 Poetry: June 28, 2017 Issue [#8361] |
  Poetry
This week: Breaking the rules Edited by: Andy~hating university  
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Poetry is what in a poem makes you laugh, cry, prickle, be silent, makes your toe nails twinkle, makes you want to do this or that or nothing, makes you know that you are alone in the unknown world, that your bliss and suffering is forever shared and forever all your own.
Quote by Dylan Thomas |
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Greetings all, I am Andy~hating university , this week's Poetry Newsletter guest editor.
I was flicking around the internet looking for something to share and I stumbled across a blog about rules of poetry. I thought I'd share what I found with you.
Make use of imagery: This is the concept of using images to evoke emotion. Instead of telling us in your poem that you are happy, sad, or whatever, think of an image that conveys the emotion. What emotions do you feel when you see a sunrise, or a large black cloud, or a full moon?
Avoid Clichés: Probably just as good advice when it comes to writing prose as poetry. It can make it easy to convey your meaning to your readers, or you might be looking for an easy rhyme, but most readers will stop reading if your poem is filled with these overused expressions.
Control your rhymes and meter: All metered and rhyming poetry has it place. A sonnet written in perfect iambic pentameter is incredibly alluring, and the rhyming and meter of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" is what makes it a classic. Just don't feel that you have to rhyme for the sake of rhyming, or write in perfect meter just because your high school English teacher had a fixation on it.
Pay attention to form: This can apply just as much to free verse as to form poetry. With form poetry, its obviously a lot more important; you don't want to end up with a fifteen line Shakespearean sonnet, or an acrostic that doesn't actually spell a word. But free verse can sometimes be just as much about form. How you choose to layout a free verse poem is form - will you have white space? Will you use patterns to reinforce your meanings? Will you have lines of roughly the same length or will they all vary?
Don’t overdo anything: There is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Overuse of similes, alliteration, metaphors, onomatopoeia, and the more unusual meters can make your poem sound silly and detract from what you are trying to convey. If you are writing a sad poem do you really want most of your words to start with plosive sounds?
Bare yourself: Don't hold back when writing your poem. The more you pour of yourself into your poetry the better. If you can't be honest with yourself in your poetry, then how do you expect your reader to take anything from your poem?
And now for the most important rule in writing poetry:
Learn the rules and break them: I'm not saying that what I've so far should be crumpled up and tossed in the nearest wastepaper basket. Poetry is an ever-evolving, anarchic writing form. You can do whatever you want with your poetry. But you need to know and understand the rules, before you decide to break them. There is nothing wrong in writing a sonnet in pyrrhic meter, with a different number of feet in every line, and doesn't rhyme (I'm not sure why you'd want to write something like this, though), just make sure you know why you've chosen to break the rules. |
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| Why don't you try writing a poem that breaks the established rules? Or, perhaps write a poem that follows the rules, and then rewrite breaking the rules? You'll never know what works and what doesn't if you don't give it a try. |
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