About

The Quatrain is a project for people who value quality Undergraduate and Graduate writing on literature and culture. Full-dress researched, academic essays and scholarly explorations, life-writing, cultural criticism, work that has a reflective, autobiographical style, and creative writing in all its forms: We simply seek to display samples of the interesting, original, and quality writing being produced by gifted students and emerging talents from Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas and Mississippi. This four state region, our geographical quatrain, is our primary interest, although we welcome work from college writers everywhere. So serious or satiric, critical or creative, written for a class or written for yourself, send us your good work and let us display it first. What you do with it after that–sending to a scholarly print journal, revising as a magazine or newspaper piece, including in your chapbook of poetry or longer manuscript–is up to you. We make no editorial or ownership claims upon the writing. Just don’t let it moulder on an old drive. Instead, let us share those insights with other students and readers who can benefit from your efforts.

Famous Quatrains

"The Moving Finger writes: and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it." --Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
On Revision

"The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say." --Mark Twain
Melville Musing

"God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught--nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!"
--Herman Melville
Write from the Spleen

"We can learn how not to write, but this a discipline that does not simply concern writing itself but concerns the whole intellectual life. A mind cleared of false emotion and false sentiment and egocentricity is going to have at least those roadblocks removed from its path. If you don’t think cheaply, then there at least won’t be the quality of cheapness in your writing, even though you might not be able to write well." —Flannery O'Connor
Carpentry

"Prose is architecture, not interior decoration." --Ernest Hemingway
Make it New

"All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
Publishing

"Publication - is the auction of the Mind of Man." --Emily Dickinson
The Heresy of Words

"All great truths begin as blasphemies."--G. B. Shaw
Living Well

"Deliver me from writers who say the way they live their lives doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book. If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for."--Alice Walker
On Taking Risks

"Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything really good." --William Faulkner

"Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." --T. S. Eliot
Keeping Council

"Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what's wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong."
--Neil Gaiman

"Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good."--Samuel Johnson

"I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again." --Oscar Wilde
Poe on Perseverance

"Through joy and through sorrow, I wrote. Through hunger and through thirst, I wrote. Through good report and through ill report, I wrote. Through sunshine and through moonshine, I wrote. What I wrote it is unnecessary to say."--Edgar Allan Poe
A Matter of Perspective

"Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree."--Ezra Pound

"Fiction is about stuff that's screwed up."--Nancy Kress
Good Bones

“As to the Adjective; when in doubt, strike it out”
--Mark Twain
"The road to hell is paved with adverbs."--Stephen King
“Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs. The adjective hasn't been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place.”--William Strunk, Jr., and E. B. White
Of Powerful Feelings

"Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart."--William Wordsworth