The Guide; Part I: General Poetry Writing

I suppose you're right about the point of the post.

 

Hello..,

Some very good points here...
We question what constitutes poetry, and each person has a different answer. Each and every person would like to think their poetry is good, but on sites like this, there is going to be a lot of variation. I think when we look at a poem individually, the intent becomes very important. There are those poems written with the reader's enjoyment in mind and then there are those written simply for the purpose of expression. Although it can certainly be said that there are unoriginal poems, shallow poems, etc., I'm not sure anyone can call it "bad" unless it was meant to be. I think it would also be great to talk about what makes a poem good and how we can generate ideas. There must be a way to take ordinary thoughts or ideas and turn them into poetry.

With this discussion on the table, IMO it has become clear that it is more difficult than it sounds to define when grammar is necessary and when it is not. I am all for experimentation, whether it is with grammar or with other things, yet I do think there needs to be "rules". For example, most of the best types of music were at one time considered experimental. If someone had not had open ears and an open mind, we might not be enjoying the variety of music that is available to us today. I think "genre" is less important than quality. Even though there may be a difference in opinion, if something is indeed excellent, it can at least be respected if not enjoyed. But there is also a difference between the average and that which is truly great. Most of us will never be Shakespeares, but at least we can try! I agree with whoever it was who said (forgive me for not quoting it) that you need to know the rules of grammar in order to break them. I think this is an excellent point. It would benefit anyone who writes to learn as much as he/she can about the more mundane or technical aspects of writing; spelling, punctuation, grammar, syntax, structure, etc. Knowledge is power.

Although we may not always follow the rules, we must not forget the reason they were made in the first place. Some of the rules were made in order to regulate the things we are talking about right now. If everyone follows the same rules, it becomes much easier to see where a mistake has been made. I once got slammed on a poetry site for not capitalizing the beginning letters of each line. Some people simply did not understand why I had done this. This would be an example of a difference of opinion. Then, there are poems I have read where the punctuation and spelling are so atrocious that I could not enjoy the piece for what it could have been. Sometimes this is not even because the person cannot spell so much as because they did not take the time to correct their work. If it is a genuine mistake, we are here to help eachother and to comment on each poem individually. If you are a person who does your homework and has a solid technical base, it can be easy to come down on those who do not. I see these times as opportunities to help someone who is genuinely seeking the opinions of others. I think it is great that we can defy the laws of geography and come together with a common interest. So let's be kind to eachother..., we all have something to learn here!

soul-hugger

 

Amen. But I'd add "effectively" to the end of this very strong point.

 

Ok, I suppose I might as well wade in.

One problem with trying to define poetry is that there are no sharp boundaries. Some prose writers are particularly poetic, and some poets have written "prose poems". The genres blur into one another.

I would suggest that what makes something poetic (rather than necessarily poetry) is that words stand for more than their meanings. Some prose is very "dry" and literal, and this suits some styles and authors. But as soon as you start to worry about the sound of the words, the rhythms, the connotations, layers of meanings and so on then you are introducing poetic elements. If you ever find yourself at the point where you can't get at the real meaning of a piece of writing without taking those into account -- well, I can't tell you where you crossed the border, but you've crossed it and you're in poetry country now.

When I was doing lots close readings of poems for university assignments and exams, I kept a mental checklist of things to watch out for, working from the finest level to the broadest level. I can't remember the whole list now, but I started at the sounds -- alliteration, assonance, rhyme and so on. Then I looked at words: what sort of words are used (simple, short words? Long unusual words? Foreign sounding words?) Then on to phrases, looking for metaphors, then line breaks and sentence structures, structures within stanzas, structures across stanzas.

A key think in poetry (and a lot of other writing too) is "foregrounding". What elements are particularly brought to the reader's attention (by rhyme, alliteration, being the first or last word in the line, being repeated) and do the foregrounded elements reinforce or work against the plain meaning? Or are they irrelevant to it? That's a big part of the difference between great rhymed verse and doggerel, by the way. In Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade" we have "blundered", "thundered", "wonder'd" reinforcing the description of the military disaster. Compare with William McGonigal's "The Tay Bridge Disaster" or the average Hallmark card and there is no unifying significance to the rhyming words.

Poetic effects are not necessarily foregrounded, though. They can interact with the meaning in subtle ways. In Betjeman's "Summoned By Bells" there's a passage in which the tranquility of the English countryside is disturbed by the arrival of an early motor car. It took me a while to realise why this relaxed, easy reading piece was so effective. Then I realised that while all was tranquil, almost all of the consonants were soft -- m's and s's mimicing the buzzing of bees and chirp of crickets. When the car appears, there are suddenly lots of p's and k's, mimicking the noise of the engine and the cars mechanisms. You could read the passage countless times without noticing that -- I did! All you notice is that the passage is very evocative, without realising why. I don't know whether Betjeman did that consciously or whether it was simply the result of a very skilled "ear", but it's there, and in my opinion it's the sort of thing that lifts it from verse to poetry. You can't do that without writing a lot -- and you can't do it without reading even more. I'll say that again: I don't believe you can write poetry that it will be worth anybody else's time reading without reading -- critically reading -- a vast amount of good poetry yourself.

For me the various poetic devices are tools. You don't have to use any particular tool for a particular job: you don't have to rhyme, or have a metrical structure or a particular stanza structure or whatever. But if you get familiar with them then you will learn instinctively which one to reach for in a given situation, and your writing will be lifted from mere "prose with the line breaks in odd places" to something that engages the readers and draws them in. Will it be poetry? Who cares? it will be good writing.

 

A lot of very sound points here digitig.

What you are describing here is the difference between semantics and pragmatics. I find this a very valuable tool in poetry and prose. The difference between the literal and the inferred can speak volumes, especially if you have the ability to blur the two and/or play the literal against the inferred.

Very valid. What is the point of rhyme if it is purely a poetic check? A rhyme scheme is a valid poetic device, but assigning one which has no purpose is often pointless. Your example is a good one. The repetition of that sound is structurally strong, echoing the booms of cannon fire and providing robust symmetry of image in the poem.

You betcha Betjeman though about this when he was writing. This level of attention to detail, building layers of device onto others amounts to poetic weight. When reading a piece, I look for candidates for exlcusion as I believe if even a single syllable carries no or little weight in poetry it is a candidate for omission. If it has no weight, why is it there? Weight is achieved in various ways and Betjeman's example is a great one. Above the well-worked rhythm and evocative language we have the soporific effect of all those nasal sounds (/m/, /n/) and fricatives ([sh], and the soft [th]). These are interrupted crudely and intentionally by the motorcar and accompanying cavalcade of plosives (/k/, /g/, /t/, /d/). This is actually quite a common trick. Why? Because it's effective and unobtrusive.

Amen once more. Indeed the aspiring poet need not conform with any device or expectation, but as you say, the more familiar one is with these things the more easily natural placement of them will become. Conversely, keeping in mind that a poet need not employ any standard, he is likely to only best reject the more common ones if he/she knows what will be achieved by doing so. The old adage holds true: to best break the rules it pays to know them well.

Your final point about lifting a work from "prose with the line breaks in odd places" is also a very important one to me. Line breaks are again a device, one that has a power above the arbitrary and aesthetic. As you rightly hint, haphazard or arbitrary linebreaks, or those assigned thoughtlessly purely to achieve a poetic feel, rarely live up their potential. A line break placed with skill can control rhythm, control the reader and his interpretation through controlling his breathing, add silent beats to metre, introduce suspense and/or subversion, and for the really adventurous add aesthetic weight. In one piece I read, which sadly I forget now, the line and stanza breaks literally fenced in their subjects on the page, allowing that poem about subjugation to take on even greater meaning.

 

I think that every time I was given a poem for close reading at university, I found interesting connections between the sound of the words and the meaning of the poem. I hesitate to make that a rule of poetry (it could just as well be a reflection of what I or the university was expecting), but I really would advise aspiring poets to consider the sound of their poem, not just the meaning! Probably not a bad idea for all writers, I suppose.

 

-sonance is king. I've expriemented with structuring poems almost entirely around assonance, consonance and alliteration. Tough, but fun.

 

I've moved this thread to the Writing Issues area. It really makes more sense to have this under General Writing than in the Review Room. There has been some really good input here about the nature of poetry

Also, it removes te temptation for new members to post in this thread to try to get revviewing credits (yeah, it has happened on occasion).

The reason I haven't moved it before is that there is relevance to critiquing here. Although the argument can be made, and as been made, that there are no hard and fast rules to poetry, without some framework it is impossible to critique poetry.

If there are no elements that define poetry, then

is a poem, and so is

In fact, both of these are garbage generated at random. The first, random groupings of letters, the second, randomly chosen words.

There is little risk that anyone would claim the first as a legitimate poem, and yet someone might try to argue that the second is. I reject both.

So what really are the essential elements of poetry?

I'm not sure there is any one criterion that by itself is required. But I do believe that there must be at least one poetic element to define a piece of writing as a poem.

Possible candidate criteria are:
Rhyme (or other tonal devices)
Rhythm
Imagery
Structure (the arrangement of the words other than sequence or sentencial form).

Structure implies that the placement of line and verse breaks carries significance of its own. The acid test is that if you string the words end to end with only a uniform spacing to separate them, you alter or weaken the poem.

Many modern poems eschew traditional rhyme. Still, similar mechanisms like alliteration and consonance, or internal rhymes, still add a great deal to poetry. They add emphasis, and they add interest. They bind words or phrases together to link the corresponding meanings. Repetition serves a similar purpose, and can be included in this category.

Imagery can be as simple as a word choice that vividly paints an image in the reader's mind, like refering to fog as smoky, or it can be an extended metaphor running throughout the poem to equate a simple scene to the human condition. I personally place a high value on the role of strong imagery in poetry.

So these are key elements of poetry. They need not all be present, but I propose that at least one must be present in some degree. However, if someone sees another element, distinct from thes four, that can make a poem in the absence of these four, perhaps the list of elements can be extended.

 

You've mentioned "significance" in relation to structure, but I'm guessing that you regard it as relevant to the others. I certainly do -- I think that the lack of significance in the rhythm and the rhyme is significant in distinguishing doggerel from poetry.

The linguist Ronald Carter has identified a number of features of texts which he considers makes them "literary", and I think a lot of them move a text along the scale from prose towards poetry:

• Semantic Density: different linguistic levels working together to give an overall effect;
• Polysemy: openness to different interpretations;
• Independence from other media;
• Genre mixing;
• Displaced interaction: doesn't directly invite the reader to take specific actions such as buy a product; and
• Text patterning.

So I see your "text patterning" and raise you "semantic density"

 

The only definition that can encompass all poetry, regardless of personal tastes as far as thing like rhyme and rhythm go, is that with poetry, the poet controls where the line begins and ends. The obvious implication here is that structure is the defining aspect of a poem, and I think that's something I'd agree with, given that it's literally the only thing that distinguishes poetry from prose.

Obviously "poetic" has come to have very specific connotations, but as a descriptor of contemporary poetry it is woefully out of date.

 

Hmm. On the basis that in prose poems the writer has control but has chosen not to exercise that control?

 

There's a lot of debate about whether prose poetry actually counts as poetry, by both critics and writers. It depends on how you define poetry, but since most people's definition includes references to content, and therefore aren't universal, prose poetry is often included at the expense of weakening the strength of the definition.

Even poets like Sherwood Anderson, one of the most well-known writers of prose poetry, calls his work flash fiction. Most prose poetry draws equally on poetry and narrative prose, so its certainly a grey area. For instance, they may be instinctively classed as poetry because of the type of imagery or the rhythm, but draw on narrative conventions from long-form prose.

 

I’ve never understood why we have to mush things into the categories of “prose” and “poetry”. It seems to me that a lot of so-called “prose poetry” really belongs in its own category.

 

That's a normal problem with categories, though. "Black" and "white" are useful categories even if there are difficulties defining where they fade into grey.

 

Well, the one thing I never had an issue with in Dragonlance was sticking a "red" between the black and the white.

 

Poem´s Constitution

Hello! Recently, poetry catched my attention, and i´m considering on starting to write it often.

I´ve only written like 3 or 4 poems for school, and I just write randoom thoughts and mix them together. Sometimes it works. Sometimes doesn´t.

I´d like to know from experienced poetry writers, how do you usually start writing a poem.

For example, yesterday I was on the beach and entered a chineese store and I saw there a pretty girl. If I wanted to write a poem about her, which elements should the poem possess? Which features should a poem usually include?

 

...i'm a full time poet and i start by simply writing whatever words come to me...
sometimes it will be a line that just popped into my head unbidden and sometimes thinking about a subject that niggles at my brain will generate a good first line and i take it from there...

...there are no specific 'should's... it should merely possess/include whatever you want it to...

...take your pretty girl, for instance... here are several starts that might suggest themselves to me, as i consider what i want to write about her:

rhymed:

the jewelry counter's most tempting wares
were outdone by the answer to his prayers

blank verse:

she leaned lazily against the counter
stopped him in his tracks

or

hair of india ink
eyes of china
the world in a smile

...i mentor many aspiring poets, so if you want help learning the art, just drop me a line any time...

love and hugs, maia
maia3maia@hotmail.com

 

This is a good guide for aspiring poets told by schools how and what to write. Poerty is everywhere. Poetry is life.

 

I don't have time to read this now, but thank you so much for posting this. I'm entering a competition and I'm sure this'll be INCREDIBLY useful

 

Goshy, these thing make a HUGE-MONGUS difference. I love it

 

First of all I hope you don't mind, I have copied and pasted this into a word doc to keep as yet another handy reference. I like your advise and if possible can I share some poems with you, I've been diagnosed with ADS and have a tendency to rush what I'm writing to keep up with what's in my head, then struggle editing because I read What I know in my head and not what I actually wrote, my grammar and spelling then is very weak and people think I'm a sometimes talented and very passionate teenager...I'm almost 30....

If you have the time and patience, it would be a massive help. If not thank you very much for the guideline above, I'm going to use it now.

 

What exactly is "prose poetry"? Is it just a short story that sounds poetic? A poem that doesn't rhyme? Are Shakespeare's plays "prose poetry"?

 

Prose poetry is just poetry written without line breaks; the only universally applicable (formal) definition of poetry is that the poet can control where the line ends (as you probably read above), and in prose poetry, the poet chooses to emulate the formal character of prose while writing what they consider (and want readers to consider) poetry. Shakespearean plays are plays, and though they contain poems and poetic qualities, they are not prose poems.

 

well said, arron!

 

Hey, I have some poetry along with a short story on my blog. Check it out and let me know what you think or what I could possibly do to improve my writing.

http://whatsthepricebrotherlyblog.blogspot.com/