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Poetry can and should be an important part of our daily lives. Poems can inspire and make us think about what it means to be a member of the human race.
Billy Collins (Former Poet Laureate of the United States)
Why do people write poetry? Off the top of my head they could be one or more of the following:
--Catharsis/relieve stress
--Make a point/to persuade
--Express yourself/share pain (or other deep emotion)
--Connect with people/communicate
--Words (or groups of words) bounce around your brain until you share them or go insane
Two of my college professors said this:
--Make the abstract idea into a concrete one
--Make the reader feel an emotion
Award winning poetry does both.
Most poets understand the concept of making a reader feel an emotion but making an abstract idea into a concrete one? How does a poet do that? First one needs to understand the difference between the abstract and concrete. This is best done by examples.
ABSTRACT
Hate
Love
Fear
CONCRETE
Chair
Bike
Mountain
Let’s take a chair. Not only can you define what a chair is, you can describe it – depending on the particular chair - and someone else could visualize it. You can touch a chair. You could show someone a chair. You could show its function to someone who doesn’t speak the same language and they’d understand. A chair is there no matter if a person believes it’s there or feels it’s there. It’s not a matter of opinion – it just is.
Let’s take hate. Sure you could define it and maybe describe it, but could you really? Could you convey its meaning? Sure, you could sock someone in the nose – but is that always hate?
Award winning poetry takes the abstract ideas and brings them to our brains to touch AND it will also give it to your heart and make you feel some emotion when it does.
What’s their secret? Imagery.
(Coming soon: Figurative vs. literal imagery)
Poetry from some of my favorite poets on Writing.com (no room for all of them!)
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Since this is my first Poetry newsletter I don't have any comments from last month to put here, so I'd like to invite you to send me any questions you may have on imagery, since I will cover literal vs. figurative imagery next time
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Poetry: February 22, 2006 Issue [#897]
