 Poetry: April 08, 2015 Issue [#6916] |
  Poetry
This week: Choreography Edited by: Kate - Writing & Reading  
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Greetings! I'm honored to be your guest editor for this week's WDC Poetry Newsletter.
What is a Poem?
A poem is a form of verse that alludes to, but does not tell, what it is. That's the purpose of prose (or in verse, a metaphor perchance). Maybe an article or a class lesson will tell you what to do, but a poem shows what can be ~ the image or idea envisioned by the writer of the poem.
"...the writing of poems...
the call of overhearing music that is not yet made."
Mary Kinzie, in A Poet's Guide to Poetry
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense.
"An Essay on Criticism," Alexander Pope
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Greetings, fellow lyric choreographers
Why am I talking dance when this is about poetry? Because I see the poet as a choreographer, creating a dance of words by designing a rhythmic sensory image to evoke the essence of a moment, an idea, a place, an event, in which a reader/listener (along with the poet) can participate. Think about it, a poem is choreographed by the poet, taking an idea and expressing it in a dance of words - steps that take an image and weave it into a dance of words.
So where do we start? How do we as poets express the images, the essence of these images, in a dance of words which engages listeners? We start with the steps: designing patterns that express in words what a dance does in movement, using the art and craft of poetry to create the dance of words. These steps have withstood the test of time (think of the basic two-step as the foundation of a waltz, tap, tango, and hip hop, among other dance patterns). These poetic patterns provide familiar 'steps' which, when choreographed by the poet, create a dance of words, each unique to the artistry of the poet, each creating a dance in which the listener can participate by reading aloud and participating in the lyric vision conjured by the rhythm of the words.
Scansion is the given name for the act of choreographing the rhythmic sound of words - the beat, rhythm, tempo. So don't shun the scan lest you lose the beat and miss the steps that guide you through the dance. Just think, reading and writing poetry silently is like trying to recall a song in your head without at least humming or whistling the tune. You don't get the essence, miss a few words perhaps, so participate in the poem, whether reading or writing.
Using scansion, scanning with your senses, you will experience that verse is written first in lines - a line being a breath of words, like a measure in music, with its own rhythmic movement of feet (the good old iambs and dactyls, for example) to incite haste or contemplation along with the image; written in sentences.
Stanzas of varying length normally contain a sentence or two, holding a cohesive image, then moving on to the rest of the moment, either a continuation or summation or change, as the poet's eye (and ear) designs.
The writer sees with poet's eye
kaleidoscopic; not black and white.
This, by your humble editor
Reading aloud, we often find in poetry that each line has a base beat that sometimes holds true for the entire poem (the Shakespearean sonnet, for example); and at other times is given pause or emphasis by changing the beat or use of enjambment (continuing the pattern into the following line).
You will see from my example above enjambment where the iambic is used and the first image continues into the second line, and there's a mid-line pause - caesura - before the second line continues again in the iambic. To release the breath, I also employed before the semicolon, a word with an extra soft-foot beat, called a phyrric foot. But note that each line can still have meaning, although I like keeping it in context.
I continue to stress reading aloud poetry to enter and join in the choreography of the dance between the poet and the reader. I am pleased to share with you here - you'll find the rhythm of each 'dance step' somewhere in the stanza that details the meaning of the term ~ as the poem gives voice to nature's rhythm, mortal and ephemeral.
I'd like to try some of the basic steps, the underlying rhythm, of the unbound variety of poems (the sounds I stress in upper case ~ read aloud and hear the movement}
 iamb ~ the two-step
a DANCE of WORDS I HEAR in VERSE
trochee ~ a variation of the two-step, I hear assertive
HEAR the SONG that WAKES the SPARrow
anapest ~ three syllables, quicker tempo
I'm the PEST who is BEST not at REST
dactyl ~ three syllables, pensive, with release
WHIS-per-ing E-choes of WORDS we thought MA-gic-al
spondee ~ two stressed syllables together
GIVE ME the WORDS and I'LL WRITE a Poem !
Just playing here to make an example ~ read them aloud then choreograph some lyric steps of your own
With thanks to my dancing instructors external -
Mary Oliver's "Rules for the Dance," and
Mary Kinzie's, "A Poet's Guide to Poetry"
Write On 
Kate
Kate - Writing & Reading
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Check out some the variety of insightful and/or inspired verbal choreography by members of our Community ~ remember, to dance, you move your feet ~ to read a poem, you give it breath 
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I thank you for joining me in this dance of words; I hope you've had some fun with the steps and can use them in your own lyrical dances of words.
Until we next meet, embrace the dance of words, and have fun with it
Write On 
Kate
Kate - Writing & Reading
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