Poseidon’s Musique

Form: Jue Ju (curtailed or frustrated verse) is one of the oldest of the Chinese patterns and in the 3rd century AD the Jue Ju was very popular. It often carried "suggestively erotic themes". It does not tell a story but attempts to create a mood.

The basic rhythmic unit of Chinese poem is the single character (zi), which is pronounced as one syllable. In English the word represented by the character might be more than one syllable. Originally the Jue Ju was composed in 5 character lines. By the Tang era, 8th century it had evolved to a 7 character pattern and became fundamental to Chinese poetry.

The elements of Jue Ju are:

1. lines of 5 to 7 characters or words. (Chinese characters are a single syllable but can represent a word in English which has more than one syllable. Chinese forms count characters, when written in English we should count words) (lines should be same length)
2. composed in 4 lines. A poem in 4 lines
3. often erotic. Create a mood but please keep it 18+
4. compared to Western poetry could be considered terse and compressed.

Gulls shriek loudly, “Welcome sun!”
Roiling timpani crash and rumble.
Turquoise madrigals whisper on sand,
A new day’s symphony begins.