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I have been dabbling lately, and enjoying the exercise that writing poetry causes - being so careful with each word choice, each idea, each representation. It's good discipline, it seems to me.
The writing group I just started attending did an exercise this week using the "So much depends upon...a red wheel barrow" poem by...blanking, Williams I think? It lit a fire, and I'm excited now about writing the occasional poem, mostly for mainstream publications. Anyone have any suggestions for that? (The one I'm working on now is about parenting, slightly humorous in tone.)
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I've got a few on my website.... I used to write more than I do now, but I've lost the will to lately. I struggle with poetry, more than I think I need to. Every so often one will come to me, but I've never really wanted to do anything with them like publishing, etc.
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I've strung some words together and I've tried to make them rhyme. But I put it all behind me 'cause I haven't had the time.
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posted
When I was young, I wrote a lot of poetry. I think it was awful. Recently, I took a creative writing course as part of my regular curriculum at school. It was 50% poetry and 50% fiction--I did lousy on the poetry part. It was quite embarrassing, too. I have a 3.9 GPA and I got a B in creative writing. If not for the poetry part, it would have been an easy A.
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I have written some very bad poetry, but I have two or three I'm proud of. I won £50 for one, had three or four published but they were the exception. I have one which was inspired by a scene in one of my novels that I quite like. But no, I haven't attempted poetry for about three years.
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I have one published poem. It won the Editor's Choice Award and was published in an anthology called The Beauty of Darkness. It's called The Patriot's Song.
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I have to say that I am an inadvertant poet. I personally perfer to read and write other things but I'll write it for an assignment or if I get into a really sappy mood and listen to Elvis long enough.
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posted
Hmm...what AM I up for, I'm not sure. Took a week to find anyone who seems at all interested. Maybe just an email exchange with ideas/tricks/tips. I have dabbled in rhyming verse and non-rhyming, and can't quite figure out which is better. Sometimes having the requirement of the rhyme is helpful, but then it's awfully constraining.
Either way, I find it an interesting change to story writing, and it forces me to think in a different way. I went to a writers group yesterday and one of the writers in the group who has 2 published novels said that he writes some screenplays and non-fiction, along with his other writing. That it's almost necessary as a way to change the way he approaches his writing so that he doesn't get too stale. I thought that was interesting.
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i consider myself an amateur poet , posted a few of my worse ones on www.poetry.com and they managed to be published (with no reward but credit) in their poetry anthologies . Plan to keep the good ones for a publication that pays , or perhaps my own anthology.
I think it helps my prose considerably . I find new ways to express familiar ideas without much use of cliche , and characters that need to sound intelligent and witty are enhanced by the use of verse with the occasional rhyme . I recently noticed Hannibal Lecter's dialogue and monologue are verse or close to verse (just saw the movie again) .
Rhyming is considerably harder to use and convey your ideas easily, usually in philosophical poems blank verse (no regular rhyme) is used to give freedom of expression . When dealing with beauty or emotion ,a regular rhyme scheme is often preferred .
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my poetry is hard a hell to translate in how i wrote it for the languedge dose not translate well, but most of it is about MY LOVE, MY ONE AND ONLY and it is quite uniproprate. also i write about death and destrution of this misirble place i am staying now. these people have gone and made me mad. Rommel Fenrir Wolf II
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quote:Hmm...what AM I up for, I'm not sure. Took a week to find anyone who seems at all interested. Maybe just an email exchange with ideas/tricks/tips.
How about joining in some poetry challenges? We don't have any at Liberty Hall, but we do at The Notebored www.notebored.com .
As far as exchanging tips and tricks, I really can't explain what i do when i write poetry, it just flows.
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I loved writing poetry when I had a teacher doling out assignments. I can't seem to get up the gumption for it otherwise.
I don't bother with rhyming words; rhythm and loose alliteration are more appealing to me.
This exercise was the most powerful for me: Don't think, just do it fast. Hand-write a single powerful word in the middle of the page (mother, ocean, fear, winter, etc.). Jot other words around it, that rise up out of the starting word. Draw arrows to connect the words (inspriration to idea). Those new words will generate more new words -- just let it flow. When you run out of words (and some may be sentence fragments, whatever), you end up with a network of connected thoughts. Sit back and see what groupings click, and let the poem write itself.
A great resource is the book Writing Down the Bones, although its focus isn't poetry per se. It is about writing with passion and guts, about the heart of what matters in whatever you have to say.
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I write songs. I'm usually rather pleased with the results. Occasionally alliteration and consonance crops up in places without being too obvious.
I'm actually pretty disciplined about picking words, connotations, etc. I almost never write 'spur-of-the-moment', or after being 'inspired'. Before I write the song I have the music, and I know exactly what I want to say during the song, and how I want to say it. That's really rigid, right?
However, I'm rather undisciplined about writing them consistently. Once I decide to do it, I'll love it, but I'm always relunctant to start for some reason. And, as I don't do 'spur-of-the-moment' writing, it's pretty rare for me to sit down and do it.
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Maybe just an email exchange with ideas/tricks/tips. I have dabbled in rhyming verse and non-rhyming, and can't quite figure out which is better. Sometimes having the requirement of the rhyme is helpful, but then it's awfully constraining. 
