posted
First let me admit I have yet to read OSC's book of poetry. On my to-do-list but not yet on my can-afford list.
Anyways, I'm a reading teacher and currently we are doing a unit on poetry in my class. Reading varoius authors, looking at different poetic elements and even trying our hand at some writing. All this had me thinking about my own writing preferences when it comes to poetry. I don't do a lot of writting. I enjoy it but never seem to have the time. Every now and again I will dabble a bit, especially when I'm doing something like this poetry unit. It gives me an excuse. So anyways... When I was younger I seemed to really enjoy free verse. No rules and no limitations seemed to appeal to me. However, now I find I much more enjoy writting something with form and structure. I think it is the challenge of it. Writting a good poem, or meaningful poem, that strickly adhears to an A,A,B,B,A ryhme scheme is tough especially if you write 3,4 or more stanzas. Or coming up with an acrostic poem that actually says something is tough. I'm not even remotely interested in Free Verse anymore. I mean, I'll write one down if it comes to me but I'd much rather set up some type of rules and see if I can fit beauty into those limitations. I just find it interesting that my sense of joy in poetry writting has changed.
So I guess I was curious to know what other people thought. Do you enjoy technical writting or the freedom of free verse? What was OSC style of Choice in An Open Book? Was there great range of types and styles. And does anyone know if it will be coming out in paper back anytime soon? I've only seen it in hard back.
Posts: 1294 | Registered: Oct 2003
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That's my poetry magazine, edited by Michael Palmer. And you'll see that I agree with you completely! I love the power and creativity that writing in forms provides you. I've never much enjoyed acrostic poetry, and sestinas always seemed just a bit too repetitive to me (though there are brilliant exceptions!) But sonnets: Ah!
I haven't given up on free verse, though - when it's done by someone who has mastered form and knows what poetic diction is. It's the people who do free verse without realizing that you still need a sense of VERSE and not just weird layout of prose.
I'm going to be publishing poetry by other people, too. I'm grimly determined to change the world THIS much: To find and publish poets whose works are aimed at untrained readers, but who use the power of language to write truly intense and meaningful poems. There is NO excuse for poetry to be so dismally unpopular.
Rod McKuen, after all, proved that people WILL buy poems if they think they are written TO them and speak FOR them.
Sometime in the next eight months, for instance, I will publish (or co-publish) a book called "The Little Pink Book of Seething Hatred" by a marvelous new poet named Sara Ellis. It will be blurbed as "The voice of the p***ed-off, disappointed gen-x woman." The cover will be shockingly pink, and every page sizzles, folks!
I have some other poets lined up. And no, I am NOT looking for submissions - except to Strong Verse magazine, of course!
But I'm very serious about powerful formal poetry.
I also write hymns, and will be publishing a book of my own hymns, along with commentary about writing hymn texts. Now THAT'S a tight form with a limited diction!
Here's an example: The laborer is worthy of the wages he is paid. The harvest time is coming and it cannot be delayed. The servants in the vineyard then will glean the ones who strayed.
Your calling may be humble but your faith is strong and true. Your speech at times may stammer but the Spirit dwells in you. O teach me, brother, sister, what the Lord would have me do!
The world confers its honors but those honors fail the test: The one who would be greatest must be servant to the rest. It's by the work of all the saints that all the saints are blessed.
The chapters of the hymnwriting book are going up as columns on Meridian magazine ( http://www.meridian.com ) and if you're lucky, you can find them in their archive. But I'll also be putting them up on Nauvoo.
And as a sample of my poetry, just so you know how I feel about form and substance of poetry today, here's a sample:
How much are hapless short-lived creatures worth? On wings the angels flutter overhead, And devils burrow tunnels through the earth: In them do storms and earthquakes have their birth, While we between the soil and air are bred To shudder and to cower till we’re dead.
O worm triumphant! Out of the cocoon You rise bedazzling to swoop and soar! Is this eternity, to die no more? Worm or wings, you will be still, and soon.
How much, again, are short-lived creatures worth? Nothing till the trembling flesh is shed And we are carried hot through heaven’s door And served to hungry justice, spoon by spoon.
An inverse (and perverse) sonnet ... but one I'm rather proud of, even if it isn't bright and cheerful like my books <grin>.
But I also do a lot of free verse - but with tight control, I hope, and a strong sense of line and meter:
Letters
I used to think the little black parasites Entered through my eyes And burrowed into my brain And there laid eggs; That the larvae stirred and writhed Scavenging among misconceptions And memories and decaying dreams, Old weathered nightmares, Imaginary lovers, Leaving behind their own detritus (Shed skin and excrement, Rumor and scraps of tale), And then formed their tiny Smooth-faced chrysalises; Changed clothes in the dark; And one day burst forth Out of my fingers, full-grown letters Lined up in rows on paper.
I would send them back into the world. They’d reproduce there, spread, become Endemic in the population, Renewed and reinvented Just a little by every host, No strain utterly lost, Merely evolved, adapted, A bit of everyone in every iteration.
But now I know There is no sojourn in the brain, No cocoon, no transformation. They crawl the surface, They hop on and off again like fleas, Taking a little blood, Leaving a little black death, Jumping back to the rats, Neither changed nor changing: The public memory talking to itself And they taught me nothing That my DNA hadn’t already Poured into the marrow of my bones.
posted
Nice Mr. Card. Though, my appreciation for poetry actually went down since HS, which is kind of odd. I just don't understand alot of it and I always need it explained to me. I like my poetry skin deep. There are some I love after having them explained to me. Robert Frost's "Design" and that apple picking one for instance.
Posts: 142 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
Thanks. I love that I keep learning new things here even though I've been coming around for as long as I have been I never knew about Strong Verse. Hmmm... I may even submit someday.
quote: I've never much enjoyed acrostic poetry
As a school teacher I totally have to disagree. These things are so much fun. I don't take them very seriously and maybe that is why they are fun. I just spent an entire day with my students writting these and some of the things 8th graders can come up with are too funny.
Some examples:
From Anus, Releaves Tension
- from a student
Finally Inside Bathroom Expecting Relief
-my response to student
I actually even wrote one today that, completely by accident, sounds poetic. It very nicely sums up my feelings on the matter. I'm not even ashamed to admit I wrote this.
Reality Evaporates Awakening Ddreams
It's funny how you should mention people missing the point with Free Verse. I was talking about this with my class the other day. About how the flow comes form the natural rhythm of the spoken words. That even though there is no meter, rhyme or form the poem still has to sound like a poem. I went over this a bunch of time with them and even used some pretty good examples but when I gave them a chance to write on their own most kids simply turned in paragraphs with weird spacing. I guess I knew what I was talking about when I told a student that Free Verse isn't as easy as it sounds. This right after she told me this would be easy becasue they didn't have to follow any rules.
-Editted about a thousand times. My computer got all stupid on my and cut my post in half twice and erased everything I had been typing once.
posted
See, I enjoy those acrostics. I just don't think they're poetry. It's a game, and a fun one; but for me, to be verse there has to be music in it. Typography is a different art. But ... it's not like my opinion ERASES anybody's acrostics <grin>.
And please do submit verse to Strong Verse!
As to poems that need to be explained - I hate that. I know, some of my poems DO take some thought. But some of them are as plain as day.
Robert Frost is my model for this. Hopkins for the rhythm, Frost for the clarity ...
Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999
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posted
I agree that acrostic is not the highest form of poetry. I would never submit an acrostic for publication as a serious poem. I think the only reason I even mentioned them in my post is because we were talking about them in class yesterday and I just had them in my head. But, they are certainly fun and kept me entertained yesterday. And I think you can create some interesting poetry with them if you put a little effort into it.
quote: And please do submit verse to Strong Verse!
I was totally floored for a minute when I read this. For some reason I put a not in there. I know my examples above were on the very silly side but my feeling were all hurt and then I noticed that I just misread. But to be very honest, I'm not sure if I would ever submit anything. I don't have the highest confidence in my writing abilities. I'm average at best and I know this. I mean I've created a few pieces that I have been very proud of but that was a long time ago and it's been a while since I've attempted to really write anything. I'm definately interested and I may actually start writting a bit more. This idea is only one fatcor of many that have had me thinking about writting lately. Lots of personal crap going on that has me searching for an outlet. So I may submit something yet. Thanks again for the replies and the new site I've now got to visit.
Posts: 1294 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
Mr. Card, one more quick question. You mention that you love writting sonnets. I know that there are different rhyme schemes and stanza breaks that would be considered appropriate. My question is this... what form do you use when writting your sonnets? This is a poem form I've never attempted but it is one that definately fits my interests, especially now with my growing enjoyment of structure and form.
Posts: 1294 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
I can't speak for Mr. Card, obviously, but my sonnets are always in the Shakespearean style. I love writing sonnets because the pre-existing format leaves no room for alteration. The meter and rhyme scheme are constant.
And I write haikus. Rules are of great importance. This format is fixed.
I've actually lost most of my interest in poetry because it seems like modern poets just don't pay any attention to rules anymore. They just write down a bunch of words and call it a poem, or so it seems to me. If there's no meter and no rhyme, I don't see how it's a poem. That's why I have no regard for Walt Whitman, and why I love Rudyard Kipling. Kipling's subject matter sometimes makes me uncomfortable, but he was a master of meter. Whitman might as well have been writing prose. And e. e. cummings should be flogged.
Edit: And yes, before anyone says it, I know cummings is dead. He should be flogged anyway.
posted
Funny you should mention Cummings. I used to think his stuff was soooo cool. I was reading some just the other day and I was like... hmm, this is pretty crappy.
I also just have to plug one of the collest books ever that I've been lending out to kids all week. I'm not sure if anyone else makes these but scholastic has a Ryhming Dictionary. It is written for elementary/middle school ages but it still rocks. Lots of good ryhmes, not exhaustive in it's lists but still lengthy.
Posts: 1294 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
My good man beatnix -- your own name is lowercase, but you capitalize cummings? What's wrong with you? *wink*
Posts: 6213 | Registered: May 2001
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You know, I love how Hopkins's poetry sounds, but I could never totally figure out his sprung rhythm scheme. Not important just for reading his amazing poems ["shining from shook foil" is a phrase that will pop into my head from time to time and then won't leave, but that's okay because it's one of my friends], but still -- it's something I'd like to understand better.
I like poetry. But I don't really have the patience to write or read it very much.
posted
I saw "Open Book" in paperback. I didn't get it at the time because I was spending my bucks on an audio book... "Shadow Puppets". As I travel around, I've been looking for "Open Book", but haven't seen it since. I May have to order it to add to my collection.
Mr. Card, I liked your sonnet very much, especially the line "Worm or wings, you will be still, and soon."... very portentous. I saw echos of Poe's "The Conqueror Worm" in it. I like Poe (and Dickenson).
My favorite form is the Sonnet. I like the challenge of trying to say something meaningful while adhering to its strictures.
I guess I need to take a poetry appreciation course or something. I have a hard time enjoying free verse. I can't seem to get the rhythm of much of it, but then... white men can't jump either... at least this one can't <grin>. I mean, there are meaningful messages in it, but it reads like disjointed prose to me.
For example... Walt Witman's lament of Abraham Lincoln "O Captain, My Captain" I liked (a lot), but... Leaves of Grass... forget about it.
I've submitted 5 poems to "Strong Verse", 3 of which were attempts at sonneteering. I guess I must have either submitted incorrectly, or (no surprise) they didn't fit the bill. I never heard anything back.
posted
So how long has Strong Verse been published? It seems fairly young to me. I used it as a market for my Young Writers' Club, so hopefully you'll be receiving more submissions! Posts: 3141 | Registered: Apr 2000
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posted
Beatnix, for me a sonnet is a fourteen-line poem. It's still a sonnet even if it doesn't rhyme. BUT I love rhymes. However, I use nonce-schemes all the time, as was so lucidly shown above. In my heart, though, I like the basic structure Gerard Manley Hopkins used, which melded Petrarchan and Elizabethan forms - the couplet envoi AND the 8/6 division of thesis, response.
Basically, though, I adapt the form to the subject at hand; because to me it is also important that if you strung the poem out into sentences, it would still be coherent and intelligible as prose.
Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999
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posted
Thanks all for your replies. You'd think a reading teacher would have a better grasp of these things. Oh well, once again I show that I apparently don't know everything. But don't tell my students. They would be heartbroken to realize I've been lying to them about being the smartest man alive. I wouldn't want to crush their dreams.
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posted
People who dislike e. e. cummings have perhaps missed the point cummings was trying to make. That legions of his admirers -- and imitators -- also missed the point is not, quite frankly, his fault. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
While I'm not sure I'm angling towards the same thing as Tom, I do have to wonder why so many people seem to think that Cummings disdained structure entirely. My favorite Cummings poems tend to be his sonnets, which, while a little looser than your traditional Shakespearean works, are very far from free verse.
Posts: 650 | Registered: Mar 2005
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Again, interesting. A combination of the two sonnet styles (Italian, Shakespeare) in a very remote way. I do it differently, and more classically (see bottom) - but heck, OSC knows how to rhyme.
quote: AABCBCD/DEFGGFE
This one breaks the common schemes of the second half. I never thought of changing sonnets too much - why am I so old-styled?
quote: ABCD/BADCEFG/EGF
Interesting reverse of the rhyme order in some situations. "ABCDBADC" is a complx structure! Way to go!
---
I personally decided to go with the classical one, which is ABBAABBA/<three rhymes in six lines>. I simply didn't like the common "CDECDE" rhyming scheme, as the rhymes can get out of your head after reading three different ones and not remembering how it precisely fit. So I took the Shakespearean style ABABCDCD/EFEFGG and made mine "ABBAABBA/CDCDEE". So it's strictly speaking within the Italian sonnet's definition, with a borrowing of Shakespeare's style.
For instance:
quote: A siege on this town’s folk all days and nights Will be a battle of the murderous stone, And with this, armies shatter others’ bone: To make a pile of all the nameless sights - And with this act all see it as their right, To seek and kill all foes, those are their own; They then pretend this act was all unknown, Or that they did it - it was honest fight. But yet I look around and see that this Is dangerous, and I can’t comprehend; For the killing can’t contain just bliss, And these deep wounds and gores will never mend. Why then, did people think that it’s my likes To see a war where men are rammed with pikes?
posted
I love many forms of poetry, including modern and post-modern poetry. Am I alone here in this love?
I love you Ginsberg. The power you express. and although I have have never seen Mohammedan angels staggering on tene- ment roofs, I too despair for my generation, for my country, for my species.
Posts: 1332 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
I don't like post-modern poetry. Sorry, but it's just not my stlye. I prefer rhyming, metered, classical stuff - that's Yeats, Milton, Shakespeare, Heaney (sp?), Donne, and various others.
Post-modernism doesn't talk to me. I can live without rhymes, that's not a problem, but I need a meter. Otherwise, the lines are all over the place and they sometimes mean absolutely nothing as far as I can see. Sometimes, the lines' length is so different (in the meter), that I'd rather read a iambic pentameter that has very little content rather than a subtle post-modern poem.
posted
With few exceptions, I can't get English meter. I have no prmblems with Latin meter with its very precise rules, but English meter just doesn't jump out at me and say, "hay, this poem is writen in dactilic hexameter," or whatever.
Posts: 1332 | Registered: Apr 2005
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I guess I knew what I was talking about when I told a student that Free Verse isn't as easy as it sounds. This right after she told me this would be easy becasue they didn't have to follow any rules. ![[Mad]](mad.gif)
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But to be very honest, I'm not sure if I would ever submit anything. I don't have the highest confidence in my writing abilities. I'm average at best and I know this. I mean I've created a few pieces that I have been very proud of but that was a long time ago and it's been a while since I've attempted to really write anything. I'm definately interested and I may actually start writting a bit more. This idea is only one fatcor of many that have had me thinking about writting lately. Lots of personal crap going on that has me searching for an outlet. So I may submit something yet. Thanks again for the replies and the new site I've now got to visit.
