Poetry

[furious]

I assume some people of this community write poetry. I would like to know some tips people have to help me write poetry. When I write poetry I have a hard time making it all flow together. I am after trips on meter rather than rhyme. I would share some poetry with you but it is too embarrassing.

If others would like to share poetry they have written that would be great.

 

[PlaceofDis]

poetry is my passion, my love.

there are many, many different ideas in which one can go about writing poetry. if you're going for structure, Meter and Rhyme and such, you're best bet would probably be to study some Tennyson and similar writers since they are, imo, the masters of such tools.

i personally write in basic free-form poetry. its highly unstructured for the most part, but i think you could find a certain rhythmic quality in the underlying base of any given poem, and some more so than others.

my best advice, is to write, a lot. and don't expect them all to be stellar, but practice helps. write five poems in a week. that weekend pick your favorite. throughout the week, read it aloud to yourself, make notes on what you like, don't like and what you think you need to and want to improve upon. come back one week again after that or a few days later, and take a fresh approach on re-working it. i know this is a long and drawn out approach, but it really does help you criticize and evaluate your own work.

if you ever want to talk or have questions about poetry (this goes for anyone) feel free to im/pm/email me anytime.

oh and you can read some of my stuff here

 

[furious]

Thanks for the great advice.

I will try to find some of Tennysons work.

Fresh(er) Air Kills

its May, and the waters of April have dried up, so lets dance
in the smoke of the barbeques, re-aligning our orbits in the summer

That is great. It is just starting Winter here in the southern hemisphere. But don't worry we still have bbq's.

 

[MongoTheGeek]

Practice. Read poetry but most importantly write it. Anything, limericks, cinquines, haiku, epic poems.

not mine but...

There once was a gas man named Peter,
Who one day while reading the meter,
Lit up a match,
Which set off a flash,
And as anyone can see by reading this poem also completely destroyed the meter.

 

[shecky]

check out Understanding Poetry, by Dr. J. Evans Pritchard, Ph.D.

To fully understand poetry, we must first be fluent with its meter, rhyme, and figures of speech. Then ask two questions: One, how artfully has the objective of the poem been rendered, and two, how important is that objective. Question one rates the poem's perfection, question two rates its importance. And once these questions have been answered, determining a poem's greatest becomes a relatively simple matter.

If the poem's score for perfection is plotted along the horizontal of a graph, and its importance is plotted on the vertical, then calculating the total area of the poem yields the measure of its greatness.

A sonnet by Byron may score high on the vertical, but only average on the
horizontal. A Shakespearean sonnet, on the other hand, would score high both horizontally and vertically, yielding a massive total area, thereby revealing the poem to be truly great. As you proceed through the poetry in this book, practice this rating method. As your ability to evaluate poems in this matter grows, so will - so will your enjoyment and understanding of poetry.

 

[MongoTheGeek]

check out Understanding Poetry, by Dr. J. Evans Pritchard, Ph.D.

Wow. I had an english teacher in HS who had us stand up on his desk. It was for public speaking. 2 years later the movie came out.

 

[kristiano]

check out Understanding Poetry, by Dr. J. Evans Pritchard, Ph.D.

To fully understand poetry, we must first be fluent with its meter, rhyme, and figures of speech. Then ask two questions: One, how artfully has the objective of the poem been rendered, and two, how important is that objective. Question one rates the poem's perfection, question two rates its importance. And once these questions have been answered, determining a poem's greatest becomes a relatively simple matter.

If the poem's score for perfection is plotted along the horizontal of a graph, and its importance is plotted on the vertical, then calculating the total area of the poem yields the measure of its greatness.

A sonnet by Byron may score high on the vertical, but only average on the
horizontal. A Shakespearean sonnet, on the other hand, would score high both horizontally and vertically, yielding a massive total area, thereby revealing the poem to be truly great. As you proceed through the poetry in this book, practice this rating method. As your ability to evaluate poems in this matter grows, so will - so will your enjoyment and understanding of poetry.

Haha! Dead Poet's Society

 

[furious]

check out Understanding Poetry, by Dr. J. Evans Pritchard, Ph.D.

To fully understand poetry, we must first be fluent with its meter, rhyme, and figures of speech. Then ask two questions: One, how artfully has the objective of the poem been rendered, and two, how important is that objective. Question one rates the poem's perfection, question two rates its importance. And once these questions have been answered, determining a poem's greatest becomes a relatively simple matter.

If the poem's score for perfection is plotted along the horizontal of a graph, and its importance is plotted on the vertical, then calculating the total area of the poem yields the measure of its greatness.

A sonnet by Byron may score high on the vertical, but only average on the
horizontal. A Shakespearean sonnet, on the other hand, would score high both horizontally and vertically, yielding a massive total area, thereby revealing the poem to be truly great. As you proceed through the poetry in this book, practice this rating method. As your ability to evaluate poems in this matter grows, so will - so will your enjoyment and understanding of poetry.

that is so Dead Poets Society

ok, here is my favourite poem I have written.

Inner strength

What
What
What
Pardon
Ok, what I said was think happy thoughts, live happy lives
Manners, passions of great men (men a generic term for homo sapiens)
Bicycle, a child’s first taste of freedom
Reading, a child’s first taste of the struggle
Darkness, a child’s first taste of the unknown
The playground, a child’s first taste of love, dislike, and fear of the bigger kid who smells like garbage.
The bigger kid who smells like garbage, a child’s first taste of the tender touch of the school nurse and her perfume.
A child’s first crush, their first taste if the crushing blows only a human can deliver.
The unrelenting pain of a broken heart.
However, . . . a child is also strong!
The first time they fall off that bike.
The bike that offers them so much freedom.
They get right back on.
The scraped knee only a mother’s worry.
The six stitches form that axe you were not meant to be using but you were.
The coolest dam thing to happen to this quiet neighbourhood since Jimmy for number 35 ate! A ladybug.
You felt like a celebrity
The celebrities you know worship
You buy their perfume, their clothes, their magazines, there dream lives.
You may be six feet tall, strong jaw line, broad shoulders, a sex machine.
Dude! Stop kidding yourself.


To me I am trying to achieve to many goals. Never quiet getting even close to achieving one of them.

Critique.

 

[PlaceofDis]

furious, you're off to a good start.

the first thing i notice is that in the first for lines, just have two words, which is fine, but why are the being repeated, what sort of inflections should i get from them? are they a question, or a stammer, an exclamation? try to give a bit more clues for your reader, ellipses and punctuation go a long way. you have a lot of repetition, but i feel its unnecessary in some ways. try to whittle away the dead parts of the poem. do you need all the 'thes' and other parts of speech that are necessary in normal formal language?

like i said, its a good start. but i just see a lot of things that could be removed to help focus the poem and make it sharper.

 

[furious]

I have got to spend more time writing poems. At the moment I don't give myself the time. I will use your suggestions to try to make the poem more clear.

It comes form my nephew who is only two. He says what a lot so I was trying to teach him some manners. While I was doing this it reminded my how fun children's lives are. All the new experiences good and bad. Most of it is true the ladybug the nurse

 

[SamIchi]

I tooks a couple classes in Poetry the last semester, ans what I've learned is that you gotta just write. Don't worry about the meter or rhyme and just free form it. The concept, the idea you are trying to convey within a poem is the important part, if you get caught up about structure it won't have the feeling and passion poetry is supposed to have.

Poems can have hundreds of revisions till it's good and some are just good the way they are.

 

[macmama]

Hi furious,

Writing can be so solitary – one of its appeals, no doubt – but I really like working collaboratively with other authors. Does your community or school offer any creative writing workshops or classes? I find it invaluable to get feedback from an objective reader, since often we're too "close" to tell if what we're trying to communicate is coming across.

And you've gotten great advice so far: write and read a LOT. What is it about certainly poets that appeals to you? You might try imitating their style as an exercise (though I'm not trying to suggest you don't find your own, of course).

It's a labor of love. Have fun!

 

[thedude110]

I have got to spend more time writing poems.

Maybe. I mean, if you want to write, you have to write.

But I'd say that to be writing well you need to be reading. All the time. The best advice I ever got when I started out as a "poet" was to apprentice myself -- to find one poet I really loved and to read that poet, to imitate that poet, to try, over and over, to do what that poet does/did. But to always make sure I was reading a lot more than I was writing.

For me, that poet was Wallace Stevens. I got my voice from Stevens. I got my understanding of metaphor, structure and balance from Stevens. As time went on, I undertook new apprenticeships -- Frank O'Hara, Hannah Weiner, Ron Silliman, Jennifer Moxley. All these wonderful people to try to become while trying to become myself, too.

When I'm writing (and I'm not writing right now), everything is poetry. Everything in the world is ready to be stolen. Poets are the best readers and the best thieves.

Such that:

Nobody should experience anything they don’t need to, if they don’t need poetry bully for them. I like the movies too. And after all, only Whitman and Crane and Williams, of the American poets, are better than the movies. As for measure and other technical apparatus, that’s just common sense: if you’re going to buy a pair of pants you want them to be tight enough so everyone will want to go to bed with you. There’s nothing metaphysical about it. Unless, of course, you flatter yourself into thinking that what you’re experiencing is "yearning."

 

[66217]

As many have said, just write. It doesn't matter if it sounds bad, or if it seems illogical. With time it will start getting better and better.

I like writing, not for business or money, just as a way of, mmmm, I can't really explain it, it is just that I feel good when I write.

I like writing poetry above all, but currently I am writing a story. The sad part is that I have realized it is just so alike with the Lord of the Rings. Obviously not even near in content. Maybe one day, maybe.

 

[furious]

Thank you all for the advice.

I like performance poetry. Poets like Rives. Here is an example of his 'Dirty Talk'.

A better example of his is 'kite'.

 

[iMacZealot]

Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet
And what a big tuffet she had.
So if you're feeling insecure
Just stand next to her
And then you won't feel quite so bad.​

 

[furious]

I have started to write a new poem about an experience I had.

The fridge hit a cover drive and it was great

I was eating smarties and jaffas
Throwing them in the air and catching them in my mouth
Succeeding many times
Until one time when I didn’t
The fridge hit a cover drive
And it was great

The finished poem.

The fridge hit a cover drive and it was great

I was eating smarties and jaffas
Throwing them in the air and catching them in my mouth
Succeeding many times
Until one time when I didn’t
The fridge hit a cover drive
In addition, it was great

My fingers are all tinged red from the jaffas,
Blue, green, and purple from the smarties
And of cause my natural skin colour which is pale cream
In addition, extra colours from work like purple scars and red fresh cuts

Back to the story
I throw this particular jaffa into the air
It went quite high
On its journey down to meet my mouth
It happened to take a short detour
This meant it missed my mouth
Ultimately ending with
The fridge hit a cover drive
In addition, it was great

Now! This particular jaffa was not special
Or different
It was the same size; shape, colour as any other jaffa you my come across in your travels
Though it did happen to have a mind of it’s own
I believe it took this detour to find itself
Ending in
The fridge hit a cover drive
In addition, it was great

The fridge in question is also similar to every fridge you come across in people’s kitchens
White, two doors, six or so feet tall lots of notes and paraphernalia upon its front
Looking rather happy to survey its kingdom the kitchen
Until
The fridge hit a cover drive
In addition, it was great

Now the cover drive, which was so great
The fridge did not move a muscle
The jaffa did all the work
The jaffa came off the middle
Into a gap in my defence
Go THE RED!
Four!
The fridge hit a cover drive . . . it went for four

Jaffa

Cricket

Cover drive