Poetry?

[Chilari]

So I learned a week or so ago that this month is National Poetry month (in the USA anyway), and while none of us are American, some of my friends decided to take part and write a poem a day during April and invited me to join them. Even though I've neither written nor read a poem since I took my GCSE exams aged sixteen, I decided to give it a go. I have managed to write a poem every day so far, *before* midnight, and each time it has been both an enjoyable and a thought-provoking experience. I've been posting them up on my LiveJournal account, if anyone fancies a read (you can also find chapter one of an old novel up there, which I posted some some friends could review it; feel free to read and comment on that too, ahem.)

So, is anyone else having a go? How's it going for you? Does anyone regularly write poetry anyway? And does anyone have any tips for things I could try? I'm very willing to have a go at different poetry forms. Except iambic pentameter. I tried that yesterday, failed horrifically, and went with something else instead.

 

[Ravana]

Not as much as I used to; "irregularly," I suppose. Poetry was my first writing love, and I still enjoy completing a good piece of poetry more than I do a good piece of fiction. I just don't spend as much time working in it as I used to.

Tips? Hmm. Don't give up on the formal stuff–metered, whether rhymed or not: it's good practice. Promotes greater command of the language, having to fit things exactly into a certain space… which will have positive effects on your prose as well. Not that you should confine yourself to it, just that you shouldn't abandon it altogether, though practicing any form of poetry will aid in concise explication. (You might be surprised to learn just how many of those little "function" words can be omitted without losing comprehensibility.) You will also probably see effects on your writing in terms of imagery, symbolism, sound control and experimentation in form–again, whether you use formal or free verse–all of which are regarded as "natural" in poetry but which are too often forgotten in prose.

"Iambic pentameter" is a bit too broad: that's a verse (single line) form, not the form of a complete poem. It is also the single most common verse form in terms of English writing, though I've never entirely understood why. (Personally, I favor three-beat feet, when I'm using meter at all, though I am far and away the exception in this.) Any traditional form could conceivably be written in iambic pentameter, or just about any other meter, though many forms will assume this as a default (notably sonnets and villanelles; blank verse is by definition unrhymed iambic pentameter, heroic couplets–usually a base form for lengthy pieces–are rhymed pairs of iambic pentameter lines). But assuming a sonnet "must" be iambic pentameter, just because it usually has been historically, is unnecessarily restrictive.

On the other hand, it isn't a sonnet if it isn't fourteen lines long; most people will also insist on it having some sort of regular rhyme scheme, though several different ones are available, and will probably be happier if the lines use some consistent metrical form, whatever that may be. Likewise, a villanelle isn't a villanelle if it doesn't follow a certain very specific form, which is easier to point to than explain: Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" is the best known example, I imagine.

The ballad stanza (four-line stanza, alternating lines of four and three feet, usually iambic, usually with only the shorter lines rhyming) is another very common English form. While the obvious examples to point to would be, well, ballads, you might be more familiar with "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"… though you'll probably be as relieved as the wedding guest by the time Coleridge finally shuts up. The advantage here is that it's only the lines and stanzas that have set limits; the overall poem can be any length you want… obviously.

The biggest mistake in writing metered verse is trying too hard to make something fit, though. If the language starts to become unnatural, artificial, you need to back off and try to rephrase it. Less-experienced writers of poetry will decide that what they already have on paper is unalterable, and will wrack their brains and their lines to fit with what's there–which becomes an even bigger problem than allowing yourself to become overly enamored with what you've already done when writing prose, since at least in prose you aren't working with external limits (apart from maybe overall length). So what I'd say is that if you hit a point in a metered poem where you aren't sure where to go from there, set it aside and come back to it later; don't just chuck it completely.

The second biggest mistake is lying to yourself about where the accented syllable falls, or whether or not two words rhyme–a mistake usually made while in the process of making the first. It's unlikely that "love" and "prove" rhymed even in Kit Marlowe's time–I'd need to break out my OED to be sure, and that's too much trouble at the moment: it is certainly true "love" once contained a "u" sound… then again, "prove" once contained a long "o"; I don't know which changed first. Even if they did rhyme at some brief point in history, "roses" and "posies" did not. On the other hand, "roses" and "posies" do rhyme on the accented syllable… which, however, is not the final one. So this poem could arguably be taken as a model of two ways in which strict, rhymed iambic pentameter can be reasonably violated (near-rhyme on the one hand, an extra unstressed syllable on the other)… though I'm less inclined to give him a pass by his third violation, where his meter "forces" an accent to fall on the second syllable of "morning." Think of it as a sort of poetic "three-strikes-you're-out" rule.

Try a villanelle. The big up side of it is that there's very little to write, since by the time you have your first three-line stanza, you've written half your poem. The down side is writing that first stanza well enough that you can get the rest of the poem to work. When you're ready for a real challenge, try a sestina (which I'm also not going to try to describe). The best example that comes to mind off the top of my head is Elizabeth Bishop's one… titled "Sestina." (She also did a very good villanelle, "One Art.") Most "serious" poets write one of these at some point during their lives. I'm one of the few people I'm aware of who's attempted to write two.…