Poets can write quite well without knowing a single poetic technique, and the reason rests on that key word, “knowing.” Well-written poems often occur, not by accident or by design, but by instinct. In other words, poets frequently feel their way into a poem, writing intuitively and artistically without even knowing the name of the technique they used and without the training needed to use that technique again on purpose.
This topic will surely come up again too, but for now, remember:
Studying poetry gives you the names of techniques you use instinctively.
Once you know the name, you can call on that technique as you revise.
Some poets are just “naturals.” Even if they have never studied poetry or have rarely read a poem, they have an innate ability to write creatively or express themselves well. This can stem from prior training in a related area such as art or music, but more often a “natural” poet has one or more natural, God-given talents. For example, you might have:
• Artistic vision – a “poetic eye” for noticing beauty, horror, pathos, hope, unique details, or subtle connections that other people miss.
• Musicality – a “poetic ear” for rhythm or the lingering echo of similar sounds wafting within a line or two.
• Curiosity – a nose for the newsworthy, a knack for knowing what might appeal to your readers or an interest in investigating, researching, and checking out the extraordinary but also the ordinary, taking nothing for granted but staying open, finding out.
• Insight – a “poetic feel” for finding deeper meaning, discerning what matters, or being aware of the long-lasting value lying, unnoticed, beneath the surface.
• Wit or humor – an ability to connect this with that or to make a connection when no apparent relationship or similarity seems to exist.
• Emotional awareness – a sensory faculty for knowing where you’re coming from and what touches or moves you but also other people as well.
If you want to use poetic techniques on purpose as you write or, more likely, as you revise your work, give yourself and your poems an after-Christmas gift of Poetry: Taking Its Course. If you would like to have your copy autographed, be sure to say so. And have a happy New Year filled with new poems that you happily revise with poetic purpose and style.
The Poetry Editor
Monday, December 27, 2010
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Rhyme, rhythm, reality: traditional English verse
As holidays make the rounds again, most of us reach toward the familiar ring of tradition before that circle passes by for another year. Somewhere in the rounds, poetry holds a special place of honor with holiday patterns of rhyme and rhythm, for example, in hymn lyrics, carols, Christmas bedtime stories, and those favorite nursery rhymes that go over the rivers and into the woods to find Grandma’s idyllic house among the oaks and pines. But stop! Grandma not only lives in a condo near the strip mall where she works, she will seriously chastise you if you call her Granny.
Despite such deterrents, some of us just want to go back. Some of us still want poetry that chimes each line’s end with the regular beat of our own hearts. Some of us cling to old traditions, but more likely, we simply do not want to throw out the customs, practices, or convictions of many, many hundreds of years of traditional English verse. Maybe we like repetition and meter. Maybe we hold sentiments even though we do not want our poems to be sentimental. Maybe we don’t want our writing to be ritualized but want it to be real.
So how do we keep old patterns yet adapt them realistically to contemporary poetry? First we need to hear the rhythm that pulsed within our ancient English predecessors. Usually this could be counted as regular thumps of four beats per line with a slight pause or caesura mid-way. On either side of that mini-break stretched vowels with fairly equal waves of sound. In addition, alliteration echoed the consonants from line to line, turning up the volume and making each poem more memorable – a particularly important technique since pen and paper had not yet confined poems to silence on the written page.
Those patterns of Old English verse still provide a fun form for practicing poetry writing. But language developed, and so did sophisticated, sometimes highly intricate, patterns of end-line rhyme. The rhythmic rap changed somewhat, too, as iambic pentameter became the popular choice of poets and readers. Why? Practicalities! Each line of approximately ten syllables nicely fit the width of the page and also the natural breath of the reader.
To break down that line-break even more: Pentameter = the Latin word penta (meaning five) + meter (measure) of iambic feet. These feet do not make a yardstick, but they’re just as basic. i.e., An iamb is two syllables with emphasis placed on the second syllable, which makes the iambic foot upbeat. The next most popular foot, a trochee, also has two syllables but with the accent first, and it’s downhill from there. So a trochee is downbeat. Poems can be written in trochees, of course, but usually a trochaic foot steps into a line of iambic pentameter to bring a little jazz step – a variation that does not lose the beat.
Once you know this basic two-step dance of poetry, it’s as though you’ve learned a new language or discovered how to fly, and you feel like your poems can do anything! You can rhyme or not. You can devise a mid-line rhyme scheme or begin lines with rhyme or substitute slant rhyme in a Shakespearean sonnet pattern. Yes, your poems might draw from another time, but absorbed by sound and beauty, you’ll find lively ways to adapt old traditions to your renewed voice and perhaps step into a unique place in poetic history.
Despite such deterrents, some of us just want to go back. Some of us still want poetry that chimes each line’s end with the regular beat of our own hearts. Some of us cling to old traditions, but more likely, we simply do not want to throw out the customs, practices, or convictions of many, many hundreds of years of traditional English verse. Maybe we like repetition and meter. Maybe we hold sentiments even though we do not want our poems to be sentimental. Maybe we don’t want our writing to be ritualized but want it to be real.
So how do we keep old patterns yet adapt them realistically to contemporary poetry? First we need to hear the rhythm that pulsed within our ancient English predecessors. Usually this could be counted as regular thumps of four beats per line with a slight pause or caesura mid-way. On either side of that mini-break stretched vowels with fairly equal waves of sound. In addition, alliteration echoed the consonants from line to line, turning up the volume and making each poem more memorable – a particularly important technique since pen and paper had not yet confined poems to silence on the written page.
Those patterns of Old English verse still provide a fun form for practicing poetry writing. But language developed, and so did sophisticated, sometimes highly intricate, patterns of end-line rhyme. The rhythmic rap changed somewhat, too, as iambic pentameter became the popular choice of poets and readers. Why? Practicalities! Each line of approximately ten syllables nicely fit the width of the page and also the natural breath of the reader.
To break down that line-break even more: Pentameter = the Latin word penta (meaning five) + meter (measure) of iambic feet. These feet do not make a yardstick, but they’re just as basic. i.e., An iamb is two syllables with emphasis placed on the second syllable, which makes the iambic foot upbeat. The next most popular foot, a trochee, also has two syllables but with the accent first, and it’s downhill from there. So a trochee is downbeat. Poems can be written in trochees, of course, but usually a trochaic foot steps into a line of iambic pentameter to bring a little jazz step – a variation that does not lose the beat.
Once you know this basic two-step dance of poetry, it’s as though you’ve learned a new language or discovered how to fly, and you feel like your poems can do anything! You can rhyme or not. You can devise a mid-line rhyme scheme or begin lines with rhyme or substitute slant rhyme in a Shakespearean sonnet pattern. Yes, your poems might draw from another time, but absorbed by sound and beauty, you’ll find lively ways to adapt old traditions to your renewed voice and perhaps step into a unique place in poetic history.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Be your best poetry editor. Trust your judgment.
Trusting yourself to know what needs “tweaking” as you revise, admittedly, takes time and practice, but eventually you can become your own best poetry editor. To move this process along and attune your poetic ear:
Learn about poetry terminology and techniques. (You’ll find this information in Poetry: Taking Its Course.)
Read poetry journals, anthologies, and books of poems by established poets.
Write poems – many poems!
Do not edit or revise as you write. Just go with the flow.
Let your poems sit until you’ve forgotten them a bit.
Read your work aloud as you revise.
Listen to the poem.
Notice anything you do or do not like.
Believe yourself!
Trust your judgment.
Since I wanted to talk about the latter, I made an exception in accepting the poem below for an online critique. Usually, the free online critique offered to Followers of The Poetry Editor blog is for a single poem of 25 lines or less, and this went over that. What caught my attention, however, was a personal comment from the poet that I needed to include to show you what I mean about trusting your own judgment.
My Father's plant stand
by Rona Laban
I wonder who's house it's in now
what corner it's relegated to
Is it holding a plant
like intended?
but then It was intended for me
My father so proud of it
telling the story
of how he had acquired it
for her, for my mother
I left it there in the apartment
When i flew down to get him
just bringing back what i could fit
in the empty suitcase
shirts, pants, shorts
the ones with stains left in a pile on the closet floor
I brought him back to the apartment one last time
to make sure i didn't leave anything important behind
He didn't mention the plant stand then
or even look back as we left
even though he must have known
he would never return
There was nothing left, no one
wife number three, the love of his life, dead now too
I might have thought of that plant stand
once or twice before
but today walking through that store
having just found the perfect terracotta pot
for the one remaining plant
someone had sent when he died
I saw it
I saw the small plant table
black, plain wood
not ornately etched beautiful
like the one my father had bought
for my mother
and it hit me
how badly i wanted that plant stand now
(Comment from poet: original last 2 paragraphs that I thought too wordy but for some reason liked how the ending flowed better….)
I might have thought of that plant stand
once or twice before
but today walking through that store
with a ceramic pot for the one remaining plant
that someone had sent when he died
having just found the perfect terracotta, mexican clay pot
tastefully adorned that i would place under the mirror
on the glass table in the dining room
I saw the small plant table
black, plain wood
not ornately etched beautiful
like the one my father had bought
for my mother
and it hit me
how badly i wanted that plant stand now
In discussing this poem, we could talk about the visual effects, the emotional honesty, and the conversational style that make the poem highly accessible to readers, thus giving “reader appeal.” Or we could talk about “negative” aspects, such as consistency. (For instance, use a capital I or not, but either way, be consistent.) We could talk about compression – saying as much as possible in as few words as possible, or we could talk about the difference between possessive case and contractions. (“Who’s” is a contraction of “Who is,” while “whose” denotes ownership.)
Such considerations can help to guide you as you revise, but what I want to emphasize here is how the poet knew which ending she liked best.
As we read our poems aloud, most of us do know what works and what does not. The problem is, we often do not believe ourselves!
Rona, your poetic instincts served you well. The last two verses do have the best flow and yet included the most important aspects of the poem and story.
What I suggest is that you keep the first and last two verses then put the poem aside while you work on something else. When you go back later to revise, read those three verses aloud – first noting how you feel. Then read aloud again, noticing the syntax (sentence structure) or clarity, rhythm or musicality, sound echoes or alliteration, and the overall impression.
With those thoughts in mind now, for example, a revision might go like this:
I wonder whose house it's in now –
what corner it's relegated to.
Is it holding a plant as intended?
But then it was intended for me –
my father so proud of it,
telling me the story
of how he had acquired it for her, my mother.
I left it in the apartment.
I might have thought of that plant stand
once or twice before,
but today, walking through a store, holding
a ceramic pot for the one remaining plant
someone had sent me when he died
and having found the perfect terracotta, Mexican clay pot
tastefully adorned to go below
the glasstop table in the dining room,
I saw it. I saw a small plant table –
black, plain wood,
not ornately etched
or as beautiful as the one
my father had bought for my mother,
and it hit me
how badly I wanted that plant stand now.
That might be the final draft or not, Rona. It’s your poem and up to you, but I like this version, which says a lot in fewer lines. Although it omits some information leading up to your father’s death, readers can fill in the blanks, which makes it more personal, becoming their poem too.
As we identify strengths and weaknesses in our poems, we begin to see how to play them up or down. We begin to accentuate what works and eliminate what does not. It’s as simple as that, but, no, it’s not always easy.
If you need help identifying a problem or knowing what to do to correct it, visit The Poetry Editor website, check out the information and options, then considering getting a critique of any number of poems at any length. Not only does this feedback help your work at hand, but your yet-to-be-written poems can benefit from a professional critique too. By receiving objective criticism, encouragement, and practical suggestions for improvement, you learn to recognize your own poetry writing strengths and better trust your poetic instincts as you revise.
Learn about poetry terminology and techniques. (You’ll find this information in Poetry: Taking Its Course.)
Read poetry journals, anthologies, and books of poems by established poets.
Write poems – many poems!
Do not edit or revise as you write. Just go with the flow.
Let your poems sit until you’ve forgotten them a bit.
Read your work aloud as you revise.
Listen to the poem.
Notice anything you do or do not like.
Believe yourself!
Trust your judgment.
Since I wanted to talk about the latter, I made an exception in accepting the poem below for an online critique. Usually, the free online critique offered to Followers of The Poetry Editor blog is for a single poem of 25 lines or less, and this went over that. What caught my attention, however, was a personal comment from the poet that I needed to include to show you what I mean about trusting your own judgment.
My Father's plant stand
by Rona Laban
I wonder who's house it's in now
what corner it's relegated to
Is it holding a plant
like intended?
but then It was intended for me
My father so proud of it
telling the story
of how he had acquired it
for her, for my mother
I left it there in the apartment
When i flew down to get him
just bringing back what i could fit
in the empty suitcase
shirts, pants, shorts
the ones with stains left in a pile on the closet floor
I brought him back to the apartment one last time
to make sure i didn't leave anything important behind
He didn't mention the plant stand then
or even look back as we left
even though he must have known
he would never return
There was nothing left, no one
wife number three, the love of his life, dead now too
I might have thought of that plant stand
once or twice before
but today walking through that store
having just found the perfect terracotta pot
for the one remaining plant
someone had sent when he died
I saw it
I saw the small plant table
black, plain wood
not ornately etched beautiful
like the one my father had bought
for my mother
and it hit me
how badly i wanted that plant stand now
(Comment from poet: original last 2 paragraphs that I thought too wordy but for some reason liked how the ending flowed better….)
I might have thought of that plant stand
once or twice before
but today walking through that store
with a ceramic pot for the one remaining plant
that someone had sent when he died
having just found the perfect terracotta, mexican clay pot
tastefully adorned that i would place under the mirror
on the glass table in the dining room
I saw the small plant table
black, plain wood
not ornately etched beautiful
like the one my father had bought
for my mother
and it hit me
how badly i wanted that plant stand now
In discussing this poem, we could talk about the visual effects, the emotional honesty, and the conversational style that make the poem highly accessible to readers, thus giving “reader appeal.” Or we could talk about “negative” aspects, such as consistency. (For instance, use a capital I or not, but either way, be consistent.) We could talk about compression – saying as much as possible in as few words as possible, or we could talk about the difference between possessive case and contractions. (“Who’s” is a contraction of “Who is,” while “whose” denotes ownership.)
Such considerations can help to guide you as you revise, but what I want to emphasize here is how the poet knew which ending she liked best.
As we read our poems aloud, most of us do know what works and what does not. The problem is, we often do not believe ourselves!
Rona, your poetic instincts served you well. The last two verses do have the best flow and yet included the most important aspects of the poem and story.
What I suggest is that you keep the first and last two verses then put the poem aside while you work on something else. When you go back later to revise, read those three verses aloud – first noting how you feel. Then read aloud again, noticing the syntax (sentence structure) or clarity, rhythm or musicality, sound echoes or alliteration, and the overall impression.
With those thoughts in mind now, for example, a revision might go like this:
I wonder whose house it's in now –
what corner it's relegated to.
Is it holding a plant as intended?
But then it was intended for me –
my father so proud of it,
telling me the story
of how he had acquired it for her, my mother.
I left it in the apartment.
I might have thought of that plant stand
once or twice before,
but today, walking through a store, holding
a ceramic pot for the one remaining plant
someone had sent me when he died
and having found the perfect terracotta, Mexican clay pot
tastefully adorned to go below
the glasstop table in the dining room,
I saw it. I saw a small plant table –
black, plain wood,
not ornately etched
or as beautiful as the one
my father had bought for my mother,
and it hit me
how badly I wanted that plant stand now.
That might be the final draft or not, Rona. It’s your poem and up to you, but I like this version, which says a lot in fewer lines. Although it omits some information leading up to your father’s death, readers can fill in the blanks, which makes it more personal, becoming their poem too.
As we identify strengths and weaknesses in our poems, we begin to see how to play them up or down. We begin to accentuate what works and eliminate what does not. It’s as simple as that, but, no, it’s not always easy.
If you need help identifying a problem or knowing what to do to correct it, visit The Poetry Editor website, check out the information and options, then considering getting a critique of any number of poems at any length. Not only does this feedback help your work at hand, but your yet-to-be-written poems can benefit from a professional critique too. By receiving objective criticism, encouragement, and practical suggestions for improvement, you learn to recognize your own poetry writing strengths and better trust your poetic instincts as you revise.
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