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I have been noticing a few things on this page. My poetry in itself is not great and there are others out there who are a billion times better so I am not saying this to boost myself. What I have been noticing is instead of leaving poetry as is, we are starting to "decorate" it as we do our houses on Christmas. Put on some lights, add a specific meter, place Santa in the front yard and then the neighbors will stop by and look. I always though poetry was what came from your soul. I didn't realize poetry was about a guy/girl sitting their thinking too much and writing so little , maybe counting syllables on one hand, while the other is slowly tapping the pencil. Instead of it being about waking up one morning and the words pour out of your soul and there is no rhyme, there is no meter. Syllables, what are those? All that matters is I must pen my soul. Honestly, I am losing my love for poetry. I like reading stuff by Nikki Giovanni and sorts like that, but now it seems I am being forced to view them differently, because they know no meter, syllable, rhyme, just soul. What do you think? And if you feel the need to be rude that is fine, but I will tell you the same thing I tell my children, if you can't show respect for others, it shows others you do not respect yourself.
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Farthest from rudeness, what a wealth of content that will give!
However I doubt I should be writing this to you at all. Please feel free to ignore it, and me. I'll be brief.
Wonderful resource when it flows like that. Mine does too, but arrives now, ready-made. Rhymed, often more metric than not, and no one told me I had to do it that way. It just comes. I certainly will not tell you what to do. I have been at this since I was a kid before the early 1940's long before the school tried to show me how it's done. Attitude? (Their feet had wooden legs.) I understand why you feel as you do.
I hope you will save and experiment from your "rough drafts." Keep them. Please bear that in mind: what I say is not intended for immediate change, or even EVER, but to set out future possibilities.
I have read a novel like that, with full use of metaphor and unconscious rhythms exactly where it fits with an inevitability that is felt, not thought and thus belongs also in prose. (If I could remember the author I'd give it here.)
If lucky, it can be presented as free verse (once you know what it needs technically to be presented well) with relatively little other change. Much recommended at least to attempt from time to time.
It can also, with metric editing--indeed improving its focus and clarity-- become formal verse. Don't count on it, and DO NOT force it! Not to say that it must, but with experience in the attempt, I can see potential for continuing growth through many years. We all have a lifetime.
Just for the record, you make a good point about decoration, all manner of colourful distraction as if to say Look at the ART!
A beautiful poem decorates the mind of the reader, even if black text on white, needing nothing more.
Good luck to you.
I will be watching for your name.
Terry -
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Excellent response.
I'm a free verse poet that keeps trying to write a good sonnet, or a villanelle. The more I try to write within the forms, the better I write without them. I've heard that the mind hears best in pentameter. I believe it.
I think its the currently popular prosey poetry about nothing much that has reduced the art and readership of poetry of late. Plenty of free verse poets utilize poetic device very well; devoide of device, its just poor prose with odd line breaks. -
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Thank you.
I agree completely.
.
Integrity of a poem, in any form
--or not-- needs its birth without
the application of force to conform
to alien metric demands. No doubt
this advice will seem to misinform
and infuriate the purists who shout
"she's no poet," defying the norm.
At my age it doesn't matter anymore.
I create own forms not seen before.
Terry -
I have to confess the sonnets and villanelles are so much more work for me and I am intimated by them. I am more of a freeform poet, though sometimes I do lapse into rhyme. I am one of those "girls who want to have fun", as Cyndi Lauper used to say. Poetry is enjoyable for me and, if it's forced, I just don't do it.
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poetry
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Misskaoz, you express what so many people say, and have been saying for ages. If you must "pen your soul", you're probably overdoing things, but, cooling things a bit, remember Wordsworth talked about "emotion recollected in tranquillity"! These are significant words, especially the "tranquillity".
I have been thinking lately about Chinese characters, and how they can be very beautiful individually and have meaning and significance by themselves, but carry so very much more information when paired. Thus, for example, "k'ou t'ou" (bang the head) is a sign of subservience which reflects a whole state of society. Some Chinese (and Japanese and other Eastasian languages) terms are only properly used to a superior, an inferior, or even only the Emperor himself.
Something of the same can be thought of as applying in English, and in particular to poetry, which depends so much on word combinations, And these combinations must be thought about very carefully, in order to maximise their effect. If you don't do this, your outpourings, however sincere, will lack the intensity you would have liked to have given them.
Rhyme, rhythm and all the various devices to which pedants have given names are all helpful in achieving this, although not essential. But good poetry (especially GOOD free verse poetry) is very difficult to write, and finding it, the proverbial needle in a haystack, also requires a special skill and a very special sort of magnet! -
poets once hoodwinked their way into being the unacknowledged legislators of the world
what a farce. i want to go up to that dude in american beauty who video taped the bag being twirled by the wind - he gets sappy! choked up! - and dash the video camera from his hands and be like, dude! it's just a bag!
words on a page. words on a page -
I may as well quote yet once more
"To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." -
some of us do have those feelings with certain poetry. On the other hand, a lot of people find poetry insignificant or even scary. They don't want to give it any attention.
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Being a would-be poet who utilizes form, rhyme, and meter almost exclusively in my work, I am distressed by those who claim that using those devices means that I have given in to the establishment and chained myself by not allowing it to be "free," or that my poetry can not possibly come from my soul because I've crammed it into a metered box.
For my part, the beauty is to be found in structure, even slight -- not pure chaos.
However, everyone is different. My mind finds more beauty in rhythmic poetry, probably because of my musical background for which rhythm is the lifeblood. I can't sing well if I ain't got no rhythm.
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Total agreement!
My Muse
But remember this in quoting "that
my poetry cannot possibly come from
my soul because I've crammed it into
a metered box." My Muse attacked:
Consider errant words as merely dumb!
A Muse decrees what older poets do.
An Ancient Muse has used it through
millennia before, and now as automat
with minimum of stress in cerebrum
of modern scribe, sans even how'dyedo
or effort can outdo, within format,
sending sonnets smooth-sailing to you.
Terry
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I think it's all too often the case that unstructured verse is only a cop-out for people who just can't cope with structure and rhyme. If you're good enough, verse forms and rhymes intensify content. Have another look at Alexander Pope for the real poetic sneer, for example.
"But in the course of one revolving moon
Was statesman, chymist, fiddler - and buffoon."
Even in Walt Whitman, can you find poetry of any real intensity? -
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My point was more along the lines of someone calling this poetry
I am happy with glee
because the sun shines on me
It rhymes, so it's a form. Right? Shrugs. I guess it is all just opinion more than anything because I find my self guffawing at some poetry others love and tearing up at some poetry others hate.
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How free is a would be musician to express the 'freedom of his soul' if he has yet to master the scales? Knowledge and discipline in one's craft extends the souls capacitiy to express itself, and poetry is a discipline and craft with demands upon study, practice, effort and reflection as any other.
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rhetorical question
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sounds good
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Oh, if ever I could sing, I would stop writing poetry. :-) No matter how much I learn about music and singing, I have never been able to sing nor will I ever be, just do not possess the talent. I guess my point was that knowing the knowledge of poetry will not necessarily make you any better , just depends on varying factors such as talent and ability to learn and apply. Also depends on how well you can portray certain emotions into a poem. At least this is what I hear, I have had people cry over poetry that I wasn't even feeling sad when I was writing, so maybe that is opinion as well. Not even trying to say I am a good poet by the way. I love my own of course, but I am pretty sure others may not feel the same. Though I do like the way you compared poetry to music, it has a certain ring to in.
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I, for the most part, write rhyming and persona poems, but it isn't a sort of forced thing I just have that tendency to write that way. I for the most part have to force myself to write free verse and can't write it worth a damn lol. My point being I think that certain types of form poetry can just naturally come to you and be an expression of your soul and/or emotions.
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A soul without craft is as free to express itself as a deaf amputee is to dance.
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Soul, meter and rhyme are words used to describe metaphorical boxes. Writing comes out as a person feels it, flowing from your brain through your entire body until it reaches your hands. I don't believe poetry has gotten better or worse, but with so many people writing now it has evolved so much. People are creating new styles everyday, most of them fun and challenging to conform to, It's that, "box" that makes poetry all the greater. Conforming your soul into rhyme or meter.
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I did just want to mention I was not criticizing anyone's way of writing. Just expressing an opinion.
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"It rhymes, so it's a form" MUST be an egregious non sequitur.
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so this isn't a heron?
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Adding your reply:
Misskaoz
Oct 24 11:39 AM
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