- Snow White's grandson, trapped in the form of a dog and turned into a gold statue by accident- back into a living state. At the storyline's conclusion, the diverted well-water is restored to its original route when Sally Peep, bitter at losing the annual sheep competition, destroys her grandfather's dam.

In the 2006 animated film Hoodwinked, when the Wolf interrogates his informant, a sheep named Woolworth, Woolworth describes Red Puckett as a "sweet gal, not like that Bo Peep", complaining that "that brat put up an invisible fence, I tasted metal fillings for a week!"

In the TV series Once Upon a Time episode "White Out," Bo Peep (portrayed by Robin Weigert) is a female warlord in the Enchanted Forest who collects payments on farmers who own livestock, including sheep, and brands those who defy her as her property with her shepherd's crook. In Storybrooke, she works as a butcher at Chop Shop. One day, she is visited by David and Captain Hook, asking for her help. She refuses to help him, demanding that she owes him none. David interrogates her demanding to know about Anna, whom she branded years ago. Claiming that she had branded many people and that she couldn't remember the girl, David instructs Hook to take her crook. Angered by their actions, Bo Peep mocks David for being a hero in this world.

In the book series The Land of Stories by Chris Colfer, Little Bo Peep is a farmer, living in the Red Riding Hood Kingdom, who aspires to become queen. Red Riding Hood keeps annoying her by mentioning that Little Bo once lost all her sheep.

http://shapingwords.blogspot.com/2010/02/quatrain-prosody-part-3.html

Quatrain Prosody -- Part 3

In Part 1 of this series I noted that the traditional rhyme scheme for the Chinese Quatrain is A-B-C-B. Here is an example of this kind of traditional rhyme scheme:

Armstrong Woods

Where the footpath ends

A creek quickly flows

Over logs and rocks

Giant redwoods grow

The effect of this kind of rhyme scheme is to give a strong sense of closure to the quatrain. In the traditional rhyme scheme the first end-rhyme that is heard is the last syllable of the quatrain. This is like a sonic cadence and I think it is one of the reasons why this kind of rhyme scheme has proven so successful in the Chinese Quatrain. I have found that it transmits well to an English language context.

Even though I felt a sense of satisfaction with the traditional rhyme scheme I set out to explore other possible rhyme schemes, to see how they would affect the sense of the Quatrain. Here is an example of A-A-A-A:

Homage to Heraclitus

The river flows to the sea

Events become history

The swirl of the galaxies

Time’s flow is eternity

I haven’t used this rhyme scheme very often, but I felt that in this case it fit the subject matter, which is the Heraclitean view of the ever-flowing, river-like, nature of existence. In this type of rhyme scheme there is not felt the sense of cadence and closure that the traditional rhyme scheme provides. My sense is that the A-A-A-A rhyme scheme feels like it could continue this way, almost like the Quatrain is just a portion of a much larger sequence, whereas the traditional rhyme scheme gives me a self-contained feeling. For certain subject matters, though, this kind of rhyme scheme may be efficacious.

Another rhyme scheme, one that I have used often, is A-B-A-B. Here is an example:

An Old Man’s Morning

February cold –

Back ache and joint pains

I am feeling old

Not much time remains

I like the effect of this rhyme scheme; it feels very “round” to me, very balanced. The weave of the lines is sonically tighter than with the classic rhyme scheme of A-B-C-B. It also has a sense of closure and cadence that is almost, though not quite, as strong as the classic rhyme scheme.

I have tried other rhyme schemes rarely. A few times I have used A-B-C-A. Here is an example:

On George Fox

I will walk the path of peace

Though the world chooses war,

Strife and hatred and deceit;

War within my heart has ceased.

In addition to lines 1 and 4 rhyming, line 3 is a slant rhyme to both 1 and 4. It’s also unusual in that line 3 is a run-on from line 2. Here’s another example of A-B-C-A:

Grace

I am very small

Which means I’m not God,

But through His kind grace

I can glimpse the all.

Here only lines 1 and 4 rhyme.

My sense is that there is not as strong a feeling of cadence and closure in this rhyme scheme. That surprised me. I had thought that it would more closely resemble the traditional rhyme scheme of A-B-C-B, but it really feels different to me.

Another Quatrain rhyme scheme appears in traditional English nursery rhymes, for example:

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,

How I wonder what you are,

Up above the world so high,

Like a diamond in the sky.

Here the rhyme scheme is A-A-B-B. I haven’t used this rhyme scheme myself, even though I’ve become interested in it because it appears naturally in English poetry of seven syllable lines (for line 4 I read “diamond” as “dymond”). My feeling is that this rhyme scheme feels more like a series of couplets, that is to say it sounds like two two-line verses, rather than a organic Quatrain of four integrated, woven together, lines. On the other hand, this kind of rhyme scheme probably has potential in English since it is already clearly established; it shouldn’t be put aside and some subject matter might be agreeable to such a structure. I am thinking of, for example, a Quatrain which opens with a question in the first two lines, and then the last two lines either offer an answer, or a comment on the question. In this kind of Quatrain there is a natural division into two sections and a rhyme scheme of A-A-B-B would support that division.

The result of all these explorations in rhyme is a renewed sense of the efficacy of the traditional rhyme scheme of A-B-C-B. It is this rhyme scheme which provides the strongest sense of completion, the strongest sense that the Quatrain stands as an organic whole. Still, I do find the other rhyme schemes to be efficacious at times, they each have their own expressive tone or quality and certain topics seem to merge well with these other rhyme schemes.

There is a common factor to all of the rhyme schemes: That is that line 4 always rhymes with some other line. Without that closing end-rhyme, the Quatrain loses its integrity, its sense of completeness and unity.

No doubt as I continue to compose these Quatrains more insights into how rhyme works in these brief poems will become clear.

http://shapingwords.blogspot.com/2010/02/quatrain-prosody-part-2.html

Quatrain Prosody -- Part 2

In the traditional Chinese approach to the Quatrain the line is divided so that there are caesurae placed at specific points in the line. For the Five-Four Quatrain the ideal is to have the line pause after the first two syllables. This gives an overall feel of 2 + 3 syllables. Is it possible to mimic this structure in English? I found that I am able to replicate this kind of division. Keep in mind that the pause here refers to a grammatical unit, not so much an extra beat or pulse, but a pause in terms of structural meaning. Here is an example:

Moonlight through the mist

Moonlight through the pine

Strange shapes drift and twist

Strange shapes intertwine

The division after the first two syllables is graphically hihglighted here:

Moonlight -- through the mist

Moonlight -- through the pine

Strange shapes -- drift and twist

Strange shapes -- intertwine

However, I found that generally speaking I am not able to maintain this kind of structure. Here I think the differences between Chinese and English impinge on this kind of structural element. Because Chinese is a monosyllabic language, all words are one syllable long. In English, by contrast, words have a variety of syllable counts. In Chinese the first two syllables will always be two words, but in English the first two syllables might be two words, one word, or part of a three, four, or five syllable word. Nevertheless, I think this kind of structure is worth watching and pursuing. I have just begun working on this type of Quatrain and perhaps with more practice the usage of this kind of structure, adapted to an English language context, will become clearer.

One of the ways that the varied syllable lengths of English can be used is to create what I call “parallel density". In a five syllable line the maximum number of words will be five; that is the highest density. The fewest number of words will be one; that is the lowest density. I have found that when two lines share the same density, that is to say when two lines have the same number of words, there is a kind of resonance that they share. A good example is the following:

The Policeman in the Café

The policeman sits

Sipping his coffee

A gun on his hip

Music plays softly

Lines two and four have the same density (three). In addition they have the same syllabic structure; 2 + 1 + 2. They also rhyme. This combination of factors makes them strongly resonant of each other and unites them rhythmically and sonically.

Parallel density can be either strict or loose. The “Policeman” Quatrain has a strict parallel density for lines 2 and 4 because the syllabic order of the words is the same. In line 1 the number of words is also 3, but the syllabic order differs from lines 2 and 4. In line 1 the syllabic order is 1 + 3 + 1. I refer to this kind of relationship as loosely parallel, which means that the density of the two lines is the same (meaning that the number of words is the same), but the syllabic order is different. When the density and the syllabic order are the same the parallel is strict.

In the following Quatrain the parallel density is loose:

Heard in the Distance

Clouds in the morning

Slowing down the dawn

Shadowless gray light

A solo flute’s song

Lines 1, 2 and 4 have the same density (4), but the distribution of syllables is different. For line 1 it is 1 + 1 + 1 + 2, for line 2 it is 2 + 1 + 1 + 1, while for line 4 it is 1 + 2 + 1 + 1. Strict parallel density, it seems to me, creates a stronger resonance. Yet loose parallel density has a discernible effect. In this particular Quatrain, line 3 has a density of 3, which makes it stand out. When line 4 repeats the density of 4 found in lines 1 and 2, it provides a sense of return and closure.

For Chinese Quatrains the placement of the grammatical division was codified. For the English Quatrain derived from the Chinese Quatrain, it seems to me that a less codified approach is needed. I say this because, again, of the variable syllabic length of English words; this would seem to lead to a variety of possible patterns, interactions, and resonances between the lines of the English Quatrain which wouldn’t be available in the Chinese language (just as tonal interactions are unavailable in English). No doubt more will be revealed as I continue to explore this form.

Note: There are also codified caesurae for the Seven-Four Quatrain. The same kind of analysis applies as that given above for the Five-Four Quatrain.

http://shapingwords.blogspot.com/2010/02/quatrain-prosody-part-1.html

Quatrain Prosody -- Part 1

Those who are regular readers at Shaping Words will have noted that two of the syllabic forms of poetry that I post are Quatrains; that is to say they are four line poems. I want to take a few moments to post about the prosody, the structure, and source of these Quatrains.

My inspiration for the Quatrains is the Chinese poetic tradition. During the Tang Dynasty (618 to 907) there arose in China two forms of short verse. Both of them are Quatrains. One of them consists of four lines with five syllables to each line, for a total of twenty syllables. The other consists of four lines with seven syllables to each line, for a total of twenty-eight syllables.

Many of China’s greatest poets wrote in these forms, including Li Bo, Du Fu, Wang Wei and many others. Some of the most famous poems in Chinese history are in one or the other of these Quatrain forms.

I found these poems to be greatly inspiring. It was remarkable how much meaning was concentrated in these brief forms. I decided to see if I could adapt the Chinese Quatrain to an English language context. The chief means for such adaptation was mimicking; that is to say I sought to mimic as many aspects of the Chinese Quatrain in an English language context as possible.

At first this may seem an unlikely possibility because English and Chinese are so different. Chinese is monosyllabic and tonal, while English is polysyllabic and non-tonal. Yet there are also striking similarities. While it is true that English is polysyllabic, it is also true that English has a larger percentage of single syllable words than other European languages. This is because English has, for the most part, dropped inflected endings. Inflection increases the number of syllables for a given word. The absence of inflection in English means that, relatively speaking, it has a large pool of monosyllabic words and this tendency in English maps well onto the Chinese linguistic context.

A second similarity is that for both languages the position of a word in a sentence determines meaning in the sense of grammatical function. Not all languages are like that; highly inflected languages are loose regarding word order. Chinese is uninflected and English is largely uninflected, and so for both these languages word order takes on a significant role.

A third similarity is that for both poetic cultures rhyme is a central organizing principle. For both English language poetry and Chinese poetry end-rhyme in particular is a pervasive means for organizing poetic structures. For those who have read Chinese poetry in translation this is probably not clear. In fact many Americans think that Chinese poetry is almost equivalent to modern free verse. This has to do with decisions that translators have made in how to bring Chinese poetry into English and also the great difficulty a translator would have finding equivalent rhymes in English for the Chinese rhymes. It is almost impossible to do that, except on very rare occasions. Some volumes of Chinese poetry contain the Chinese characters of the poem along with the translation. However, this is not really helpful for the English speaking reader. What is needed is a transliteration of the Chinese poem so that the dedicated reader can get an idea of what the poem sounds like in Chinese. The Chinese characters do not represent sounds and because of this the English speaking reader has no opportunity to grasp the rhyme scheme of the original poem when looking at the Chinese characters. Only a transliteration offers that possibility and there are very few volumes of translations from the Chinese that do this. I think this is unfortunate because it hides the nature of Chinese poetry from the average reader. For these reasons many American continue to think that Chinese verse is unrhymed and unregulated when exactly the opposite is true.

Another similarity between Chinese and English poetry is that for the traditional poetry of both cultures the line is regulated by counting. That is to say the length of a line is determined by a particular count. For example, the English Sonnet has ten syllables, or five iambs, per line, while the Chinese Quatrain has either five or seven syllables per line. What is counted is somewhat different for the two poetic traditions. In traditional English poetry what is counted are the accents or stresses; that is to say a line of five stresses makes up a line of a Sonnet. Since the Sonnet typically is made up of iambs, that usually results in ten syllables; but other stress patterns are possible which result in slightly different syllable counts even though the stress count remains at five. In contrast, Chinese poetry is strictly syllabic. Only the number of syllables is counted (in this respect Chinese poetic culture is similar to Japanese and French poetry). I decided to map the Chinese approach onto English by confining the count to syllables rather than stresses. I did this because of my ongoing interest in the possibilities of syllabic verse in English. I have reached a point where I trust a syllabic approach to English verse because so much excellent syllabic poetry has been produced since the early twentieth century. I have come to admire the results of a strictly syllabic approach to English poetry as found in, for example, the Cinquain, the syllabic Haiku, the syllabic Sonnet, and many other examples. I therefore felt that adopting a syllabic approach could prove efficacious in the example of the Chinese Quatrain’s transmission to the English language.

Finally, I was intrigued by the idea of a syllabic form where the lines were all of a uniform length. In the syllabic verse I had previously dealt with the syllable count varied from line to line. In the syllabic Haiku the count is 5-7-5. In the syllabic Tanka it is 5-7-5-7-7, for the Cinquain it is 2-4-6-8-2, for the Tetractys 1-2-3-4-10, etc. It seems to be the case that when English language poets write syllabically they tend to write in structures with changing line lengths. I’m not sure why that is the case, but it seems to be consistent. The Chinese poetic culture tended strongly towards uniform line lengths; I’m not aware of a Chinese form that is not of uniform line length. This contrasts with Japan where the poetic forms have varied line lengths. The Chinese forms have a certain steadiness. They remind me of going on a walk on a trail, keeping up a steady pace, not to fast, not too slow, just walking forward. There is a feel about the uniform line length which I found attractive. I also found it familiar. Most English language poetry (leaving aside free verse) also has uniform line lengths. From Elizabethan poetry to Robert Frost and Millay, a uniform line length has been a standard feature of English language poetry. In this both Chinese and English poetry are similar and I thought that resemblance might prove fruitful.

I was aware, of course, that some aspects of Chinese cannot be mimicked in English. In Chinese poetry regulation of tone is an aspect of their prosody. Since English is non-tonal such regulation is not applicable and cannot be transferred from Chinese to English. My quest was to discover how much of the prosody of the Chinese Quatrain could be mimicked in English and then to see the results.

I started out with what I gleaned to be the basic structure which is as follows:

1. The quatrain has four lines.

2. The quatrain has a title.

3. Each line has the same number of syllables; either five or seven.

4. The Quatrain has the following end-rhyme scheme: A, B, C, B.

Based on this I proceeded to attempt writing these Quatrains in English. Here are two early examples:

On a Clear Night When the Full Moon Was Very Bright

Moonlight on my bed

Wakes me from my dream

Memories of you

The sound of a stream

Found in a Closet

Fossils from a mountain top

Signs of life from ages past

The first gift you gave to me

When I thought our love would last

There is much more to Quatrain prosody, but this was my starting point. I’ll write more about other aspects of the Strict Quatrain form in Part 2.

P.S. A note on terminology. The Chinese word translated as “Quatrain” is “jueju”. In Chinese this word designates a four-line poem. In English poetry “Quatrain” can refer to a poem of any length as long as it is organized into four-line groups. So Robert Frost’s famous “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is a Quatrain containing four groups of four-lines, a total of sixteen lines.

The jueju are subdivided into two types, depending on line length. The five syllable jueju is called “wujue”. The seven syllable jueju is called “qijue”. I developed a nomenclature to describe these two forms as follows: I refer to the “wujue” as the “Five-Four Quatrain”. I refer to the qijue as the “Seven-Four Quatrain”. “Five-Four” means “five syllables per line, four lines”. “Seven-Four” means “seven syllables per line, four lines.”

Here’s a guide for the terminology:

Chinese: Jueju

English: Strict Quatrain, or Quatrain

Chinese: Wujue

English: Five-Four Strict Quatrain, or Five-Four Quatrain

Chinese: Qijue

English: Seven-Four Strict Quatrain, or Seven-Four Quatrain

For the purposes of this essay “Quatrain” will refer to a poem of only four lines. If the possibility of confusion arises, I will refer to the adaptation of the Chinese Quatrain into English as the “Strict Quatrain”, meaning only four lines; and I will refer to the English usage as the “Open Quatrain”, meaning open as to the total number of lines. In most cases the context will be clear and I will simply refer to “Quatrain”.

http://shapingwords.blogspot.com/search/label/Tetractys

Tetractys poetry- tetra means four

Showing posts with label Tetractys. Show all posts

Monday, November 9, 2015

'Searching for You' by Leonard Dabydeen -- A Review

Searching for You

By Leonard Dabydeen

A Review

I reviewed Leonard Dabydeen’s earlier collection of poetry, Watching You, a few years ago. Watching You is the first collection of Tetractys poems; meaning the first book consisting entirely of the Tetractys form. The Tetractys is a five-line syllabic form with the count as follows: 1-2-3-4-10. It is based on Pythagorean number theory where the first four numbers add up to 10. 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10, so in a way the last line syllabically gathers the first four lines.

In Dabydeen’s second book, Searching for You, the author continues with his exploration of the Tetractys form. But in this volume Dabydeen has added Fibonacci poems as well. The relationship between the two forms is intriguing. The overall count for the Tetractys is 20 syllables. Dabydeen uses the six-line form of the Fibonacci: 1-1-2-3-5-8, which also adds up to 20 syllables for the overall count. The two forms are similar in the overall shape; both forms start with a one-count word, then they open up into longer lines, but the pacing of how they open differs. In both forms the last line has the longest count. The interplay between the two forms is one of the things which gives Searching some of its charm. The book is a demonstration of how a syllabic line in English functions by using two forms with the same overall count, that share an overall shape, but with different distributions of that count.

Dabydeen’s approach to lineation is grammatical; each line forms a grammatical unit. In overall structure, most of the poems are single sentence poems so that they flow from the opening one-count line to the end where the reader usually encounters the longest line. (There are some exceptions where Dabydeen uses a reversed structure of the lines.) The two forms both start with a one-count word; so they share that in common. As in his previous book, the first line often consists of a pronoun, which makes sense. It seems to me that in this second book, though, Dabydeen is more expansive in his choice of opening one-count words. The opening word in forms like the Tetractys and Fibonacci carries a lot of weight; a single word of one count holds an entire line. And Dabydeen draws us in with his opening words.

Dabydeen writes his poems based on his personal experience, often commenting on his own emotional state, current events, the plight of refugees, and landscapes, particularly at night. There is also a strongly religious element threading through the collection. Dabydeen’s Hinduism plays a prominent role and some of the poems are invocations or prayers to deities such as Krishna.

Lonely as a Star

Dark

tonight

no moonlight

behind the clouds

I sit on this bench lonely as a star.

This is beautifully shaped. The lineation is clear. There is an elegant integration of the landscape with the author’s interior mood. There is also a judicious use of rhyme, tonight/moonlight, which helps us to feel the sense of the form. And there is a sonic resonance between dark/star which also helps to clarify the shape of the poem.

Here is another Tetractys:

Friendship

Each

moment

standing here

being with you

brings me closer to a wish coming true.

Again we see the well-crafted lineation and the judicious use of rhyme, you/true. I also appreciate the way the first four lines tumble into the long closing line in a way that feels rhythmically natural. It’s almost like you are hearing someone speaking this, pausing slightly at the end of each short line, and then opening their heart in the last, longer line.

Here is a seascape:

Sea

Now

the sea

beckons me

from the boardwalk

I watch waves rushing to shore quietly.

Not all of his Tetractys rhyme, but I admire the skillful, and natural, way that Dabydeen uses rhyme in a way that is unaffected. Here is an unrhymed Tetractys:

My Watch

my watch

snowflakes dance

this cold morning

sunshine pretends to keep melting the snow.

There are 125 Tetractys poems. These are followed by 76 Fibonacci poems. Here are some prayers to Lord Krishna:

chant

your name

seek blessings

like flowers blooming

in a garden with trees of thorns.

live

this Age

in darkness

in Kali Yuga

free us from evil, Lord Krishna

I enjoyed reading the specifically religious poems in this collection; they add a deeper dimension to the collection. Notice how in the second prayer to Krishna, Dabydeen starts two lines with ‘in’, while the last two lines use a mild end rhyme, Yuga/Krishna. This gives the prayer a chant-like sound; I wonder how this prayer would sound put to music; I can almost hear the tune.

At times Dabydeen is philosophical:

So Much of Life

much

of life

is made up

of how we gather

all the things we do together.

Dabydeen is a major syllabic poet writing in English. His two books are a significant contribution to the small, but growing, body of English syllabic verse. His work is carefully constructed, wide ranging in topics, and imbued with both emotional and intellectual honesty. His second book is a wonderful collection and I look forward to future publications.

Botany of Life

Let

take you

where flowers

bloom in abundance

it is the botany of life.

Searching for You:

A Collection of Tetractys & Fibonacci Poems

By Leonard Dabydeen

ISBN: 9781514409756

$19.99

Available from Amazon, Xlibris, or through Ingram Distribution.

Posted by Jim714 at 10:09 AM 2 comments:

Labels: Fibonacci, Review, Tetractys

Friday, November 9, 2012

On Definitions, Recipes, and Rules

When looking at a particular syllabic form we work with a group of characteristics. For example, the Tetractys form has the following characteristics:

1. Five lines

2. Syllable count for each line is determined: 1-2-3-4-10

Alternatively, you could look at this as five distinct characteristics:

2.1 Line 1 has one syllable

2.2 Line 2 has two syllables

2.3 Line 3 has three syllables

2.4 Line 4 has four syllables

2.5 Line 5 has 10 syllables

3. Line 1 should not consist of the articles ‘the’ or ‘a’

This characteristic was put forth by the originator.

4. There is a title

Now, how do we relate to this group of characteristics? There are several approaches.

The first approach is that they are rules in the sense of rules of a game. From this perspective if you compose a poem and the poem strays from even one of these characteristics, then you have not composed a Tetractys. Rules of a game are determinative in the sense that if you violate the rules you are cheating. For example, if we are playing chess and I move a pawn diagonally, that would be cheating. It would not be considered an ‘alternative’ play. It would simply be wrong. If we view the characteristics of a poetic form in this way then we would conclude that a Tetractys that differs from the listed form was simply not a Tetractys, in the same way that if I make a move in chess that is outside of the rules of play I am no longer actually playing chess.

A second way of looking at the characteristics of a form is to regard them as a definition of the form. Let’s use as an example a traditional listing of Haiku characteristics:

1. A three line poem

2.1 Line 1 has five syllables

2.2 Line 2 has seven syllables

2.3 Line 3 has five syllables

3. Somewhere in the poem will be a seasonal reference

4. There is no title

This is a good summary of a traditional view of Haiku. If you take this last as definitive, as a definition, then if you come across a Haiku that deviates from this list you will conclude that it is not a ‘real’ Haiku. It is similar to coming across a statue of a rabbit and concluding that it is not a ‘real’ rabbit. It may have some of the characteristics of a rabbit, but in essence it is not a rabbit because it lacks life and other characteristics, such as motion. It is a representation of a rabbit, but it lacks ‘rabbitness’. Similarly, a traditional view of Haiku might view a three line poem in 5-7-5, but that does not have a seasonal reference, as lacking in ‘haikuness’; the essence of Haiku is simply not there.

A third way of looking at the characteristics of a form is that they are a recipe for generating the form. From this perspective the characteristics are ingredients which, combined, produce the form in question. Let’s take the Cinquain:

1. A five line poem

2.1 Line 1 has two syllables

2.2 Line 2 has four syllables

2.3 Line 3 has six syllables

2.4 Line 4 has eight syllables

2.5 Line 5 has two syllables

3. There is a title

From the perspective of a recipe the idea is to combine all these ‘ingredients’ and by so doing you will produce a Cinquain. It may or may not be a good Cinquain, but if it has all of these characteristics it will be considered a Cinquain.

The recipe model allows for deviations from the given recipe. For example, if I am making bread pudding and the recipe calls for cinnamon, but I have run out, I might add some other seasoning, or just drop the cinnamon. But I would still consider it to be bread pudding. The recipe model is not based on the idea of essence, nor does the recipe model function in the same way as rules do. It is not cheating to make a substitution in a recipe for bread pudding. I might make a substitution out of necessity or out of choice, but in either case it is simply a variation on the recipe.

Similarly, if I look at the characteristics of a given syllabic form as ingredients in a recipe, that allows for substitutions. In Haiku this would allow for non-seasonal Haiku, or for a line that is longer or shorter than the recipe. For the Cinquain it might allow for a concluding line that is one syllable, or three syllables; these would be two variations on the recipe. From the perspective of a recipe I would not be cheating. And from the perspective of a recipe I would not be moving away from the ‘essence’ of the form because a recipe is not a matter of essences. A recipe is a matter of outlining a procedure; a recipe is craft oriented rather than essence oriented.

Personally, I have found the recipe model to be rewarding. Though recipes allow for changes and deviations from the listed ingredients, I also find myself realizing that there is a lot of inherited wisdom in a recipe. It is good to take the recipe seriously because the recipe is the distilled inheritance of many practitioners’ understanding.

Using a recipe based view of syllabic form allows for a relaxed response when one runs across the occasional Haiku by Basho that deviates, plus or minus, from the standard count. It allows for variations on the form as sub-categories that can take on their own life.

Here’s an example of what I mean from the world of tea. One of the world’s favorite black teas is Earl Grey. The recipe for Earl Grey is:

1. A blend of black tea

2. Bergamot oil

If these two ingredients are present, you have Earl Grey.

But over time people have creatively engaged with Early Grey and come up with the following variations:

Lady Grey

1. A blend of black tea

2. Bergamot oil

3. Lavender

Earl Grey Green

1. A green tea

2. Bergamot oil

London Fog

1. A blend of black tea

2. Bergamot oil

3. Rose

4. Cream

Victorian Earl Grey

1. A blend of black tea

2. Bergamot oil

4. Lemon oil

5. Cornflower

And there are many other variations as well.

Something similar has happened to the Sonnet. Different rhyme schemes have defined sub-categories of the Sonnet so you have Shakespearean, Petrarchan, Spencerian, Terza Rima, etc. Each of these sub-categories can then engender further variations.

Using the model of a recipe, we can see what has happened to Haiku in the west. Just as Earl Grey Tea has developed many offshoots, so Haiku in the west has developed many variations. Syllabic Haiku is a variation from the tradition in that it drops the seasonal reference as a necessary, though often cultivated, ingredient in the list. Free Verse Haiku has kept the three line ingredient (for the most part), but dropped the syllable count and seasonal reference ingredients. Just as the different types of Earl Grey are all legitimate variations, so also the different types of Haiku are all legitimate expressions of the poetic impulse. But they are different; just as Early Grey Green is different from the Earl Grey types that use a black tea base. They taste different and they appeal to different types of people. So also the different types of Haiku ‘taste’ different and will appeal to different types of poetic sensibility.

From the perspective of a recipe, an interesting question is ‘how far can one go in changing the ingredients before you are now creating something else’? I don’t think there is a way to answer this question. I think one has to rely more on a sense of feeling.

When I was working my way through graduate school I worked as a waiter at a creperie, a restaurant that specialized in many kinds of crepe (I think it was called ‘The Magic Pan’). One day I was taking an order and the customer ordered the ‘chicken crepe’ lunch from the list. Then the customer asked if they could substitute the ‘crab crepe for the chicken crepe and the spinach salad for the tossed salad’. You see the ‘crab crepe lunch’ was more expensive. So the customer wanted the chicken crepe price but a crab crepe lunch. As politely as I could I declined the substitutions and the customer ordered something else.

The point of the story is that when we make substitutions in a recipe, or any kind of aggregate, there comes a point where we are constrained to think that we have gone beyond the parameters of the ‘form’; whatever it might be. But this sense of having gone beyond is going to be different for different people. I don’t know of an objective way to make this determination; again I think it is more feeling based.

For example, if someone offered me ‘Earl Grey’, but it did not have bergamot oil, I would be inclined to think it wasn’t ‘really’ Earl Grey. But suppose it contained other citrus oils (Bergamot is a citrus and the oil of Bergamot is what is used in Earl Grey). Some might consider using a combination of different citrus oils to be ‘close enough’ to Earl Grey to qualify as a type of Earl Grey. It might be called ‘Earl Grey Orange’, for example. Again, I do not know of any objective way of making this kind of determination and the two of us would likely have to agree to disagree about what constitutes ‘genuine’ Earl Grey.

But to return to poetic forms; my sense is that many of the discussions about poetic form, especially those surrounding Haiku, are essence based. I fall into that view myself at times even though I strongly incline towards a recipe view of poetic form. In part this is derived from Japanese views of essence (Japanese: honi). This view of essence is not often explicitly touched on, but it lies behind many of the presentations of formal Japanese verse. I understand this view; it makes sense. But it also leads to unnecessary rancor. A recipe view undermines the feeling that everyone must compose according to the same ingredients. There is no reason, for example, why syllabic and free verse Haiku cannot live side by side. They use different recipes, for sure, but that should be OK.

Philosophically, the three views of form (rule based, essence based, and recipe based) probably appeal to different types of people. And whether or not an individual has one or the other view is likely to be related to how that individual views other areas in their life. The three views reflect deeply held metaphysical positions that are not often consciously examined. In addition, I do not think it is possible to make a final determination as to which approach is superior. Essence and rule based approaches have the virtue of continuity and are more likely to preserve tradition and pass it on to the next generation. A recipe based approach can be more innovative and allows for more creativity in terms of the characteristics themselves; though essence and rule based approaches can be just as creative. And perhaps, in the end, they are not mutually exclusive. Perhaps they are more like on a continuum. I have noticed that at different times in my life I have been more drawn to an essence based view, while at other times more drawn to a recipe based view.

But it is good to take a look at how one relates to these characteristics. By becoming consciously aware of how we relate to them we can communicate more clearly about our own view and comprehend more accurately those who take a different approach. This increases our understanding of each other and I think that is a good thing.

Posted by Jim714 at 11:13 AM No comments:

Labels: Cinquain, Haiku, Prosody, Syllabics, Tetractys

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Watching You -- A Review

Watching You

A Collection of Tetractys Poems

By Leonard Dabydeen

Published by Xlibris

ISBN: 9781469148021

$19.99

English syllabic poetry has been marked by the appearance of many new forms. Ever since Adelaide Crapsey created her 'Cinquain' in the early 20th century other syllabic forms have emerged. I am referring here to forms created by native English speakers as opposed to syllabic forms borrowed from other countries like Haiku or Sijo.

One of these new forms of syllabic poetry is the Tetractys. It is a five line form with the syllable count as follows: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 10. It was created by the British poet Ray Stebbing in either the 1980's or 1990's; I'm not sure of the exact date. I have noticed the Tetractys form appearing in recent anthologies of modern poetry and in works by a single author centered on a variety of syllabic forms.

'Watching You', however, is the first collection I know of devoted exclusively to the Tetractys. (This blog, incidentally, is quoted in the 'Introduction' which makes this book of poetry a nice acknowledgement that some people really are reading this blog.) At 126 pages with 110 Tetractys poems it is a substantial collection.

The challenge of the Tetractys lies in the first four lines. I think of any line under five syllables as a 'very short line'. There are a number of forms that start with very short lines: Fibonacci, Etheree, Lanterne, and Tetractys are four such forms. There seems to be an attraction to the very short line among English syllabic poets.

My own approach to the very short line is to adopt a 'list' approach to these lines. I think of the way a shopping list works and then adapt that to the very short lines. For this reason most of my very short lines consist of nouns, with an occasional modifier like 'dark' or 'cold'.

Dabydeen takes a different approach to the very short line and I found this difference attractive. Many of Dabydeen's Tetractys start with a pronoun such as We, I, His, My, You, etc. I believe that this is Dabydeen's most common way to approach the first line of one syllable. What Dabydeen does is to use grammar to support lineation. Here's an example:

Music Playing

listen

to the sound

of falling rain

music playing on the top of my van.

(Page 27)

Line 1 is the subject, line 2 is the verb, line 3 is the direct object, line 4 is a prepositional phrase, and line 5 is a metaphor summing up the first four lines. I think this kind of construction is neat; it's almost like diagramming a sentence, except that line 5 takes us off into more poetic regions.

So Dabydeen doesn't use the list approach that I have cultivated. And one of the reasons I enjoyed this collection is that Dabydeen offers a different solution to the very short line than the one I am used to, and does it very well.

Not all of Dabydeen's Tetractys begin with a pronoun:

Like Endless Tears

Rain

making

rivulets

like endless tears

I watch the raindrops coming to my home.

(Page 26)

Notice that same structural pattern. Line 1 is the subject, line 2 is the verb, line 3 the direct object, line 4 a metaphor expanding on line three, and line 5 takes an introspective turn. In both of the quoted Tetractys line 5 is a turn in a different direction. The ten syllables of the last line are expansive enough to do that while at the same time remaining connected to the first four lines.

Many of Dabydeen's poems are Double Tetractys:

Smoke (1)

Smoke

slowly

swirl upward

towards the sky

making shapes like a lonely artist.

I watch the embers of fire in silence

poking my mind

making faces

just like

dreams.

(Page 103)

Notice that line 8 is four syllables, where strict adherence would require a three-syallble line. Dabydeen is confident enough in his approach, and has internalized the form enough, that he will, in rare instances, change the line count by a syllable. When reading this I didn't even notice the discrepancy until I actually began counting lines of poems. The overall effect of the tetractys is maintained.

The double Tetractys has a strong sense of closure, while the original five-line Tetractys has a feeling of a suddenly opened door. Dabydeen is at ease with the different effects the two forms have.

Dabydeen titles all of his poems; usually the titles are taken from the poem itself, highlighting what Dabydeen considers central.

In the 'Introduction' Dabydeen writes (referring to himself in the third person), "With free verse predominant in his creative spirit, Leonard Dabydeen strutted along the poetry path with commentaries and discussions among many top-ranking internet poets, including members of the Indian Poetry Society on Facebook. However, it was the mathematical framework of the tetractys poem that enthused his creative mind to build a collection for readers of any genre:

I Indulge

indulge

in deep thoughts

flowering plants

shaping beauty and sculptured happiness

And so in this debut collection of tetractys poems, 'Watching You', the author shares his indulgence with utmost intensity in a creative world."

I'm happy to see that the tetractys has generated such enthusiasm. I look forward to more from Dabydeen, hopefully soon.

Posted by Jim714 at 9:25 AM 2 comments:

Labels: Review, Tetractys

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Twenty

Recently I was reading the online 'Fib Review' (see my blog list), a journal devoted to the Fibonacci form of syllabic poetry, when I realized that many Fibonacci are analogs of two other syllabic forms; the Tetractys and the Five-Four Quatrain. The Fibonacci form is open ended; that means that theoretically a Fibonacci could be any number of lines long. Practically most Fibonacci are six or seven lines long. The six line Fibonacci, which seems to be the most frequently used, has the following syllabic structure: 1-1-2-3-5-8, for a total count of twenty syllables.

That makes three syllabic forms that I know of that have an overall count of twenty syllables:

The Five-Four Quatrain: 5-5-5-5

The Tetractys: 1-2-3-4-10

The Fibonacci: 1-1-2-3-5-8

I think this is a wonderful set of forms to learn from. My suggestion, for those interested in deepening their understanding of syllabic poetry, is to take a traditional subject and then write on the subject in all three forms. By 'traditional subject' I mean something like the seasons, the moon, love, parting, old age, etc. By composing poems on the same subject in the three syllabic forms the nature of syllabic poetry becomes clearer. This set of forms is, I think, particular well suited because the number of lines differs from form to form: the Five-Four Quatrain has four lines, the Tetractys has five lines, and the Fibonacci has six.

Don't worry about writing something great or original. Think of this as an exercise. The purpose of the exercise is to increase one's understanding of syllabic linneation and how syllabic poetry works. Here is an example I wrote using all three forms taking the subject of the moon:

Five-Four Quatrain:

The autmn full moon

Thin clouds in the sky

Slowly cross its face

Slowly drifting by

Tetractys:

Moon

Full moon

Summer moon

A few thin clouds

In the distance the weird cry of the loon

Or:

Moon

Full moon

Summer moon

A few thin clouds

Draped around the moon resembling a shroud

Fibonacci:

Moon

Round

Some clouds

High thin clouds

Drift across the face

A slow moving dance done with grace

The Five-Four Quatrain has a regular pulse and each line has the ability to contain a full semantic structure. The Tetractys and Fibonacci start out with very short lines, lines that are too short for full semantic meaning. For those not used to writing a very short line, I would suggest thinking of a list, like a shopping list. That's an everyday usage of the very short line and provides a good entrace into the opening lines of the Tetractys and Fibonacci. Try to avoid using articles like 'the' or 'a' in the very short lines, particularly the one syllable lines. In a shopping list one wouldn't place an article on a separate line. Also, try to avoid using prepositions for very short lines; again one would not place a preposition alone on a shopping list. The clearest way to write a very short line is to use nouns. A strong second are modifiers like adjectives and adverbs.

Have fun with this exercise. Taken together, these three syllabic analogs can really open up the world of syllabic verse.

Posted by Jim714 at 12:14 PM 2 comments:

Labels: Fibonacci, Quatrains: 5-4, Syllabics, Tetractys

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Signs of Love

Two

People

Hand in hand

Smiling a lot

It's love in their eyes, it's love that they've got

Posted by Jim714 at 2:50 PM No comments:

Labels: Tetractys

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Tetractys Prosody

The syllabic form known as ‘Tetractys’ was created by British poet Ray Stebbing in the late 20th century; sometime in the late 80’s or early 90’s is my understanding. Every since I encountered the Tetractys online I have found it an unusual, distinctive, and attractive form. I was attracted to it for two reasons. First, the syllabic structure is unique and unusual in that the last line of the form contains as many syllables as the rest of the lines combined. This makes the last line unusually long in comparison to the previous lines.

This becomes clearer if one knows the syllabics. The Tetractys has five lines with the syllables distributed as follows: 1-2-3-4-10. The first four lines add up to ten syllables, while the last line, the fifth, has ten syllables all by itself. I was attracted by this unusual balance. In syllabic forms I have seen before the Tetractys, the ebb and flow of the syllable count is usually one or two syllables. The classic Tanka is typical with its five lines as follows: 5-7-5-7-7. Note the two syllable variation between some of the lines. This is typical of most syllabic forms I have observed.

The dramatic change in the number of syllables does have a precedent: the American Cinquain created by Adelaide Crapsey. In the Cinquain the five lines have the following syllable count: 2-4-6-8-2. The difference between lines 4 and 5 is six syllables. That is the same difference found between lines 4 and 5 in the Tetractys, but in the Tetractys line 5 increases by six syllables over line 4, while in the Cinquain line 5 decreases by six syllables. The Cinquain reduces its count in the last line, while the Tetractys increases its count in the last line, but both the Cinquain and the Tetractys do so by the same amount; six syllables.

This sudden opening up of the line to a full count of ten in the Tetractys appealed to me. I liked the examples of the Tetractys form I read and found the form a challenge.

The second reason I was attracted to the Tetractys is that the Tetractys is an analog for the Five-Four Quatrain with which I have been working for some time. Both the Tetractys and the Five-Four Quatrain contain an overall syllable count of twenty syllables, but the distribution of those syllables differs. In the Five-Four Quatrain there are four lines with five syllables per line; for a total of twenty syllables: 5-5-5-5. In the Tetractys there are five lines with an irregular distribution of syllables as noted before: 1-2-3-4-10.

I have found that using formal analogs (which in the context of syllabic poetry means two or more forms that share the same overall syllable count, but differ as to how that count is distributed) is one of the best ways of gaining clarity as to how a particular form works, its rhythm and pulse. Working with Tetractys helped me to access the Five-Four Quatrain and comprehend its specific character.

I was assisted in exploring the Tetractys by the fact that Ray Stebbing, its creator, wrote about the prosody of the Tetractys. Stebbing was a conscious creator and made efforts to communicate to other poets what he had in mind when he created the Tetractys. Here are some excerpts from his writings on the form:

A short form of verse the Tetractys

You pronounce it to rhyme with malpractice

Searching one day in the Oxford English Dictionary, I came across an unfamiliar word – ‘tetractys’. It seems that Euclid, the mathematician of classical times, considered the number series 1, 2, 3, 4, to have mystical significance because its sum is 10, so he dignified it with a name of its own – Tetractys. This gave me the idea for a new form of syllabic verse consisting of five lines, the first of which contains a single syllable, the second two, the third three, the fourth four and the last ten syllables. What better name could I give it than ‘Tetractys’? . . .

The Perfect Tetractys

The perfect Tetractys would satisfy all the following criteria:

1. the correct syllable count,

2. meaningful words (e.g. not the, a, an) in the single-syllable line,

3. line breaks that make sense, i.e. conform to normal syntax, not separating words that quite obviously form a unit of meaning.

(If 2 and 3 did not apply, writing a Tetractys would merely involve taking a twenty-syllable line and chopping it arbitrarily into the requisite lengths – it doesn’t take a poet to do that!)

In addition to these the normal criteria for good poetry apply:

4. effective use of imagery,

5. effective choice of words,

6. appeal to the ear, certainly by rhythm, possibly by use of other sound effects (rhyme, alliteration, etc.),

7. and lastly, and most importantly, appeal to the intellect and the emotions; moving the reader to laughter, tears, deep thought, anger . . .

In writing a Tetractys it is essential to satisfy at least the first and last of the criteria. To satisfy most of the rest is highly desirable. Manage to satisfy all seven – Well, we all aim for perfection, but usually have to settle for mere excellence.

End of quote

Stebbing discusses in his writing on the form reverse Tetractys (10-4-3-2-1) and two forms of double Tetractys (1-2-3-4-10-10-4-3-2-1 and 10-4-3-2-1-1-2-3-4-10). In addition there can be linked Tetractys with a series that is connected either in the original form or the reverse form. This kind of manipulation of the forms is routinely found among practitioners of specific syllabic forms. For example, the original Cinquain is 2-4-6-8-2; the reverse Cinquain is 2-8-6-4-2, and there are double Cinquain as in 2-4-6-8-2-2-8-6-4-2 and this can be reversed as well. Linked chains of Cinquain either by a single Cinquain poet or by a group, mimicking in some respects Renga, are also found.

But the original five line form of the Tetractys, 1-2-3-4-10, is the one I find most satisfying.

I have found the Tetractys to be a wonderful form. When done well it has its own unique rhythm and pulse which is attractive. Give the Tetractys a try. It is a wonderful addition to the world of English Syllabic Verse.

Posted by Jim714 at 12:13 PM No comments:

Labels: Prosody, Syllabics, Tetractys

Saturday, August 7, 2010

True Fiction

Words

Pages

And chapters,

Reading the lines --

Someone else's journey that's also mine

Posted by Jim714 at 7:13 AM No comments:

Labels: Tetractys

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

The Tea Snob Speaks

A little light verse for today --

Tea

Brewed fast

In a bag

Tastes really bad

It's like drinking dust and makes me feel sad

Posted by Jim714 at 8:06 AM No comments:

Labels: Tetractys

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Tetractys Melody 1

Posted by Jim714 at 6:19 AM No comments:

Labels: Melodies, Tetractys

Monday, June 7, 2010

Closing the Shop at the End of the Day

Dusk

Lights out

Lock the door

I turn towards home

This was another good day at the store

Posted by Jim714 at 8:29 AM No comments:

Labels: Tetractys

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Still Life

Brooms

Leaning

On the wall

By the closet

In the corner of the newly cleaned hall

Posted by Jim714 at 7:22 AM No comments:

Labels: Tetractys

Friday, May 7, 2010

Morning Friends

Chairs

Tables

Breakfast thoughts

Starting the day

The regulars at the corner cafe

Posted by Jim714 at 8:02 AM No comments:

Labels: Tetractys

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

When They Were Young

Kites

Colors

In the sky

Children's laughter

I can remember many years after

Posted by Jim714 at 7:04 AM 3 comments:

Labels: Tetractys

Sunday, March 7, 2010

First Day

Light

Within

All people

The touch of love

Descending on all from the source above

Posted by Jim714 at 4:41 AM 2 comments:

Labels: Tetractys

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Reverie

Songs

We sang

Together

I remember

Even as the fire fades to an ember

Posted by Jim714 at 4:28 AM No comments:

Labels: Tetractys

Sunday, February 28, 2010

Ahimsa

Peace

Within

It begins

In the silence

In the heart that is free from violence

Posted by Jim714 at 4:16 AM 1 comment:

Labels: Tetractys

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Equanimity

Joy

Sorrow

Appearing

Disappearing

Yesterday and today and tomorrow

Posted by Jim714 at 4:29 AM No comments:

Labels: Tetractys

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Why I Pray

Prayers

Flowing

For people

Locked in hatred

Unable to find that which is sacred

Posted by Jim714 at 4:15 AM No comments:

Labels: Tetractys

Monday, January 25, 2010

Puzzled

War

Sorrow

Smoke filled sky

A baby cries

What is this blindness that destroys our lives?

Posted by Jim714 at 8:19 AM 1 comment:

Labels: Tetractys

Sunday, January 10, 2010

First Day Meeting

Calm

Silence

Inner light

And the presence

Of the everlasting truth and essence

Quatrains

http://shapingwords.blogspot.com/search/label/Quatrains

Poetry Reading

October is my favorite month of the year. And this year October began auspiciously with me doing a poetry reading on October 1st. I read from Hiking the Quatrain Range; my collection of quatrains in various forms. I read from two groupings. The first group was based on the Chinese quatrain tradition of the seven-syllable line. The second group I read from was Englynion based on the Welsh tradition of quatrain poetry.

It was a good audience; attentive and appreciative. One person asked about my use of rhyme. This was after I had read a sequence of quatrains based on the Chinese tradition where the standard rhyme scheme is A-B-C-B. I explained that traditional Chinese poetry is rhymed syllabic verse. I commented that most westerners are not aware of this because translations of traditional Chinese verse rarely map the formal characteristics of Chinese poetry onto their English translations. Furthermore, until very recently, in their introductions they fail to inform readers of these formal characteristics. It took me a long time to uncover these formal characteristics, and even more time to see their potential for English language poetry.

There are exceptions to this general observation. Red Pine does attempt to transmit some of the formal characteristics of traditional Chinese poetry. Here is an example from Red Pine’s translation The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain:

298

Buddhist monks don’t keep their precepts

Taoist priests don’t take their pills

Count the sages who have lived

All are at the foot of hills

(Page 251)

Here Red Pine has retained the standard rhyme-scheme (pills/hills) in the English translation. In addition, he has retained a basic line count; in this case it is 8-8-7-7. The original consists of 5 count lines, but there is a basic similarity in the translation; when reading the translation there is a steady pulse like in the original.

It is very difficult to translate the formal characteristics of Chinese poetry into English; I get that. But there is a heritage of English translators who do not even try to build this formal bridge. Because of this many westerners have the impression that traditional Chinese verse is close to modern free verse and that is a misguided impression.

Not many western poets have attempted to map the formal characteristics of traditional Chinese poetry onto the English language. Robin Skelton is one. I am one. I am unaware of others, but I suspect that they exist.

For both Skelton and myself attempting to transmit a poetic form from one language to another is a rewarding challenge. For me it feels like connecting, as best I can, with another culture. It broadens my understanding of how different people have understood poetry and opens new possibilities for my own creative expression.

It was a rewarding evening. And people bought lots of books; always a plus.

Posted by Jim714 at 7:28 AM No comments:

Labels: Miscellaneous, Quatrains

Saturday, April 4, 2015

Book Launch: Hiking the Quatrain Range

Hiking the Quatrain Range

Greetings:

Today is Syllabic Quatrain Day. I picked April 4, which numerically is 4/4, to give a nod of thanks to all the traditions of syllabic quatrain scattered throughout the world. It also seemed to me an auspicious day to launch my newest collection: Hiking the Quatrain Range.

Hiking contains fourteen collections of my quatrains. All the collections take a syllabic approach. My procedure is to compose each quatrain as a separate four-line poem, and then gather them into sequences. These sequences have either a common theme or share a common syllabic shape, or both.

“First Day Poems, Parts 1 and 2” are quatrains rooted in my Quaker Faith and Practice. Part 1 contains 5-count (five syllables per line) quatrains. Part 2 contains seven-count quatrains.

“Clear Skies” are quatrains with 2-count lines (two-syllables per line).

“Fall Leaves Fall” contains 3-count quatrains.

“After the Rain” contains 4-count quatrains.

“At the Café” and “Quince” are fairly long sequences of 5-count quatrains.

“Serenity” is a sequence of 6-count quatrains.

“The Gift” and “Winter Dawn” are long sequences devoted to the 7-count quatrain.

“Englynion: Books I & II” are devoted to two Welsh forms; Englyn Unodl Union and Englyn Cyrch. Most are Engyln Unodl Union.

“Agitations” are quatrains of various types on the theme of political or social commentary.

“Close Encounter” closes the collection with 8-count quatrains.

The Quatrain is found throughout the world in many cultures. My approach was most strongly influenced by the Chinese tradition of quatrain poetry. Other influences were the Welsh tradition and, most recently, the minimalist poetry of Samuel Menashe. There is something very attractive about the quatrain which seems to resonate with people everywhere.

It took me a long time to put this collection together. I wrote, rewrote, and rewrote again the sequences, trying to get the placements just right. But it was an enjoyable process and going over the quatrains showed me how flexible and varied the parameters of the form are. It also increased my appreciation for those poets who have focused on this form and bequeathed us such a rich heritage of examples to emulate. And finally, going over these poems confirmed my feeling that a syllabic approach to quatrains in English is efficacious and rewarding.

Hiking the Quatrain Range

$14.95

250 pages

ISBN: 9781500763657

Available from Amazon and, in a few weeks, from your local bookstore.

Posted by Jim714 at 7:54 AM No comments:

Labels: My Publications, Quatrains

Monday, October 28, 2013

Duskscape

A cold wind as the dusk starts to gather

The azure day departs,

A meaning darkness imparts

Found within our silent hearts

Posted by Jim714 at 9:11 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: Englyn

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Untitled

Where the river meets the sea at land's end

Once again I feel free

As strong waves of memory

Drift into eternity

Posted by Jim714 at 2:30 PM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: Englyn

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

War Mongers

When they decided to destroy Iraq

They attacked with great joy,

Like children playing with toys,

They have no heart, just a void

Posted by Jim714 at 7:23 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: Englyn

Saturday, August 17, 2013

Untitled

The summer morning heat and a clear sky,

Starlings fly, I retreat

To a dream that's incomplete --

Old age makes me obsolete

Posted by Jim714 at 10:27 AM 2 comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: Englyn

Thursday, August 8, 2013

Late Summer

In the month of August the first leaves fall

From tall trees to the dust

Touched by the color of rust,

Sunset dims the day to dusk

Posted by Jim714 at 7:27 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: Englyn

Wednesday, August 7, 2013

With Friends

Mondy morning pancakes at the cafe,

Good friends stay for the sake

Of conversing's give and take;

Refreshing, like a cool lake

Posted by Jim714 at 7:14 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: Englyn

Thursday, July 25, 2013

Transition

The rising of the sun in mid-July,

The sky glows, the night's done,

Messages from dreams are shunned

The day's chores have just begun

Posted by Jim714 at 7:33 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: Englyn

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

The House with the Broken Windows

On the dusty table leaves from a birch

As I search I cradle

Sounds from scenes I am able

To recall, like a fable

Posted by Jim714 at 7:23 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: Englyn

Saturday, July 20, 2013

On a Summer Evening

The sound of a guitar in the warm night

The delight of the stars

So bright they seem close, not far,

A balm for our inner scars

Posted by Jim714 at 7:30 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: Englyn

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Duskscape

The Russian River flows into the sea,

I see the sunset close

One more day of common woes

Gold leaves fall on a red rose

Posted by Jim714 at 4:31 PM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: Englyn

Saturday, July 13, 2013

Spacious

In the open grotto of emptiness

(A vastness, a hollow)

Crossing the sky a swallow

Casts a fast moving shadow

Posted by Jim714 at 7:31 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: Englyn

Monday, July 8, 2013

Vocabulary

In summer heat the woodland creek runs dry;

Sometimes I try to speak

But the right words that I seek

Are like dust that was concrete

Posted by Jim714 at 4:18 PM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: Englyn

Saturday, June 1, 2013

Nightscape

Oaks and boulders scattered across the field,

The clouds conceal gathered

Stars, galaxies unnumbered --

Friends I can't quite remember

Posted by Jim714 at 6:44 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: Englyn

Sunday, May 5, 2013

On Enoch

When Enoch walked with God as the sun rose

And the night closed, they trod

As the wind made the trees nod

Creatures ev'rywhere were awed

Posted by Jim714 at 12:32 PM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: Englyn

Sunday, April 28, 2013

Healing Words

Contemplating a Psalm before the dawn,

In the long hours of calm,

Before the noise of dot-com,

Is to the soul a sweet balm.

Posted by Jim714 at 2:04 PM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: Englyn

Saturday, April 27, 2013

Walk Before Dawn

The full moon has not gone down when I start,

I depart and the ground

Looks like silver, like a crown

Of starlight -- silence, no sound.

Posted by Jim714 at 10:33 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: Englyn

Friday, April 26, 2013

On Old Age

The stream flows past the snow-covered boulders,

I am older and slow;

The caw of a distant crow

Like a lantern's fading glow

Posted by Jim714 at 9:52 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: Englyn

Thursday, April 25, 2013

What I've Learned at My Hermitage

Steadily the traffic flows down the street --

On retreat hermits know

The pace of the season's flow,

Even mountains come and go.

Quatrain

Showing posts with label Quatrains 10-4. Show all posts

Monday, December 5, 2011

Overwhelmed

Life is more complicated ev'ry day,
I do not understand why this is so
And though I try and try to simplify
Duties accumulate like drifts of snow

http://shapingwords.blogspot.com/search/label/Quatrains%2010-4

Showing posts with label Quatrains: 15-4. Show all posts

Sunday, July 28, 2013

The Perception Horizon

Sometimes I feel like I am walking blind,
It's kind of like a sigh
Heard in a room I walk by,
Things sort-of-seen by the eyes

Posted by Jim714 at 9:02 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains: 15-4, Quatrains: Englyn

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

How We Spend Our Days

Dawn on the First of December under a clear and cold sky

Shoppers drive here and there for a gift that will be a surprise;

Under a four-lane bridge that spans the meandering river,

A discarded man, wrapped in a discarded blanket, shivers.

Winter Weekend

Blue sky
Cold day
Strong wind
Kids play

Posted by Jim714 at 10:50 AM 2 comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 2-4

Sunday, December 4, 2011

After Receiving The News

In war
He died
Somewhere
She cries

Posted by Jim714 at 2:13 PM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 2-4

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Duskscape

Thin clouds
Slow dusk
Moonrise
Stars hushed

Posted by Jim714 at 7:40 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 2-4

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Winter Begins

Gray skies
Cold days
Dusk wind
Life fades

Streams of Time

It has been slate gray the whole day from the time I woke up until late afternoon,
I find it difficult to distinguish the time without some signals from the sun,
Events used to proceed in strict order, one after the other, when I was young,
Now all my days intermingle like many streams merging in a forest lagoon.

Posted by Jim714 at 10:05 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 20-4

Saturday, December 11, 2010

Morning Contemplation

The morning mist at the beginning of winter possesses a life of its own,
As the shapes drift and twist through the branches of the broad maple tree in the garden,
Sometimes they hide and sometimes they reveal that the leaves have suddenly turned to gold --
I sit on the couch wrapped in a blanket in the house which still holds the evening cold.

Posted by Jim714 at 10:14 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 20-4

Friday, December 10, 2010

Rainscape Moment

The rain's been falling for many days and nights in the season of early winter,
It's been falling off and on, not constantly, so the streets have not become rivers,
The tips of the needles of the deodar tree hold a drop of rain that shimmers,
A gust of wind and all the drops fall and suddenly the whole world appears dimmer.

Dawnscape

A few clouds
In the sky
Morning sun
Blackbirds fly

Posted by Jim714 at 12:38 PM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 3-4

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Why I Go To Meeting For Worship Every First Day (aka Sunday)

I forget
About God
In this world
God seems odd

Posted by Jim714 at 3:24 PM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 3-4

Friday, September 23, 2011

Time and Season

Summer heat
Autumn stalls
The ninth month
Dry leaves fall

Posted by Jim714 at 5:46 PM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 3-4

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Reasons for Hope

Stars at night
A clear view
Ocean waves
Dreams come true

Posted by Jim714 at 5:48 PM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 3-4

Monday, November 1, 2010

Untitled

Autumn leaves
On the ground
The sun's rays
At sundown

Posted by Jim714 at 11:35 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 3-4'

Fortuna's Power

The homeless man
Counting his change,
Once he was rich,
Now he's deranged.

At Yosemite

Yosemite Falls
The tall granite cliffs
Pines cling to ledges
While clouds slowly drift

Posted by Jim714 at 7:18 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 5-4

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Galactic Time

Venus is crossing
The face of the sun
Here on planet earth
Fresh streams swiftly run

Posted by Jim714 at 7:31 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 5-4

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Springscape

Waiting for the moon
Rabbits in the hedge
Petals are falling
By the mountain ledge

Posted by Jim714 at 7:25 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 5-4

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Heartscape

Warm days in winter
The sky is cloudless
I begin to pray
God's love is boundless

Posted by Jim714 at 6:09 PM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 5-4

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Surprised by Flowers

Red geraniums
Next to the backdoor
In the alleyway
Behind the bookstore

Posted by Jim714 at 11:27 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 5-4

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Checking In

Winter mist dissolves

Late in the morning

I call an old friend,

"So, how's it going?"

Posted by Jim714 at 12:30 PM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 5-4

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Signs of the Changing Season

A sun-filled morning
In mid-November
High clouds in the sky
Winds hint of winter

Posted by Jim714 at 12:57 PM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 5-4

Saturday, November 13, 2010

At the Village Bakery

Saturday morning
At the bakery
An island of warmth
In the cold fall air

Posted by Jim714 at 10:01 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 5-4

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Riverscape

The wind this morning
Is strong and steady
A river flows by
Leaves in an eddy

Posted by Jim714 at 5:54 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 5-4

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Mothers With Young Children

Children making noise
Mothers try to talk
"I'll call you later"
Laughing while they walk

Posted by Jim714 at 1:41 PM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 5-4

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Twenty

I have posted previously about analogs; but to refresh our memories (something I need to do more and more these days), in syllabic poetry analogs are two or more syllabic forms that share an overall syllable count but distribute the count differently. I have found that composing poetry using analogs is one of the best ways of becoming clear about how syllabic poetry functions, the rhythm and pulse of particular syllabic forms, and how linneation works.

Recently I was reading the online 'Fib Review' (see my blog list), a journal devoted to the Fibonacci form of syllabic poetry, when I realized that many Fibonacci are analogs of two other syllabic forms; the Tetractys and the Five-Four Quatrain. The Fibonacci form is open ended; that means that theoretically a Fibonacci could be any number of lines long. Practically most Fibonacci are six or seven lines long. The six line Fibonacci, which seems to be the most frequently used, has the following syllabic structure: 1-1-2-3-5-8, for a total count of twenty syllables.

That makes three syllabic forms that I know of that have an overall count of twenty syllables:

The Five-Four Quatrain: 5-5-5-5
The Tetractys: 1-2-3-4-10
The Fibonacci: 1-1-2-3-5-8

I think this is a wonderful set of forms to learn from. My suggestion, for those interested in deepening their understanding of syllabic poetry, is to take a traditional subject and then write on the subject in all three forms. By 'traditional subject' I mean something like the seasons, the moon, love, parting, old age, etc. By composing poems on the same subject in the three syllabic forms the nature of syllabic poetry becomes clearer. This set of forms is, I think, particular well suited because the number of lines differs from form to form: the Five-Four Quatrain has four lines, the Tetractys has five lines, and the Fibonacci has six.

Don't worry about writing something great or original. Think of this as an exercise. The purpose of the exercise is to increase one's understanding of syllabic linneation and how syllabic poetry works. Here is an example I wrote using all three forms taking the subject of the moon:

Five-Four Quatrain:

The autmn full moon
Thin clouds in the sky
Slowly cross its face
Slowly drifting by

Tetractys:

Moon
Full moon
Summer moon
A few thin clouds
In the distance the weird cry of the loon

Or:

Moon
Full moon
Summer moon
A few thin clouds
Draped around the moon resembling a shroud

Fibonacci:

Moon
Round
Some clouds
High thin clouds
Drift across the face
A slow moving dance done with grace

The Five-Four Quatrain has a regular pulse and each line has the ability to contain a full semantic structure. The Tetractys and Fibonacci start out with very short lines, lines that are too short for full semantic meaning. For those not used to writing a very short line, I would suggest thinking of a list, like a shopping list. That's an everyday usage of the very short line and provides a good entrace into the opening lines of the Tetractys and Fibonacci. Try to avoid using articles like 'the' or 'a' in the very short lines, particularly the one syllable lines. In a shopping list one wouldn't place an article on a separate line. Also, try to avoid using prepositions for very short lines; again one would not place a preposition alone on a shopping list. The clearest way to write a very short line is to use nouns. A strong second are modifiers like adjectives and adverbs.

Have fun with this exercise. Taken together, these three syllabic analogs can really open up the world of syllabic verse.

Posted by Jim714 at 12:14 PM 2 comments:

Labels: Fibonacci, Quatrains: 5-4, Syllabics, Tetractys

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Cars and Consequences

In the parking lot
Two people argue
Over the last spot --
All traffic has stopped

Posted by Jim714 at 10:00 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 5-4

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

City Lights

In the small village
Children move away
The side of the house
Is fading to gray

Posted by Jim714 at 1:03 PM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 5-4

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

In Praise of Beauty

There is much beauty
Everywhere I look
The stars in the sky
The sound of a brook

Posted by Jim714 at 2:19 PM 2 comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 5-4

Fate

The lamp is covered
And so is the couch
The dust on the desk
They used to be rich

Posted by Jim714 at 2:13 PM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 5-4

Saturday, August 14, 2010

Lunch With A Friend

Afternoon cafe
The smell of coffee
Shared conversations
Thick soup with barley

Posted by Jim714 at 7:32 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 5-4

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Gratitude

I am fortunate
My life has been blessed
Parents who were kind
Teachers did their best

Posted by Jim714 at 6:55 AM 1 comment:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 5-4

Monday, June 14, 2010

Heard in the Distance

Clouds in the morning
Slowing down the dawn
Shadowless gray light
A solo flute's song

Posted by Jim714 at 8:47 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 5-4

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Wisdom

Found within the heart
There's a kind of glow
It's easily missed
Be still and you'll know

Posted by Jim714 at 8:10 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 5-4

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Night Life

In the quiet house
Hours before the dawn
Among the shadows
A cat makes his rounds

The Call of the Hermitage

Into the great silence
There before time began,
Before all things started,
The everlasting land

Posted by Jim714 at 8:07 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 6-4

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Untitled

The early morning sun
Is casting cold shadows
On the battered sidewalk
Two old friends stroll and talk

Posted by Jim714 at 8:35 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 6-4

Monday, December 10, 2012

Time and Season

Warm days in December
Feels a little bit strange;
Somewhat like dreams I've had --
A mirage mountain range

Posted by Jim714 at 6:38 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 6-4

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Silent Song

See, the leaf is falling
From the old maple tree,
It is our God speaking
In the key of beauty.

Posted by Jim714 at 7:03 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 6-4

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Context

There is a vast cosmos
Beyond the human realm,
Its presence is healing,
It's where we really dwell

Posted by Jim714 at 5:04 PM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 6-4

Sunday, November 21, 2010

The Book of the World

Silence is my scripture,
Stillness is my true home,
Solitude my palace --
The peace within my soul.

Posted by Jim714 at 12:15 PM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 6-4

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Scattered

October morning mist,
Some trees still have their leaves,
I have to get to work --
Where'd I put my car keys?

Past Imperfect

Like rain from the fourth month overcast sky --
Try to ignore the past;
Desert winds the boulders blast,
Boulders that a glacier cast

Posted by Jim714 at 8:30 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 7-4, Quatrains: Englyn

Saturday, March 23, 2013

Celestial Visitor

A bear wanders down the road into town,
Onto ground he wanders;
While in the stars he pondered
Why humanity flounders

Posted by Jim714 at 10:38 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 7-4, Quatrains: Englyn

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Untitled

As the dawn touches the sky
And the stars all fade from sight
The presence of friends long gone
From my dreams they all take flight

Posted by Jim714 at 6:04 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 7-4

Saturday, February 2, 2013

Untitled

Morning sunlight on fresh snow,
Drivers are hesitant, slow,
Things easily slip and slide;
A new bride hopes love will grow.

Posted by Jim714 at 8:23 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 7-4, Quatrains: Englyn

Friday, November 16, 2012

Formal Feeling

When I write a formal poem
Though I do it all alone
There is a sense of sharing,
Like caring for someone's home

Posted by Jim714 at 8:41 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 7-4, Quatrains: Englyn

Friday, November 2, 2012

Rorshach

Dusk mist comes in from the sea
Hovering above the trees
Sometimes I can see faces,
Faint traces from last night's dream

Posted by Jim714 at 7:57 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 7-4, Quatrains: Englyn

Saturday, August 25, 2012

On the Other Side of the Mountain

Ev'rything is forgotten
History as memory
Can't hold back the tides of time
All returns to mystery

Posted by Jim714 at 9:47 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 7-4

Sunday, August 19, 2012

Candlelight

We live our lives day by day
Doing the best that we can:
Meals, work, bills, a friend to see,
Then comes eternity

Posted by Jim714 at 1:11 PM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 7-4

Thursday, August 2, 2012

In The Garden

Flowers make me think a lot
About the blossoms of time,
How even days of beauty
Will soon vanish, are not mine

Posted by Jim714 at 7:02 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 7-4

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Sweet Dream

Sitting on a rocking chair
Placed between the moon and mars
Comets singing songs in space
While I commune with the stars

Posted by Jim714 at 6:14 AM 2 comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 7-4

Sunday, April 29, 2012

The Gift

There's no reason for beauty,
The cosmos does not need it,
Beauty is the gift of God,
It is how God redeems it.

Posted by Jim714 at 6:58 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 7-4

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Riverscape

The rain's falling all day long
Here on the Russian River
The sky slowly turns to night,
Mists make the trees look darker

Posted by Jim714 at 8:28 AM 2 comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 7-4

Friday, February 10, 2012

Winter Dawn

There's not a cloud in the sky
The first frost is on the ground
Two crows are exchanging cries
Otherwise there's not a sound

Posted by Jim714 at 7:26 AM 2 comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 7-4

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Hermit Song

Solitude is beautiful
Silence is a rare flower
Blossoms of eternity
Manifesting at each hour

Posted by Jim714 at 10:23 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 7-4

Thursday, January 5, 2012

The Morning Fix (It's OK, It's Legal)

The line at Starbuck's Cafe
Waits patiently for caffeine,
It comes in various forms;
Coffee or tea (black or green)

Posted by Jim714 at 7:45 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 7-4

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

A Vision

Melodies fall from the clouds
Streams of stars flow through the glen
On a branch of the oak tree
There's an angel now and then

Posted by Jim714 at 9:53 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 7-4

Monday, September 26, 2011

Recycling

A tree swaying in the wind
In the middle of a field
A vulture pecks at a corpse
Partaking of a fine meal

Posted by Jim714 at 6:19 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 7-4

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Night Shift

The janitor is finished
Cleaning up after others,
As the dawn dissolves the night
He disappears from our sight

Posted by Jim714 at 8:04 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 7-4

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Beyond Thought

Theologies are systems
Of thoughts that are human made,
They are insignificant,
Unlike God, they will soon fade

Posted by Jim714 at 4:34 PM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 7-4

Friday, May 13, 2011

Homage to Emily

'The world is not conclusion'
That is what the poet said --
The cosmos like a stream flows,
Like a feather in the wind

Caught In The Cave

Waves of mountains in the distance
Next to the slate still ocean shore
Stalagmites of oppressive thoughts
Resemble a thick iron door

Posted by Jim714 at 8:21 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 8-4

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Journey

Into the silent land I'll walk,
A tracker of the signs of love,
Into the land that leaves no trace,
There to be reborn from above

Posted by Jim714 at 12:25 PM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 8-4

Friday, August 5, 2011

Tenuous

Every time I leave my house
I wonder if I will return;
Impermanence has many forms,
A lesson that I've slowly learned.

Posted by Jim714 at 6:12 PM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 8-4

Sunday, July 31, 2011

On Contemplation

Rocks are hovering in the sky
A riot takes place in silence
In a mirror that's made from wood
I see a hidden vein of good

Posted by Jim714 at 3:50 PM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 8-4

Saturday, July 30, 2011

Daydream

Wind blowing the leaves of the trees
By the road streched across July
A tarot reader spreads her deck
While dolphins between the clouds glide

Posted by Jim714 at 6:17 PM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 8-4

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Blessing From the Past

I remember a time of love,
It happened many years ago,
Angels crossed the face of the moon
As the quince blossomed in the snow

Posted by Jim714 at 5:32 PM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 8-4

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Dialectic

I don't mind having discussions
With those with whom I disagree,
If I'm right or wrong is nothing
Measured against eternity.

Posted by Jim714 at 10:18 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 8-4

Saturday, November 13, 2010

At the Village Bakery

It's nice to find a quiet spot
That doesn't have background music;
It's easier to talk and share
Without distractions melodic

Posted by Jim714 at 10:04 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains, Quatrains: 8-4

Fresh-Baked

Saturday morning is busy
People are coming and going
At the warm Village Bakery
Children and parents look happy

Duskscape

A cold wind as the dusk starts to gather
The azure day departs,
A meaning darkness imparts
Found within our silent hearts

Posted by Jim714 at 9:11 AM No comments:

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Untitled

Where the river meets the sea at land's end
Once again I feel free
As strong waves of memory
Drift into eternity

Posted by Jim714 at 2:30 PM No comments:

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

War Mongers

When they decided to destroy Iraq
They attacked with great joy,
Like children playing with toys,
They have no heart, just a void

Posted by Jim714 at 7:23 AM No comments:

Saturday, August 17, 2013

Untitled

The summer morning heat and a clear sky,
Starlings fly, I retreat
To a dream that's incomplete --
Old age makes me obsolete

Posted by Jim714 at 10:27 AM 2 comments:

Thursday, August 8, 2013

Late Summer

In the month of August the first leaves fall
From tall trees to the dust
Touched by the color of rust,
Sunset dims the day to dusk

Posted by Jim714 at 7:27 AM No comments:

Wednesday, August 7, 2013

With Friends

Mondy morning pancakes at the cafe,
Good friends stay for the sake
Of conversing's give and take;
Refreshing, like a cool lake

Posted by Jim714 at 7:14 AM No comments:

Sunday, July 28, 2013

The Perception Horizon

Sometimes I feel like I am walking blind,
It's kind of like a sigh
Heard in a room I walk by,
Things sort-of-seen by the eyes

Posted by Jim714 at 9:02 AM No comments:

Labels: Quatrains: 15-4, Quatrains: Englyn

Thursday, July 25, 2013

Transition

The rising of the sun in mid-July,
The sky glows, the night's done,
Messages from dreams are shunned
The day's chores have just begun

Posted by Jim714 at 7:33 AM No comments:

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

The House with the Broken Windows

On the dusty table leaves from a birch
As I search I cradle
Sounds from scenes I am able
To recall, like a fable

Posted by Jim714 at 7:23 AM No comments:

Saturday, July 20, 2013

On a Summer Evening

The sound of a guitar in the warm night
The delight of the stars
So bright they seem close, not far,
A balm for our inner scars

Posted by Jim714 at 7:30 AM No comments:

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Duskscape

The Russian River flows into the sea,
I see the sunset close
One more day of common woes
Gold leaves fall on a red rose

Posted by Jim714 at 4:31 PM No comments:

Saturday, July 13, 2013

Spacious

In the open grotto of emptiness
(A vastness, a hollow)
Crossing the sky a swallow
Casts a fast moving shadow

Posted by Jim714 at 7:31 AM No comments:

Monday, July 8, 2013

Vocabulary

In summer heat the woodland creek runs dry;
Sometimes I try to speak
But the right words that I seek
Are like dust that was concrete

Posted by Jim714 at 4:18 PM No comments:

Saturday, June 1, 2013

Nightscape

Oaks and boulders scattered across the field,
The clouds conceal gathered
Stars, galaxies unnumbered --
Friends I can't quite remember

Posted by Jim714 at 6:44 AM No comments:

Sunday, May 5, 2013

On Enoch

When Enoch walked with God as the sun rose
And the night closed, they trod
As the wind made the trees nod
Creatures ev'rywhere were awed

Posted by Jim714 at 12:32 PM No comments:

Sunday, April 28, 2013

Healing Words

Contemplating a Psalm before the dawn,
In the long hours of calm,
Before the noise of dot-com,
Is to the soul a sweet balm.

Posted by Jim714 at 2:04 PM No comments:

Saturday, April 27, 2013

Walk Before Dawn

The full moon has not gone down when I start,
I depart and the ground
Looks like silver, like a crown
Of starlight -- silence, no sound.

Posted by Jim714 at 10:33 AM No comments:

Friday, April 26, 2013

On Old Age

The stream flows past the snow-covered boulders,
I am older and slow;
The caw of a distant crow
Like a lantern's fading glow

Posted by Jim714 at 9:52 AM No comments:

Thursday, April 25, 2013

What I've Learned at My Hermitage

Steadily the traffic flows down the street --
On retreat hermits know
The pace of the season's flow,
Even mountains come and go.

Posted by Jim714 at 7:49 AM No comments:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itsy_Bitsy_Spider

Monday, April 1, 2013

Past Imperfect

Like rain from the fourth month overcast sky --
Try to ignore the past;
Desert winds the boulders blast,
Boulders that a glacier cast

the itsy bitsy spider is a famous, popular four part song with four hand gestures that accompany it

"Itsy Bitsy Spider" (also known as "Incy Wincy Spider"[1] and several other similar-sounding names) is a popular nursery rhyme and fingerplay that describes the adventures of a spider as it ascends, descends, and reascends the downspout or "waterspout" of a gutter system (or, alternatively, the spout of a teapot or open-air reservoir). It is usually accompanied by a sequence of gestures that mimic the words of the song. Its Roud Folk Song Index number is 11586.

Contents [hide]

1 Lyrics

2 Origins

3 Recordings

4 References

5 Bibliography

6 External links

Lyrics[edit]

A commonly used version uses these words and gestures:[2]

Words Fingerplay

The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the waterspout.

Down came the rain

and washed the spider out.

Out came the sun

and dried up all the rain

and the itsy bitsy spider climbed up the spout again.

Alternately touch the thumb of one hand to the index finger of the other.

Hold both hands up and wiggle the fingers as the hands are lowered.

Sweep the hands from side to side.

Raise both hands and sweep to the sides to form a semicircle as the sun.

Wiggle fingers upwards.

(As in the first line)

Other versions exist.

Origins[edit]

The song can be found in publications including an alternative version in the book, Camp and Camino in Lower California (1910),[3] where it was referred to as [the classic] "Spider Song".[4] It appears to be a different version of this song using “blooming, bloody” instead of just "itsy bitsy". It was later published in one of its several modern versions in Western Folklore, by the California Folklore Society (1948),[5] Mike and Peggy Seeger's, American Folk Songs for Children (1948).[6] In 2013 Maziar Bahari's company Off-Centre Productions created an animated version of the song featuring an animated mouse character called "Journo".[7]

Lyrics as described in 1910, as being from the 'classic' "Spider Song":[4]

Oh, the blooming, bloody spider went up the spider web,

The blooming, bloody rain came down and washed the spider out,

The blooming, bloody sun came out and dried up all the rain,

And the blooming, bloody spider came up the web again.

The song is sung by and for children in countless languages and cultures. In Germany the melody is used for the song "Spannenlanger Hansel (de)".

Recordings[edit]

This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

The popular nursery rhyme has been covered and sampled a number of times. Bart Simpson sang the rhyme in the tenth episode of season four of The Simpsons, "Lisa's First Word". It was featured in the children's program Dora the Explorer and in the South Park episode "Something You Can Do with Your Finger". A child singing the rhyme twice can be heard in the opening of the Criminal Minds episode, "Gatekeeper".

1980: Patsy Biscoe (as "Incy Wincy Spider") CD: 50 Favourite Nursery Rhymes Vol. 1, also available as 3-CD set 150 Favourite Nursery Rhymes[8]

1987: Carly Simon on the Coming Around Again album

1988: Carly Simon on the Greatest Hits Live album

1989: Nicole Kidman on the Dead Calm soundtrack (as "Incy Wincy")

1991: Little Richard on the Disney CD For Our Children, to benefit the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation.

1995: Danish-Norwegian pop band Aqua, then known by their original band name Joyspeed, released a single only "Itsy Bitsy Spider".

2002: The Mars Volta sampled the rhyme on their song "Eunuch Provocateur" from their extended play Tremulant.

2002: Raffi sang this song on his Let's Play album by adding an additional verse.

2006: EliZe feat. Jay Colin released "Itsy Bitsy Spider" on the album In Control.

2014: Jamie Foxx as Electro in The Amazing Spider-Man 2

Looks like a quadrant

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thumbscrew_(torture)

The thumbscrew is a torture instrument which was first used in medieval Europe. It is a simple vice, sometimes with protruding studs on the interior surfaces. The victim's thumbs or fingers were placed in the vice and slowly crushed. The thumbscrew was also applied to crush prisoners' big toes. The crushing bars were sometimes lined with sharp metal points to puncture the thumbs and inflict greater pain in the nail beds. Larger, heavier devices based on the same design principle were applied to crush feet and ears.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One,_Two,_Three,_Four,_Live!

One, Two, Three, Four, Live!

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

One, Two, Three, Four, Live!

1234LiveLP.jpg

Live album by Sharon, Lois & Bram

Released 1982

Genre Family Music

Length 45:52

Label Elephant Records

A&M Records

Universal Music Canada

Producer Bill Usher

Sharon, Lois & Bram chronology

In the Schoolyard

(1981) One, Two, Three, Four, Live

(1982) Mainly Mother Goose

(1984)

One, Two, Three, Four, Live! is the fifth album by popular Family entertainers Sharon, Lois & Bram, originally released in 1982. The recording was re-released in 1996 under the title "In Concert". It's available on Cassette, LP Record and CD

Releases[edit]

Released 1982 (Elephant Records) "One, Two, Three, Four, Look Who's Coming Through the Door!"

Released 1983 (A&M Records/Elephant Records) "One, Two, Three, Four, Live!"

Released 1996 (Elephant Records) "One, Two, Three, Four, Live!"

Re- releasing on April 15, 2016 (Universal Music Canada) "1234 Live!".

This is the trio's only Live-In-Concert Album (Live in Concert With The Mammoth Band) What a thrill everyone had.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiWbjoOOly4

She does the famous song "Where is thumpkin which is a four part song with four hand gestures"

Where is thumpkin where is thumpkin

Here I am Here I am

How are you today sir very fine I say sir

Run away run away

http://hellopoetry.com/words/491038/fourteener/poems/

Fourteener poems are popular. Ibn Aras said that fourteen was significant because it is the tetractys ten plus four

http://hellopoetry.com/words/491038/fourteener/poems/

The Day of Fourteen

in the day of fourteen

everywhere is obscene

yet for them is serene,

how terrible to be seen

Eccedentesiast

Jun 8, 2015

fourteen

your eyes are beautiful

but it becomes more beautiful

when you are looking at her

Felicia

Jul 27, 2015

Fourteen

Yours is a dead end, but it's the only path I want to take

Hayley

Dec 31, 2014

Fourteen

Young enough to say what you feel,

Old enough to know your feelings are wrong.

Young enough to embrace love,

Old enough to let it go.

Young enough to laugh openly,

Old enough to be embarrassed.

Young enough to cry freely,

Old enough to stop

Young enough to feel pain,

Old enough to know there is more to come

Young enough to write,

Old enough to communicate.

Brianne

Feb 21, 2015

Once Fourteen:

Filled with black and gray ignorance

Sometimes you wish your life wasn’t existence

While waking up to those eyes

Always in such a disguise

Fearing from others judgment

Turning you into something so unpleasant

Lingering from past abandonment

Making you swing full of violence

Desperate from searching for affection

Turning you to cling to anyone with a compliment

Insecure from beauty you don’t see

Making you envious of girls without a personality

I’ve been where you’ve been

I’ve seen what you’ve seen

I myself, was once fourteen

You don’t need to hide

It’s time to put our past aside

Take pride and show them how you shine

The only love you need is buried within your insides

Ottar

Apr 3, 2015

The Prize /o/o/o/o/o/o/o (fourteener)

bad pair of parents these two always dressed for funerals,

wings feathered with death and flight construct a nest with cunning,

safe from predators in the branches high of a safe evergreen,

each year for four years, two crows hatches one egg, alive

share the work, feed the one, day and night, work the pair, with hope,

Caa-crows, caa-crows, caa-caa, goes the crow, baby crow has passed,

not first flight aloft with air and sky beneath the young wings,

yet from life, to Earth who claims, the prize, before four black eyes,

‘Tis the same every Spring these two, evermore a funeral

heather leather

Jun 18, 2016

childhood ; or lack thereof

fourteen.

fourteen and I am alive.

fourteen and yet I feel like I am five

fourteen and my poems still aren't that good

fourteen and my skin still scars just as often

fourteen and I don't talk to my mom as much I used to

fourteen and I still hate my body

fourteen and I never liked celebrating my birthdays

fourteen and I never liked waking up on my birthdays

to a stranger who looks like me and sounds like me

but isn't me because I'm fourteen and that's

supposed to make a difference

fourteen and I feel like I am too young to be writing

about the things I do but my cousin's fourteen and she

does the things I am afraid to write about

fourteen and this is probably the only honest

poem I've ever written in my life

fourteen that's probably why it isn't that good

fourteen and I feel like I'm running out of things to say

fourteen yet there are so many things I haven't said

fourteen and I miss the way people used to love me

fourteen and I feel like it's fucked up that I don't miss the

way I used to love me because fourteen was when I stopped

remembering what that feeling felt like

fourteen and I don't hate school as much as I thought I would

fourteen and there's nobody in my school I'd celebrate my birthday with

fourteen and I haven't talked to someone I love in months

fourteen and I have more regrets than my age

fourteen and I realize that means nothing but it feels like it means everything

fourteen and I used to dream about doing impossible things but

fourteen is the number of dreams I have that died

fourteen and I don't blame the people that have given me love

and then tossed it aside because it's been a year and my tears have dried

fourteen and I have learned my heart is an abandoned garden

that only grows weeds and that planting flowers in it is useless

fourteen and it took me a long time to realize that I am more than just my age

fourteen and I wish I was still five, with my hair curly

and my mother's soft singing the only tune in my mind

but I am fourteen and life is supposed to be better

in ten days when I turn fifteen and

yet I have a feeling everything will be the same

(h.l.)

Melissa Joy Carlson

Aug 26, 2015

bend.

please don't take to heart what that bully said to you when you were 14, when you were just learning to survive and he told you to die. and it's okay to cry. bend you might, but break not quite. you'll be alright.

tomorrow, if not tonight.

Katie Lorenzo

May 28, 2013

Fourteen (anaphora)

When I was fourteen I learned to write

I learned to pour out my sorrow onto the pages

of an old notebook

When I was fourteen I learned to write for myself

Without stupid prompts

asking me what I was proud of

When I was fourteen I learned to write the truth

Never again did a meaningless sentence spill out of my pen

saying things that were opposite of what I felt

When I was fourteen I learned to write for everyone else

I said to those silent pages what I could not say to their faces

for fear of losing everything

When I was fourteen, I learned to write

Ann Beaver

Oct 18, 2013

Fourteen

Fourteen tolerance

With reminiscence

As the side of a sharpened blade

I don't know but I made

A reason

Because pleasure isn't enough

Smooth feels rough

Ragged ranges

Of pitch

Black to blacker

Pink to red

I long to understand human pains

Because nothing else remains

I long understand human blood

And the way it resembles mud.

Holland Vandrepole

Jun 27, 2013

It's Only Fourteen Lines

Its is only fourteen lines

He said, how difficult could it be

But I had tried a million times

If it was, then why wasn't easy for me?

instead of trailing dust, my pen collected dust

How can I write words that would compare

To such words of nature, love and lust

Nothing was important enough, so here I stare

With what could I fill a blank page?

Only meaningless love had occurred

I am only twenty years of age

This could have been morbid if preferred

Its only fourteen lines He said, Just try!

Don't compare, it wasn't easy, it was a lie

James Fate

Oct 16, 2013

Fourteen

echoes in my mind

like aches

but merely echoes

I am getting better at being

alive

but that is only because

I am so full of dead things

to remind me of what I now

have the option

not to be

to be

is my decision

yes

I am locking it in

to be

that is my final answer

until my choice is taken from me

stardust is the basic component

of all the parts and pieces

I am so full

of dead things

I was born with fourteen ghosts

excluding the stars that we rise

from the ashes of

like phoenixes

excluding the animals

that gave rise to us

excluding names

and faces

and friendships

and homes

fourteen ghosts

and they say we are born innocent

Charlotte

Sep 16, 2014

fourteen

i was fourteen

when you kissed me

in a ditch. you had a

girlfriend and i had

a problem but it didn't matter.

the party was quiet

and everybody knew who

we were as you dragged me

toward the woods and i giggled

like you were a boy band

and i had a VIP pass.

we kissed in the dark

and i never once thought

that you wouldn't want to

look at me in the daylight.

i never once thought that

three days later you would hit

me so hard that my teeth

rattled or that you would

tell me that my legs, built like

twigs, were logs or that you

would look down on me

and call me a whore.

i was fourteen.

i'd been hungry for love

for years and you only starved me

more. kept me in the corner

and gave me scraps when you

were finished. i wanted you

and you wanted to hurt me so

i let you.

i was fourteen.

Elizabeth Squires

Jul 5, 2013

Fourteen Word Poem

through the window

one can see

fluffy clouds

floating

the

blue

sky

sea

Marie K

Jul 22, 2013

Age Fourteen

Once I went to a graduation

it was a nice one

but a mother didn't come

and a girl went to the graduation

Alone

it was a nice one

but she was alone

Elizabeth Squires

Aug 3, 2013

Fourteen Word Poem

may a powerful witch put a hex

on that man

with the God complex

Jack Savage

Sep 4, 2013

Fourteen

If you really

fucking believed in love

the words

wouldn't always

an action.

Jeremy Duff

Sep 24, 2013

Six Word Story Number Fourteen

Shadows can be scarier than darkness.

Elizabeth Squires

Oct 29, 2013

Fourteen Word Poem

on this

pitch black night

millions

of bright sparklers

adorn

the expansive bush skies

http://hellopoetry.com/words/491038/fourteener/poems/

Another four by four by four by four poem/dance. The four parts of each quatrain are accompanied by four handmovements when children do handplay to the song

Five Little Monkeys - Lyrics

Five little monkeys jumping on the bed

One fell off and bumped his head

Mama called the doctor and the doctor said:

"No more monkeys jumping on the bed!"

Four little monkeys jumping on the bed

One fell off and bumped his head

Mama called the doctor and the doctor said:

"No more monkeys jumping on the bed!"

Three little monkeys jumping on the bed

One fell off and bumped his head

Mama called the doctor and the doctor said:

"No more monkeys jumping on the bed!"

Two little monkeys jumping on the bed

One fell off and bumped his head

Mama called the doctor and the doctor said:

"No more monkeys jumping on the bed!"

One little monkey jumping on the bed

He fell off and bumped his head

Mama called the doctor and the doctor said:

"No more monkeys jumping on the bed!"

http://www.nurseryrhymes.org/five-little-monkeys.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head,_Shoulders,_Knees_and_Toes

Another four part song/dance Heads Shoulders Knees and Toes--- each part gives four body parts and there are four parts to the song

"Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" is a children's song. The song has been documented as early as the 1950s,[1] and is often sung to the tune of "There Is a Tavern in the Town".

Contents [hide]

1 Description

2 Lyrics

3 References

4 External links

Description[edit]

There is generally only one verse with lyrics similar to those below. The second line repeats the first line both in words and in melody, the third line has a rising tone, and the fourth line repeats the first two. Children might dance while they sing the song and touch their head, shoulders, knees, and toes in sequence while singing each word.

Lyrics[edit]

The following lyrics are taken from the children's music database of the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences:

Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes

And eyes and ears and mouth and nose

Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4eueDYPTIg

Quadrant

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Omnivore%27s_Dilemma
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals is a nonfiction book written by American author Michael Pollan published in 2006. In the book, Pollan asks the seemingly straightforward question of what we should have for dinner. As omnivores, the most unselective eaters, humans are faced with a wide variety of food choices, resulting in a dilemma. Pollan suggests that, prior to modern food preservation and transportation technologies, this particular dilemma was resolved primarily through cultural influences. These technologies have recreated the dilemma, by making available foods that were previously seasonal or regional. The relationship between food and society, once moderated by culture, now finds itself confused. To learn more about those choices, Pollan follows each of the food chains that sustain us; industrial food, organic food, and food we forage ourselves; from the source to a final meal, and in the process writes a critique of the American way of eating.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Hearts

What Hearts (1992) is a 1992 Newbery Honor-winning children's novel by Bruce Brooks. It contains four interrelated stories about a 12-year-old boy, Asa, who faces different challenges through stages of his childhood.[1][2][3]

Contents [hide]

1 Plot

2 Characters

3 Awards

4 Critical reception

5 References

Plot[edit]

The book tells four stories of Asa's childhood. When Asa comes home with straight A's and hand-grown radishes in the first grade, he learns that his parents are getting a divorce. He moves with his mother to meet her boyfriend Dave, with whom he does not get along, due to Dave's being mean to him. They move to North Carolina to Dave's home. In the second story, he is in the fourth grade where he makes a lot of friends. His mother is now married to Dave, but Asa has difficulty accepting Dave as his stepfather. One day at school, Asa is assigned to recite a poem called "Little Blue Boy" with his friend Joel. He does not like the poem, so he plans to recite "The Highwayman." Joel agrees to recite the longer, more difficult poem. At first, Joel is excited, but he has difficulty remembering the lines. Joel's mother and Asa agree on Asa's reciting the poem alone while Joel's mother takes him away, unaware of Asa's solo recitation. Joel shows up on the day of the recital, and Asa, for sake of his friendship, switches back to "Little Blue Boy," which Joel remembers perfectly.

Another turning point comes when Asa is eleven. He tries out for Little League Baseball after practicing with his stepfather and his mother for weeks. A day before his tryout, his mother has an accident with pills. It is later revealed that his mother is suffering from depression. The family moves to Raleigh, and Asa misses his chance to play baseball.

In the fourth story, Asa is in love with Jean, his classmate since the fifth grade whom he finally befriends in the seventh grade. Asa confesses his love to Jean and just as he reaches home that day, he learns that he and his mother are moving, due to his mother's separation from Dave. The next day, Jean confesses her love to Asa by giving him two candy hearts that say "I love you, I love you," only to find out that Asa would no longer be with her. Asa later calls Jean on the phone but Jean pretends as if nothing has happened between them. When Asa mentions the heart candies, Jean asks, "What Hearts?" Asa realizes the world is ever changing, and that he has to learn to adjust with it.

Fourth is always different

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodoitsu

Dodoitsu (都々逸) is a form of Japanese poetry developed towards the end of the Edo Period. Often concerning love or work, and usually comical, Dodoitsu poems consist of four lines with the syllabic structure 7-7-7-5 and no rhyme.

The fourth is always differnt from the first three in the quadrant model

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_proverbs

Many four-character idioms are from Chinese philosophy written in Classical Chinese, in particular "The Analects" by Confucius. (a frog in a well (井の中の蛙?) is Classical Chinese, from the Zhuangzi.)

https://www.fastcoexist.com/3020687/you-are-connected-to-everyone-on-earth-by-just-4-degrees-now

Technically the "six degrees of separation" is not true. People are connected to everybody on Earth by "four degrees of separation".

Eman Yasser Daraghmi and Shyan-Ming Yuan, of the National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan, created a database on Facebook that included 950 million people, The Pacific Standard reports. After eliminating duplicate and fake accounts as well as celebrities, the researchers used advanced statistical methods to calculate how far everyone was spread out on the network.

–– ADVERTISEMENT ––

What’s even more exciting is that the "four degrees of separation" rule is that this number included people who are in rare or very specialized professions, who might have a more tight-knit or smaller network. If you work in a more common profession, like teaching or medicine, the degrees of connectedness between you and everyone else is probably even less—an average of 3.2.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_characters

The use of contractions is as old as Chinese characters themselves, and they have frequently been found in religious or ritual use. In the Oracle Bone script, personal names, ritual items, and even phrases such as 受又(祐) shòu yòu "receive blessings" are commonly contracted into single characters. A dramatic example is that in medieval manuscripts 菩薩 púsà "bodhisattva" (simplified: 菩萨) is sometimes written with a single character formed of a 2×2 grid of four 十 (derived from the grass radical over two 十).[

That is the quadrant model

Structure
of four character
i
dioms
Korean idioms, or Gosasungoh,
generally
consist of four Chinese Characters or Hanja. At times they are also referred as 4 character
idioms (sajasungoh). Many idioms have their origins in historical events. However, some
also reflect their origin from myths and
legends from era gone by. So, by understanding these idioms, one can also start to understand the historical, legendary or
mythical and classical literature backgrounds of Koreans.
Example:
가가대소
(
呵呵大笑
),
박장대소
(
拍掌大笑
), can be translated as “guffaw,” or “a hearty laugh.” Literal translation:
“
have a good laugh: laugh heartily, loud laughter.”
As noted, whil
e many of these are composed for four hanjas, there are examples
of these composed
of
two, t
hree, and five hanja
.
For example, “perfection” or wan
-‐
byuk, is composed of two hanja and literally means “complete marble (ball)” or “intact marble.”
However, it has changed throughout time to mean “perfection.” There are many other words that have
ev
olved to its current
usage.
Some of these idioms have a direct English or western counterparts. For instance, the Korean idiom ‘jaewangjulgae’ can be
t
ranslated to ‘Cesarean Birth
’
or
‘
Cesarean Section.
’
Idioms are not just a simple reflection of histori
cal events and myths and legends of time gone by, but also reflect the changes in our
culture and our lives. New idioms are being formed to reflect these radial changes
Like

THe Korean equivalent of Chengyu are sajasungoh, or four character poems, (사자성어).[2] They have similar categorization to Japanese ones, such as 고사성어 (故事成語) for historical idioms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middlemarch

Yojijukugo is the similar format in Japanese. The term yojijukugo (四字熟語?, four character idiom) is autological. Many of these idioms were adopted from their Chinese counterparts and have the same or similar meaning as in Chinese. The term koji seigo (故事成語?, historical idiom) refers to an idiom that comes from a specific text as the source. As such, the overwhelming majority of koji seigo comes from accounts of history written in classical Chinese. Although a great many of the Japanese four-character idioms are derived from the Chinese, many others are purely Japanese in origin. Some examples:

花鳥風月 ka, chō, fū, getsu ("Flower, Bird, Wind, Moon"; beauties of nature)

一期一会　 ichigo ichie (once-in-a-lifetime experience)

傍目八目　 okamehachimoku (a bystander's vantage point)

手前味噌　 temaemiso (singing one's own praises; tooting one's own horn)

二股膏薬　 futamatagōyaku (double-dealer; timeserver)

風林火山　 fū, rin, ka, zan ("wind, woods, fire, mountain"; military proverb coming from Sun Tzu's "Art of War")

STORY CONSISTS FOUR PLOTS OF UNEQUAL EMPHASIS

Middlemarch, A Study of Provincial Life is a novel by English author George Eliot, first published in eight instalments (volumes) during 1871–2. It is considered one of the greatest books of all time.

Middlemarch is written as a third-person narrative, centering on the lives of the residents of Middlemarch, a fictitious Midlands town, from 1829 onwards — the years preceding the 1832 Reform Act. The narrative is variably considered to consist of four plots of unequal emphasis:[16] the life of Dorothea Brooke; the career of Tertius Lydgate; the courtship of Mary Garth by Fred Vincy; and the disgrace of Bulstrode. The two main plots are those of Dorothea and Lydgate.[b] [c] Each plot happens concurrently, although Bulstrode's is centred in the later chapters.

The nature of hte quadrant model is there is four parts and they are all connected but they are all separate as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiastic_structure

CHIASTIC CROSS STRUCTURES

Use in the Qurʾān

The themes in the Pedestal Verse and the story of Joseph are presented in a chiastic structure. Several other passages exist in a type of ring symmetry, or symmetrical structure.[8]

ABC…CBA pattern

Beowulf

In literary texts with a possible oral origin, such as Beowulf, chiastic or ring structures are often found on an intermediate level, that is, between the (verbal and/or grammatical) level of chiasmus and the higher level of chiastic structure such as noted in the Torah. John D. Niles provides examples of chiastic figures on all three levels.[9] He notes that for the instances of ll. 12-19, the announcement of the birth of (Danish) Beowulf, are chiastic, more or less on the verbal level, that of chiasmus.[10] Then, each of the three main fights are organized chiastically, a chiastic structure on the level of verse paragraphs and shorter passages. For instance, the simplest of these three, the fight with Grendel, is schematized as follows:

A: Preliminaries

Grendel approaching

Grendel rejoicing

Grendel devouring Handscioh

B: Grendel's wish to flee ("fingers cracked")

C: Uproar in hall; Danes stricken with terror

HEOROT IN DANGER OF FALLING

C': Uproar in hall; Danes stricken with terror

B': "Joints burst"; Grendel forced to flee

A': Aftermath

Grendel slinking back toward fens

Beowulf rejoicing

Beowulf left with Grendel's arm[11]

Prologue

A: Panegyric for Scyld

B: Scyld's funeral

C: History of Danes before Hrothgar

D: Hrothgar's order to build Heorot

Epilogue

D': Beowulf's order to build his barrow

C': History of Geats after Beowulf ("messenger's prophecy")

B': Beowulf's funeral

A': Eulogy for Beowulf[12]

Paradise Lost

The overall chiastic structure of Milton's Paradise Lost is also of the ABC…CBA type:

A: Satan's sinful actions (Books 1-3)

B: Entry into Paradise (Book 4)

C: War in heaven (destruction) (Books 5-6)

C': Creation of the world (Books 7-8)

B': Loss of paradise (Book 9)

A': Humankind's sinful actions (Books 10-12)[13]:141

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Baqara_255

THIS VERSE HAS CHIASTIC CROSS STRUCTURE

The Throne Verse (Arabic: آية الكرسي‎, translit. ʾĀyat al-Kursī‎) is the 255th verse of surah Al-Baqara, the second chapter of the Qur'an.[1] This verse speaks about how nothing and nobody is comparable to Allah.[1] It is the most famous verse of the Quran and is widely memorized and displayed in the Islamic world due to its emphatic description of Allah's power over the entire universe.[citation needed]

Symmetry of verses[edit]

Ayat al-Kursi displays an internal symmetry comprising concentric looping verses surrounding a pivotal chiasm 'x' of the type A B C D X D' C' B' A'. The reciter imagines him or herself walking through Ayat al-Kursi until reaching the centre, seeing what is in front and what is behind, and finds they represent a perfect reflection of each other. The central chiasm is represented by "Ya'lamu ma baina aidihim wa ma khalfahum = He knows what is before them and what is behind them". This is flanked symmetrically outwards so that A corresponds to A', B corresponds to B', and so forth. For example, line 3 "he is the lord of the heavens and the earth" corresponds to line 7 "his throne extends over heavens and earth".

There is a slight difference of opinion as to whether to follow Ayat al-Kursi with verses 256 and 257 though this is not usually performed.

Surat al-Baqara itself provides a broader internal concentricity which approximates Ayat al-Kursi to verses of 29-31 relating the glorification of the angels and Allah's eternal will to bestow His names upon Adam.

IT IS A CROSS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armanen_runes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IN_(yellow_background).svg

There is no historical Gibor rune (the name may be based on the Anglo-Saxon Gyfu rune). Its shape is similar to that of the Wolfsangel symbol.

THE SYMBOL IS ALSO THE SYMBOL FO THE SOCIALIST NATIONALIST PARTY OF UKRAINE

The emblems of the National Socialist movement in the Netherlands (1931–1936), and the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich (1939-1945), the 4th SS Polizei Panzergrenadier Division (1939-1945) and the 34th SS Volunteer Grenadier Division Landstorm Nederland (1943–1945)

16 LINES 16 SQUARES QUADRANT MODEL

on July 13,2012

Stanzaic, 4 quatrains

Rhyme Scheme: abba ccdd efef abba

syllabic 5/6/7/8 8/7/6/5 5/6/7/8 8/7/6/5

Four Quatrains, no specific meter requirement.

Must be Centered.

Example Poem:

Write a Spiral Quatrain

A spiral quatrain.

Starts with five syllables,

then like adding decibles,

each line you add one more again.

Until here. At eight now you stop.

then decrease by one each hop

downward until by jive

the count reaches five.

Do that all once more,

but with a diff’rent rhyme.

Until stanzas you have four.

You may write these poems any time.

There is not a required refrain.

Here it seems defensible,

and it’s embraceable,

A spiral quatrain.

OUR CLASS READ THE SCARLET LETTER IN HIGH SCHOOL- FOUR PARTS/ MOVEMENTS OF THE SCARLET LETTER

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2932426?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

FOUR MAIN CHARACTERS AND FOUR PARTS OF SCARLET LETTER

https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/the-scarlet-letter/critical-essays/the-scarlet-letter-as-a-gothic-romance

Quad

https://www.scribd.com/document/101077294/Scarlet-Letter-Criticism

John C. Gerber takes a “logical” approach in his views regarding

The Scarlet Letter

. He dividesthe novel into four parts, each in where the action is charted by the actions of one entity or character.Using this reasoning, he states that the action in the first part is led by the community, by Chillingworthin the second, Hester in the third, and Dimmesdale in the last part. He moves on into supporting hisclaims with a summary of the novel, telling the story in a very detailed but concise way. If the novelwere converted into a movie, then the movie would be like four stories woven into a singlecomplementing storyline.

The criticism is perfectly complemented by the novel’s content which indeed

supports his claims. The opening of the n

ovel revolves around the community’s condemnation of the

perjury, later shifting to making Chillingworth the center of action; this is demonstrated by his actionswith Hester in the prison house and the fact that he moves in with Dimmesdale. The third part provesHester as the center of attention by describing her isolation and redemption by raising Pearl, and finallythe fourth part makes Dimmesdale the center of action mainly because it is during his sermon that hedecides to confess his sin in public. Each one of the characters plots the course of the action in the

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Brontë

On 29 July 1913 The Times of London printed four letters Brontë had written to Constantin Héger after leaving Brussels in 1844.[34] Written in French except for one postscript in English, the letters broke the prevailing image of Brontë as an angelic martyr to Christian and female duties that had been constructed by many biographers, beginning with Gaskell.[34] The letters, which formed part of a larger and somewhat one-sided correspondence in which Héger frequently appears not to have replied, reveal that she had been in love with a married man, although they are complex and have been interpreted in numerous ways, including as an example of literary self-dramatisation and an expression of gratitude from a former pupil.[34]

FOUR PART STRUCTURE FINNEGANS WAKE

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrative_structure

"Commodius vicus" refers to Giambattista Vico (1668–1744), who proposed a theory of cyclical history in his work "La Scienza Nuova" (The New Science). Vico argued that the world was coming to the end of the last of three ages, these being the age of gods, the age of heroes, and the age of humans. These ideas recur throughout Finnegans Wake, informing the book's four-part structure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrative_structure
Most forms of narrative fall under four main categories: linear narratives, nonlinear narrative, interactive narration, and interactive narrative.

Linear narrative is the most common form of narration, where events are largely portrayed in a chronological order, that is, telling the events in the order in which they occurred.
Nonlinear narratives, disjointed narrative or disrupted narrative is a narrative technique, where events are portrayed, out of chronological order or in other ways where the narrative does not follow the direct causality pattern.
Interactive narration refers to works where the linear narrative is driven by, rather than influenced by, the users interaction.
Interactive narrative is a form of fiction in which users are able to make choices that influence the narrative (for example, through alternative plots or resulting in alternative endings) through their actions.

FOUR STAGES

A simple Graphic Narrative has four stages: an introduction of the characters and a description of a situation, the introduction of a problem, unexpected opportunity, or other complication into the situation, a resolution in the form of a partial or complete response to the problem by one or more of the characters, and the denouement, the aftermath of the response that makes clear the success, partial success, non-success, or uncertain success of the response. This fourth stage may also show how the original situation has changed due to what has taken place in the Complication and Resolution stages of the narrative.[2]

Larry Brooks, author of many, many scripts, four published novels, and the blog StoryFix, published this in a blog series. It’s very much worth it to read the Story Structure full series, but I’ll give a quick overview here.

http://jordanmccollum.com/2009/10/overview-larry-brookss-story-structure/

The structure is in four parts with three turning points separating them (plus two “pinch points”). Each part of the story should be about one quarter of the story.

https://books.google.com/books?id=2QfNNkJYZC4C&pg=PA124&lpg=PA124&dq=novel+with+a+four+part+structure&source=bl&ots=8zNQvixC07&sig=5_Ik2wHFiMMrxW-EQ4dfwypjVK8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwizg_i2ypXTAhWEtpQKHbFyApY4ChDoAQhgMA4#v=onepage&q=novel%20with%20a%20four%20part%20structure&f=false

BORIS VIAN FOUR SECTIONS BOOK

CONCERNING MOVING FOUR ELLS

http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/t01/t0114.htm

MISHNA I.: In what (ornamental) apparel may a woman go out, and in what may she not go out? A woman is not allowed to go out (even in private ground) either with woollen or linen bands or with straps on her head to keep her hair in tresses (as a precaution lest she enter public ground and take off the bands to show to her friends, thereby becoming guilty of carrying movable property for a distance of four ells or more). Nor is she to bathe herself with the bands on unless loosened. Nor is she to go out with either Totaphoth or Sarbitin on, unless they are fastened; 1 nor with a hood in public ground, nor with gold ornaments, nor with nose-rings, nor with finger-rings that have no seal, nor with pins. But if she did go out with these things, she is not bound to bring a sin-offering (as they are ornaments and not burdens).

GEMARA: "Bathing." Where is bathing referred to (and what has it to do with the Sabbath)? Said R. Na'hman b. Itz'hak in the name of Rabba b. Abuhu: The Mishna means to say: What is the reason that a woman is not allowed to go out with either woollen or linen bands? Because the sages have decided that she is not to bathe herself with them on, even on week days, unless loosened; therefore she shall not (go out with them on) on the Sabbath at all, lest it happen that she become in duty bound to bathe herself, 2 and, while untying her hair, be forced to carry the bands in public ground for a distance of four ells or more.

44 LINES INTRODUCTORY FOUR AND THEN FOUR TENS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Décima

A décima refers to a ten-line stanza of poetry, and the song form generally consists of forty-four lines (an introductory four-verse stanza followed by four ten-line stanzas). It is also called "espinela," after its founder, Vicente Espinel (1550–1624), a Spanish writer and musician of the Siglo de Oro.

The Ecuadorian décima is an oral poetic form that exists among the black population of the Esmeraldas Province. A décima consists of 44 lines, each of which generally has eight syllables. A décima consists of one stanza of four lines, and four more stanzas of ten lines each. Each of the four lines of the first stanza is repeated later in the poem. Sometimes when these lines are repeated, they are slightly altered. Patterns of rhyme and meter are not governed by any particular rules.[2]

During declamation, there is a pause between stanzas, as well as a pause between the fourth and fifth lines of each ten-line stanza. This is reflected in the structure of the poems as well: a transcription of a décima will invariably have a period or a semicolon at the end of the fourth line. Some older decimeros add an additional pause between the eighth and ninth line of each ten-line stanza.[2]

The structure of the décima suggests that it is derived from the Spanish glosa, which also employs eight-syllable verses and a break between the fourth and fifth verse of a ten-line stanza.[2]

Décimas are generally anonymous. Though many decimeros claim to have composed the décimas they recite, this is rarely the case. One scholar of décimas said he met only one decimero who actually composed his own décimas, and that decimeros living in different areas often claimed to have composed the same poems.[2]

44 LINES INTRODUCTORY FOUR AND THEN FOUR TENS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Décima

The structure of the décima suggests that it is derived from the Spanish glosa, which also employs eight-syllable verses and a break between the fourth and fifth verse of a ten-line stanza.[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea

The Black Sea is one of four seas named in English after common colour terms—the others being the Red Sea, the White Sea and the Yellow Sea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Last_Songs_(Vaughan_Williams)

Ralph Vaughan Williams' Four Last Songs cycle is made up of four songs: "Procris," "Tired," "Hands, Eyes, and Heart," and "Menelaus." All of the songs were composed between 1954 and 1958.[1] The cycle is best suited for mezzo-soprano, although, the original program note from the cycle's 1959 premiere acknowledges that all of the songs may be sung by a baritone, except for "Hands, Eyes, and Heart" "which is a woman's song."[2] It is suggested that the four songs were originally intended to be two separate song cycles with "Menelaus" and "Procris" belonging to one cycle and "Tired" and "Hands, Eyes, and Heart" belonging to another.[3] However, there is debate in the scholarly community about this proposed song cycle grouping. Renée Chérie Clark in her essay, "A Critical Appraisal of Four Last Songs" suggests, citing a letter from the composer to a friend at Cornell University, that Vaughan Williams actually intended for "Menelaus" and "Hands, Eyes, and Heart" to be grouped together. The composer's death in 1958 left both cycles unfinished, and in 1960, they were assembled by the composer's widow, Ursula Vaughan Williams, and published as set by Oxford University Press.[2] The texts of all four songs are poems written by Vaughan Williams' wife Ursula who penned several books of poetry throughout her lifetime as well as a biography of her late husband. "Procris" and "Menelaus" deal with figures from ancient Greek and Roman mythology and epic poetry while "Tired" and "Hands, Eyes, and Heart" depict images of love between a husband and wife.

FOUR LOST EPICS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theban_Cycle

The Theban Cycle (Greek: Θηβαϊκὸς Κύκλος) is a collection of four lost epics of ancient Greek literature which related the mythical history of the Boeotian city of Thebes.[1] They were composed in dactylic hexameter verse and were probably written down between 750 and 500 BC.

The epics of the Theban Cycle were as follows:

The Oedipodea, attributed to Cinaethon: told the story of Oedipus' solution to the Sphinx's riddle, and presumably of his incestuous marriage to his mother Epicaste or Jocasta.

The Thebaid, of uncertain authorship but sometimes attributed in antiquity to Homer: told the story of the war between Oedipus' two sons Eteocles and Polynices, and of Polynices' unsuccessful expedition against the city of Thebes with six other commanders (the "Seven Against Thebes"), in which both Eteocles and Polynices were killed.

The Epigoni, attributed in antiquity to either Antimachus of Teos or Homer: a continuation of the Thebaid, which told the story of the next generation of heroes who attacked Thebes, this time successfully.

The Alcmeonis, of unknown authorship: told the story of Alcmaeon's murder of his mother Eriphyle for having arranged the death of his father Amphiaraus (told in the Thebaid).

FOUR POEMS BASED ON FOUR PAINTINGS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vier_Tondichtungen_nach_A._Böcklin

Vier Tondichtungen nach A. Böcklin (Four tone poems after Arnold Böcklin), Op. 128, is a composition in four parts for orchestra by Max Reger, based on four paintings by Arnold Böcklin, including Die Toteninsel (Isle of the Dead). He composed them in Meiningen in 1913.

Sculpture[edit]

The four brothers—usually represented all together seated on their horse Bayard—have inspired many sculptures:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Four_Sons_of_Aymon

The oldest extant statue is found on a tomb in Portugal (dated to the first half of the 12th century).

A bronze statue (Ros Beyaert) depicting the four sons of Aymon (Reinout, Adelaert, Ritsaert and Writsaert) on their horse Beyaert (Bayard), was erected on the central approach avenue to the Exposition universelle et internationale (1913) held in Ghent (Belgium).[12] This statue was created by Aloïs de Beule and Domien Ingels.

One of the most famous representations was created by Olivier Strebelle for the Expo 58. Situated by the Meuse in the city of Namur, the horse appears to want to carry its riders across the river with a leap.

Another statue showing the four brothers standing beside their horse can be found at Bogny-sur-Meuse, created by Albert Poncin.

Dendermonde is home to several statues representing the brothers.

The statue Vier Heemskinderen (1976) by Gerard Adriaan Overeem was placed in the "Torenstraat" of Nijkerk

In Köln, since 1969, a bronze sculpture by Heinz Klein-Arendt depicts them.

FOUR CYCLES
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_play
There are four complete or nearly complete extant English biblical collections of plays;[9] although these collections are sometimes referred to as "cycles," it is now believed that this term may attribute to these collections more coherence than they in fact possess. The most complete is the York cycle of forty-eight pageants; there are also the Towneley plays of thirty-two pageants, once thought to have been a true 'cycle' of plays acted at Wakefield; the Ludus Coventriae (also called the N Town plays or Hegge cycle), now generally agreed to be a redacted compilation of at least three older, unrelated plays, and the Chester cycle of twenty-four pageants, now generally agreed to be an Elizabethan reconstruction of older medieval traditions. Also extant are two pageants from a New Testament cycle acted at Coventry and one pageant each from Norwich and Newcastle upon Tyne. Additionally, a fifteenth-century play of the life of Mary Magdalene, The Brome Abraham and Isaac and a sixteenth-century play of the Conversion of Saint Paul exist, all hailing from East Anglia. Besides the Middle English drama, there are three surviving plays in Cornish known as the Ordinalia, and several cyclical plays survive from continental Europe.

FOUR MYSTERY PLAY CYCLES

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/York_Mystery_Plays

The plays are one of four virtually complete surviving English mystery play cycles, along with the Chester Mystery Plays, the Towneley/Wakefield plays and the N-Town plays

IT HAS FOUR SECTIONS

The Post-Vulgate Cycle is one of the major Old French prose cycles of Arthurian literature. It is essentially a rehandling of the earlier Vulgate Cycle (also known as the Lancelot-Grail Cycle), with much left out and much added, including characters and scenes from the Prose Tristan.

This cycle of works was one of the most important sources of Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur.

The work is divided into FOUR sections. Many of these sections are largely similar to the previous Vulgate versions.

The Estoire del Saint Grail, which did not differ significantly from the Vulgate version. It tells the story of Joseph of Arimathea and his son Josephus, who brings the Holy Grail to Britain.

The Estoire de Merlin (also called the Vulgate or Prose Merlin), which also bears few changes from the Vulgate. It concerns Merlin and the early history of Arthur.

To this section is added the Post-Vulgate Suite du Merlin, also known as the Huth-Merlin, the first departure from the source material. It adds many adventures of Arthur and the early Knights of the Round Table, and includes details about Arthur's incestuous begetting of Mordred and receiving Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake that are not found in the Vulgate. The author added some relevant material from the Vulgate's Lancelot Proper section and the first version of the Prose Tristan to connect the events to the Queste section.

The Queste del Saint Graal. The Post-Vulgate Queste is very different in tone and content from the Vulgate version, but still describes the knights' search for the Holy Grail, which can only be achieved by the worthy knights Galahad, Percival, and Bors. Elements from the Prose Tristan are present, including the character Palamedes and King Mark's invasions of Arthur's realm.

The Mort Artu, concerning Arthur's death at the hands of his son Mordred and the collapse of his kingdom. It is closely based on the Vulgate Mort but was written with greater connectivity to the previous sections.

FOUR SECTIONS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guests_of_the_Nation

"Guests of the Nation" is a short story written by Frank O'Connor, first published in 1931, portraying the execution of two Englishmen held captive by the Irish Republican Army during the War for Independence. The story is split into four sections, each section taking a different tone. The first reveals a real sense of camaraderie between the English prisoners. With the two Englishmen being killed, the final lines of the story describe the nauseating effect this betrayal has on the Irishmen.

FOUR THEME PARKS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Kingdom

Magic Kingdom is a theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Bay Lake, Florida, near Orlando. Owned and operated by The Walt Disney Company through its Parks and Resorts division, the park opened on October 1, 1971, as the first of four theme parks at the resort. Initialized by Walt Disney and designed by WED Enterprises, its layout and attractions are based on Disneyland Park in Anaheim, California, and is dedicated to fairy tales and Disney characters.

Four part nursery rhyme- Johnny Johnny Yes Papa

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olWG6jiMV0g

Johnny Johnny yes Papa

Eating sugar no Papa

Telling lies no Papa

Open your mouth, hahaha

The four part itsy bitsy spider song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eomoAAvMmQA

I'm a paragraph. Click here to add your own text and edit me. It's easy.

Another four part song- Rain Rain go away- theres four friends in this video too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zu6o23Pu0Do

Rain rain go away

Come again another day

Little Merk Diezle wants to play

Rain Rain go away

The finger family song- four parts- another four by four by four by four song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xqqj9o7TgA

starts

Daddy finger Daddy finger where are you

Here I am here I am how do you do

Daddy finger Daddy finger whats your name

Thumb I am thumb i am call me thumb

Four part song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yq7wpqPsJIs

http://www.dltk-teach.com/rhymes/bumblebee/song2.htm

Here is the beehive. Where are the bees?

(hold up fist)

Hidden away where nobody sees.

(move other hand around fist)

Watch and you'll see them come out of the hive

(bend head close to fist)

One, two, three, four, five.

(hold fingers up one at a time)

Baby bumble bee song- four by four by four by four 16- 16 squares in the quadrant model

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yq7wpqPsJIs

http://dragon.sleepdeprived.ca/songbook/songs3/S3_6.htm

Baby Bumble Bee

(source: "The World's Best Funny Songs", Esther J. Nelson, 1988; also in "The Worm Song and Other Tasty Tunes, Janet Wilson, 1993.)

I'm bringing home my baby bumble bee

Won't my mommy be so proud of me

I'm bringing home my baby bumble bee

Ooh eee it stung me!

I'm squishing up my baby bumble bee

Won't my mommy be so proud of me

I'm squishing up my baby bumble bee

Ooh ee it's all over me!

I'm licking up my baby bumble bee

Won't my mommy be so proud of me

I'm licking up my baby bumble bee

Ooh eee needs salt!

I'm bringing home my baby dinosaur

Won't my mommy hide behind the door

I'm bringing home my baby dinosaur

Ooh eee it stepped on me!

A four part nursery rhyme- accompanied by tickling

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round_and_round_the_garden

"Round and round the garden" is an English language nursery rhyme typically accompanied by a fingerplay. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19235.

Contents [hide]

1 Lyrics

2 Origins

3 Accompanying actions

4 Notes

5 External links

Lyrics[edit]

The most common modern form of the poem is:

Round and round the garden

like a teddy bear.

One step, two step,

Tickle you under there.[1]

Accompanying actions[edit]

The nursery rhyme is accompanied by various actions, by the adult on the child or the child on the adult. The child/adult first lightly strokes his or her index finger in slow circles around the child/adult's upturned palm, then with each "step", walks their index and middle finger up the arm, firstly to the elbow and then to the shoulder. Finally after a short pause before the "tickle", they launch a (not unexpected) tickle under the arm.

Another four part very popular children's song--- it is a four by four by four by four song 16 in all. 16 squares in the quadrant model. Interestingly in the last quatrain you say "if your happy and you know it do all three). The fourth is always different, yet contains the previous three

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KVNxAYge8Y

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_You%27re_Happy_and_You_Know_It

"If You're Happy and You Know It" is a popular repetitive children's song from the United States, credited to Dr. Alfred B. Smith,[citation needed] midway through the 1900s. The song has been noted for its similarities to "Molodejnaya", a song appearing in the 1938 Soviet musical film Volga-Volga.[1]

Like many children's cantations, there are many versions of the lyrics. A popular version goes like this:

If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands!

If you're happy and you know it, and you really want to show it;

If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands!

This verse is usually followed by three more, which follow the same pattern but say: "If you're happy and you know it, stomp your feet!", "If you're happy and you know it, shout/say 'hooray'!" or "shout/say 'amen'!"; and, "If you're happy and you know it, do all three!" Other versions of the song tend to say "then your face will surely show it" in place of "and you really want to show it"; the form "then you really ought to show it" has also been used. Many variations on the substance of the first three verses exist, including:

Four Quatrains about Good Things

1. Using the space below, brainstorm and write down words and phrases that describe good things that have happened in your life recently.

2. On a separate sheet of paper, write four quatrains. Each quatrain should be about a different topic. Each of your poems should have the rhyme scheme abcb or aabb.

A quatrain is a poem of four lines. The rhyme scheme for a quatrain can be abcb (in which the second and fourth lines have end rhyme) as in the example poem below:

Row, row, row your boat, a

Gently down the stream b

If you see a crocodile, c

Don’t forget to scream. b

A poem with rhyme scheme aabb has end rhyme in the first and second lines as well as in the third and fourth lines.

Sam, Sam, the butcher man a

Washed his face in a frying pan, a

Combed his hair with a wagon wheel, b

And died with a toothache in his heel. b

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYijwjM8D5Q

Four line poem in four voice parts

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Row,_Row,_Row_Your_Boat

Row, Row, Row Your Boat

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Row, Row, Row Your Boat"

Row your boat.svg

Sheet music

Nursery rhyme

Published 1852

"Row, Row, Row Your Boat" is an English language nursery rhyme and a popular children's song. It can also be an "action" nursery rhyme, whose singers sit opposite one another and "row" forwards and backwards with joined hands. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19236.

Contents [hide]

1 Lyrics

2 Origins

3 Additional or alternative verses

4 Notes and references

Lyrics[edit]

The most common modern version is often sung as a round for four voice parts (About this sound play (help·info)). A possible arrangement for SATB is as follows:

Soprano Contralto Tenor Bass

Row, row, row your boat,

Gently down the stream. Row, row, row your boat,

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, Gently down the stream. Row, row, row your boat,

Life is but a dream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, Gently down the stream. Row, row, row your boat,

Life is but a dream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, Gently down the stream.

Life is but a dream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,

Life is but a dream.

The text above is often sung multiple times in succession to allow for the different voices to interweave with each other, forming four-part harmony.

Origins[edit]

It has been suggested that the song may have originally arisen out of American minstrelsy. The earliest printing of the song is from 1852, when the lyrics were published with similar lyrics to those used today, but with a very different tune. It was reprinted again two years later with the same lyrics and another tune. The modern tune was first recorded with the lyrics in 1881, mentioning Eliphalet Oram Lyte in The Franklin Square Song Collection but not making it clear whether he was the composer or adapter.[1]

Additional or alternative verses[edit]

People often add additional verses, a form of children's street culture, with the intent of either extending the song or (especially in the case of more irreverent versions) to make it funny, parody it, or substitute another sensibility for the perceived innocent one of the original. In Bean, where Rowan Atkinson (Mr.Bean) and Peter MacNicol (David Langley) also used this parody singing in the film. [2] Versions include:

Row, row, row your boat,

Gently down the stream.

If you see a crocodile,

Don't forget to scream.

And:

Row, row, row your boat,

Gently down the stream.

Throw your teacher overboard

And listen to her scream.[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodoitsu

FOURTH IS ALWAYS DIFFERENT- 26 is gematria of the tetragrammaton

The fourth is always differnt from the first three in the quadrant model

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_poetry

FOUR LINES IMAYO

The period of cloistered rule overlapped the end of the Heian period and the beginning of the Kamakura period. Cloistered rule (Insei) refers to an emperor "retiring" into a monastery, while continuing to maintain a certain amount of influence and power over worldly affairs, and yet retaining time for poetry or other activities. During this time the Fujiwara clan was also active both politically and poetically. The period of cloistered rule mostly Heian period but continuing into the early Kamakura period, in or around the 12th century, some new movements of poetry appeared.

Imayō in the period of cloistered rule

Further information: Ryūkōka

First a new lyrical form called imayō (今様, modern style, a form of ryūkōka) emerged. Imayō consists of four lines in 8-5 (or 7-5) syllables. Usually it was sung to the accompaniment of instrumental music and dancing. Female dancers (shirabyōshi) danced to the accompaniment of imayō. Major works were compiled into the Ryōjin Hishō (梁塵秘抄) anthology. Although originally women and commoners are thought to be proponents of the genre, Emperor Go-Shirakawa was famed for his mastery of imayō.

QUATRAINS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jueju

Jueju (Chinese: 絕句), or Chinese quatrain, is a type of jintishi ("modern form poetry") that grew popular among Chinese poets in the Tang Dynasty (618–907), although traceable to earlier origins. Jueju poems are always quatrains; or, more specifically, a matched pair of couplets, with each line consisting of five or seven syllables.[1]

The five-syllable form is called wujue (Chinese: 五絕; pinyin: Wŭjué) and the seven-syllable form qijue (Chinese: 七絕; pinyin: Qījué).[2]

History[edit]

The origins of the jueju style are uncertain.[3] Fränkel states that it arose from the yuefu form in the fifth or sixth century.[4] This pentasyllabic song form, dominant in the Six Dynasties period, may have carried over into shi composition and thus created a hybrid of the yuefu quatrain and shi quatrain.[3] Indeed, many Tang dynasty wujue poems were inspired by these yuefu songs.[2]

In the seventh century the jueju developed into its modern form, as one of the three "modern" verse forms, or jintishi, the other two types of jintishi being the lüshi and the pailu.[4]

The jueju style was very popular during the Tang dynasty. Many authors composing jueju poems at the time followed the concept of "seeing the big within the small" (Chinese: 小中見大; pinyin: Xiăozhōng jiàndà), and thus wrote on topics of a grand scale; philosophy, religion, emotions, history, vast landscapes and more.[2]

Authors known to have composed jueju poems include Du Fu,[5] Du Mu,[6] Li Bai,[7] Li Shangyin,[8] Wang Changling[9] and Wang Wei.[10]

Form[edit]

Traditional literary critics considered the jueju style to be the most difficult form of jintishi. Limited to exactly 20 or 28 characters,[11] writing a jueju requires the author to make full use of each character to create a successful poem. This proved to encourage authors to use symbolic language to a high degree.[2]

Furthermore, tonal meter in jueju, as with other forms of Chinese poetry, is a complex process. It can be compared to the alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables in sonnets. A poet writing a jueju or similar lüshi-style poem needs to alternate level and oblique tones both between and within lines.[12]

Some of the formal rules of the regulated verse forms were applied in the case of the jueju curtailed verse, these rules as applied to the jueju include regular line length, use of a single rhyme in even-numbered verses, strict patterning of tonal alternations, use of a major caesura before the last three syllables, optional parallelism and grammaticality of each line as a sentence. Each couplet generally forms a distinct unit, and the third line generally introduces some turn of thought or direction within the poem.[13]

Example[edit]

This poem is called "Spring Lament" (Chinese: 春怨; pinyin: Chūn yuàn) and was written by Jin Changxu.[14]

Traditional Chinese

Simplified Chinese

English translation

春怨

打起黃鶯兒

莫教枝上啼

啼時驚妾夢

不得到遼西

春怨

打起黄莺儿

莫教枝上啼

啼时惊妾梦

不得到辽西

"Spring Lament"

Hit the yellow oriole

Don't let it sing on the branches

When it sings, it breaks into my dreams

And keeps me from Liaoxi!

This poem concerns a standard figure in this type of poetry, a lonely woman who is despondent over the absence of a husband or lover, probably a soldier who has gone to Liaoxi in present-day Mongolia. She chases away the orioles to stop their singing in the first couplet. The second couplet gives the reason. The bird songs interrupted her sweet morning dream to see her husband in the far away land. The words and phrases tug at her heart.[14]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shigin

Kanshi and classical Chinese poems are usually composed of four or more lines of Chinese characters, or kanji (漢字), each line having the same number of characters. Gin with four phrases, each seven characters long (the most common), are classified as shichigon-zekku (七言絶句?, "seven-word quatrains"). There is strictly only one standard melody, although many poems will be distinguished by minor variations from this theme.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qijue

Qiyan jueju (七言絕句; abbr. qijue 七絕), known in Japan as shichigon-zekku (七言絶句?) is a type of jueju poetry form consisting of four phrases each seven Chinese characters (or kanji) in length.

Shichigon-zekku are the most common form of classical Chinese poems (kanshi), and the standard form of shigin (Japanese chanted poetry).

Contents [hide]

1 Composition

2 Examples

3 See also

4 External links

Composition[edit]

In composing Shichigon-zekku, the character of the phrases (zekku) is important. The rules are as follows:

First phrase kiku (起句 "bringing into being"?): Depiction of the scene

Second phrase shoku (承句 "understanding"?): Add further illustration and detail to the kiku

Third phrase tenku (転句 "changing"?): By changing the scene of action, reveal the true essence of the poem

Fourth phrase kekku (結句 "drawing together"?): In assimilating the tenku draw together and complete the poem

Examples[edit]

Example of qiyan jueju:

"江南春绝句"

千里莺啼绿映江，

水村山郭酒旗风。

南朝四百八十寺，

多少楼台烟雨中。

"Spring of the South"

Thousands miles of birds' singing, light green along the Yangtze river;

Ponds and hills circling the village with flags in the soothing wind;

Amid the four hundred and eighty temples of the South dynasty;

How many terraces are in the misty cold rains?

—Du Mu (杜牧)

(803～852)

Example of shichigon-zekku:

"富士山"

仙客来遊雲外巓

神龍棲老洞中渕

雪如丸素煙如柄

白扇倒懸東海天

"Mount Fuji"

This great peak above the clouds, where hermit-wizards came for sport

The deep pools of whose caverns holy dragons have inhabited from old

The snow is like white silk, the rising smoke like a handle

A great white fan inverted, in the heavens above the eastern sea

—Ishikawa Jozan (石川丈山)

(1583～1672)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yonkoma

Yonkoma manga (4コマ漫画?, "four cell manga", or 4-koma for short), a comic-strip format, generally consists of gag comic strips within four panels of equal size ordered from top to bottom. (They also sometimes run right-to-left horizontally or use a hybrid 2x2 style, depending on the layout requirements of the publication in which they appear.) Though the word yonkoma comes from the Japanese, the style also exists outside Japan in other Asian countries as well as in the English-speaking market

Rakuten Kitazawa (who wrote under the name Yasuji Kitazawa) produced the first yonkoma in 1902. Entitled "Jiji Manga", it was thought to have been influenced by the works of Frank Arthur Nankivell and of Frederick Burr Opper.[1] Jiji Manga appeared in the Sunday edition.[which?]

Structure

Traditionally, Yonkoma follow a structure known as Kishōtenketsu. This word is a compound formed from the following Japanese Kanji characters:

Ki (起):The first panel forms the basis of the story; it sets the scene.

Shō (承): The second panel develops upon the foundation of the story laid down in the first panel.

Ten (転): The third panel is the climax, in which an unforeseen development occurs.

Ketsu (結): The fourth panel is the conclusion, in which the effects of the third panel are seen.[2]

Well-known manga drawn using the yonkoma style include:

.hack//4 Koma

Acchi Kocchi

Azumanga Daioh

B Gata H Kei

Baito-kun

Choir!

Hetalia: Axis Powers

Hidamari Sketch

K-On!

Kanamemo

Kill Me Baby

Kin-iro Mosaic

Kobo, the Li'l Rascal

Lucky Star

Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun

Neko Rahmen

Nono-chan

Nyorōn Churuya-san

Puchimas! Petit Idolmaster

Sazae-san

Seitokai Yakuindomo

Sketchbook

Taberemasen

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Chengyu are mostly derived from ancient literature. The meaning of a chengyu usually surpasses the sum of the meanings carried by the four characters, as chengyu are often intimately linked with the myth, story or historical fact from which they were derived. As such, chengyu do not follow the usual grammatical structure and syntax of the modern Chinese spoken language, and are instead highly compact and synthetic.

Chengyu in isolation are often unintelligible without explanation, and when students in China learn chengyu in school as part of the classical curriculum, they also need to study the context from which the chengyu was born. Often the four characters reflect the moral behind the story rather than the story itself. For example, the phrase "break the woks, sink the boats" (破釜沉舟, About this sound pò fǔ chén zhōu) is based on a historical account where the general Xiang Yu ordered his troops to destroy all cooking utensils and boats after crossing a river into the enemy's territory. He won the battle because of this "no-retreat" strategy. Similar phrases are known in the West, such as "burning bridges" or "Crossing the Rubicon". This particular idiom cannot be used in a losing scenario because the story behind it does not describe a failure.

The following three examples show that the meaning of the idiom can be totally different by only changing one character.

一日千秋 : "One day, a thousand autumns."

Meaning: implies rapid changes; one day equals a thousand years

一日千里 : "One day, a thousand miles."

Meaning: implies rapid progress; traveling a thousand miles in a day

一日三秋 : "One day, three autumns."

Meaning: greatly missing someone; one day feels as long as three years

Other examples in Chinese:

三人成虎 (Three men make a tiger)