Poetry Buffs?

rathma

Does anyone here know anything about poetry? I've got an idea but I don't know how to say it. Suggestions?

Loren Booda

Find meter for each moving line;

while rhyme might seem the sweeter,

the heart itself doth follow time.

-Loren Booda



(I have three poems on my website, below.)

Dagenais

http://teacher.scholastic.com/writewit/poetry/

I found that on a quick google search.

My opinion is that Poem's should flow, and have a structure to them (lines, stanzas).

When I write poems, they always rhyme, or I'd just write a story.

Most have good metaphors and deeper meanings.

zoobyshoe

To write a good rhyme you must dig
In that brain you keep under your wig,
And make sure your meter
Is bold, tight, and neater
Than the grunting produced by a pig.

cragwolf

Oppenheimer was working at Göttingen and the great mathematical physicist, Dirac, came to him one day and said: "Oppenheimer, they tell me you are writing poetry. I do not see how a man can work on the frontiers of physics and write poetry at the same time. They are in opposition. In science you want to say something that nobody knew before, in words which everyone can understand. In poetry you are bound to say something that everybody knows already, in words that nobody can understand."

[:D]

Loren Booda

Poetry manifests an equation

Yielding balanced, cogent persuasion,

But if you find yourself alone

You might avail RhymeZone.

motai

Be careful not to force the rhyme into the poem. When writing a poem, the scansion of the poem should add and not detract to the overall effect of the poem.

In poetry, words or stanzas must be in their right place. It should be detrimental if it is put in any other spot.

I could go on, but I gotta go right now.

Janitor

Loren, your avatar looks like a War-of-the-Worlds Martian invasion. What's up with that?

holly

Just write what you want to write, how you want to write it. Rhyme it if you like. Don't rhyme, if you like. Make a "shape poem." Maybe you'll come up with something really fresh.
* * * *

Loren Booda, by the way, your poem contains a "vowel rhyme" in the first and third lines. Blake did many such, as well as a fabulous number of "eye rhymes." Very sophisticated.

Loren Booda

Janitor,

For my avatar I borrowed a surrealist image cropped from Rene Magritte's "Voice of Space." The painting is more representative of dream than science fiction, though. You may have seen some of his works on rock album or book covers.

holly,

I believe the most famous "shape poem" is "The Mouse's Tale" by Lewis Carroll. Thanks for noticing my extra effort - a "vowel rhyme," eh? What is an "eye rhyme"? Your expertise indicates an English major; my attribution is an MS in physics.

My favorite poetry is that of Romanticism, the ultimate being "Kubla Khan" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He wrote the poem in an opiate haze but was interrupted, with only a entrancing fragment transcribed.

A great help for the Aspiring Poet is Roget's Thesaurus.

holly

L. Booda, an eye rhyme you will immediately recognize: Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright/in the forests of the night/What immortal hand or eye/Could frame thy fearful symmetry.

Blake. Of course, a body doesn't get angry in heaven, but I bet he gets a little tired of hearing people say "sym-me-TRI" all the time, trying to make it into an ear rhyme.

The very best suggestion I have for anyone wishing to write, wishing to break out of a rut, wishing to do something they love but are fearful about, wishing to break their chains, etc and etc, is a slim volume by Brenda Ueland, entitled "If You Want to Write." Fabulous advice by a very interesting and acutely intelligent person, a good-hearted person, and very sensible, too. Make yourselves go get it! Thank you.

Janitor

The only Magritte painting I can think of off the top of my head is the "This is not a pipe" one.

zoobyshoe

And yet, one should not distain the beatiful prose poem.
An example by ee cummings:

If I Love You

if i love you
(thickness means
worlds inhabited by roamingly
stern bright faeries

if you love
me) distance is mind carefully
luminous with innumerable gnomes
Of complete dream

if we love each (shyly)
other, what clouds do or
Silently Flowers resembles
beauty less than our breathing.

Poetry by ee cummings
Address:http://www-scf.usc.edu/~thier/ee/

Monique

Could you explain that, because I don't see it :(

Loren Booda

"line" and "time" - matching long i's with alliterating consonants, n and m?

holly

Yes, L. Booda, the "i's" but not the consonants, they don't come into play in the vowel rhyme. You cleverly added the alliterative sound to draw us further in...

Monique, try to say LINE and TIME without the Netherlandish accent, ha ha, you'll hear it!

Many poems contain internal vowel rhymes, too; adding to the feeling the poem is being almost perfectly woven -- is somehow fitting together just right -- but not detectable to those not on the alert for it.

Loren Booda

holly, is that avatar a wolverine or what?


Potential poets beware

The Poet's Market fare

They'll reel you in

With a promise to win

And leave you in despair.