The bend and flex of form poetry

[Tzara]

I've tried singing, chanting and shouting to get stresses right, but it doesn't really help me. I know when I've got something that's not quite right by eye, but that doesn't mean I know how to fix it. Counting syllables can usually mask an inability to label your stresses. Some people can't even count syllables right, so at least I got that. Many songs benefit from wonky line lengths and odd word choices.

Counting syllables is a dangerous substitute that is reliant on the basic iambic bias of English to get your rhythm tight.

I think poets should be trained to hear metrics in the way first-year music students take sight-singing to train their ears to pitch.

But that's just me and I ain't nobody you should pay attention to.



Empd: Try marking scansion on Will's sonnets as an exercise. That will (maybe, maybe not) help.

 

[vrosej10]

This is wonderfully written and I'm amazed that you didn't edit it. It's very sensual and there is spontaneity to the rhythm. I think your sentence structure with its varied length for me at least created a sense of anticipation and release. Although some poets dismiss sentence structure as irrelevant, if they think of it at all, I always try to view the poem in terms of sentence length, punctuation, and syntax and assess how it adds to what I want to write. I might quibble with one of your sentences, but that's all it would be, a quibble.

I also liked the repetition which created a drumbeat for me. Repetition of words or phrases, when skillfully employed in my opinion, can add substantially to the rhythm; when not done skillfully, it can turn a piece into a nursery rhyme for pre-schoolers. That certainly wasn't the case here in this beautiful love song.

I am so much smarter when I am crazy. Ask me to do this when I wasn't in a manic episode and there is just no way I could do it.

 

[vrosej10]

Counting syllables is a dangerous substitute that is reliant on the basic iambic bias of English to get your rhythm tight.

I think poets should be trained to hear metrics in the way first-year music students take sight-singing to train their ears to pitch.

But that's just me and I ain't nobody you should pay attention to.



Empd: Try marking scansion on Will's sonnets as an exercise. That will (maybe, maybe not) help.

I am desperately trying to learn metrics. I am a lot better than I used to be at it, but I am not there yet, but I am coming. I think the more stuff we learn about poetry, the more creative options we have. It's like having more paint colours to work with.

 

[EroticOrogeny]

Counting syllables is a dangerous substitute that is reliant on the basic iambic bias of English to get your rhythm tight.

I think poets should be trained to hear metrics in the way first-year music students take sight-singing to train their ears to pitch.

But that's just me and I ain't nobody you should pay attention to.



Empd: Try marking scansion on Will's sonnets as an exercise. That will (maybe, maybe not) help.

Sounds like a good idea or 2.

I wrote a program to help me with meter. It's kind of dumb and gets confused by words which can be different parts of speech. You can't blindly trust it's output, but it helps.

 

[butters]

*puffs cheeks out and blows through lips*

crikey. all that hard stuff.
i like just writing things.

 

[champagne1982]

If I need iambs or trochées I recite, "The Lorax". Dr. Seuss is the master of metre.

 

[The Mutt]

Read it out loud. If it sounds right, it is right.

Just kidding, kinda. I've never studied poetry, other than the bits I got in freshman english.

The first poem I ever wrote was a sonnet, because a teacher once told me that nobody can write a good sonnet any more. I took it as a challenge and wrote a whole sonnet cycle for him.

I love the work of writing form poetry. Taking giant emotions and observations and squeezing them into a tiny box is the best training for a writer I can think of.

I wish I could remember who said it, and that I could quote it properly, but the second best advice I ever heard about writing is that a poet should write down everything he feels, then remove all of the words that don't need to be there. It works for everything, not just poems.

(The best advice came from Roger Ebert (paraphrasing); The Muse does not arrive when you are thinking about writing. She comes when you are writing.)

 

[vrosej10]

On the matter of meter, I think I am finally getting it! Last night I was writing something and realised there was a big fat double dactyl in a line that should have been trochees. I was so proud of myself. This has been the hardest thing to learn and nothing is usually hard for me to learn (I was the obnoxious kid in class who always got it right first time, every time).

 

[butters]

...

Edit to ask:

I'm interested in this aspect of GB pronunciation ... as a small one, my parents had friends from England. One of them was an Upper class Londoner (probably born circa 1940's and moved to Canada in the 60's or early 70's) I remember her stating that by the accent she could tell the very street in London that a British person grew up. Is this true? I know that there is a difference between Welsh and Yorkshire and Londoners for example, but when in London, can you distinguish the part of town one grew up in just by the way they pronounce their words?

I missed this before - I'd not be able to tell which street, but if you went back half a century and into more rural locations, this could happen, since some villages had only one main road. What i CAN tell, is when someone comes from the town i grew up in, and particularly the specific suburb of that town where i grew up. The sounds of the accent, the intonation, make it stand out to my ears above all the other voices that might be surrounding it.

I've tried singing, chanting and shouting to get stresses right, but it doesn't really help me. I know when I've got something that's not quite right by eye, but that doesn't mean I know how to fix it. Counting syllables can usually mask an inability to label your stresses. Some people can't even count syllables right, so at least I got that. Many songs benefit from wonky line lengths and odd word choices.

When it comes to stresses, the best thing to remember is that it mimics natural speech-patterning. So, if I say the word Davis,for me I say it DAY-vis, natural speech patterning laying the stress on that first syllable. So the line Mary had a little lamb would sound Mair-ree had a little lamb

Another tip someone gave me was to rest my chin in my hand and the elbow of that same limb on a hard surface like your pc table. Speak the lines of your poems as you would speak the words naturally,and where a stress occurs, your chin will press down into your hand harder than the unaccented syllables.

Sometimes, though, i like to make stresses fall where they might not naturally, or place them on a word to emphasise it more in a line - i tend to work with line-breaks to achieve this.

On the matter of meter, I think I am finally getting it! Last night I was writing something and realised there was a big fat double dactyl in a line that should have been trochees. I was so proud of myself. This has been the hardest thing to learn and nothing is usually hard for me to learn (I was the obnoxious kid in class who always got it right first time, every time).

you made me go look it up
this is where my short-comings announce themselves: where i work by ear for the most part, when someone starts naming the names of the mechanics, i have to go see what's meant half the time but now i know what a dactyl is AND a double dactyl! yay

 

[greenmountaineer]

Double Dactyl Poetry

Anthony Hecht, one of my favorite poets, and one of the most somber you'll find who wrote about the Holocaust ("More Light! More Light!" is the most horrific poem I have ever read) also had a playful side and with a colleague invented the "double dactyl light verse format. It's an interesting read on

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_dactyl

I tried my hand at it in a recent submission entitled "Basic Double Dactyl Training" and followed the proscribed format, except I couldn't quite manage a 6 syllable word for one of the lines, so a purist would have chided me for the variation I used.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun to do, challenging, and therapeutic too because I'm sometimes as somber as Anthony ever was.

 

[butters]

Anthony Hecht, one of my favorite poets, and one of the most somber you'll find who wrote about the Holocaust ("More Light! More Light!" is the most horrific poem I have ever read) also had a playful side and with a colleague invented the "double dactyl light verse format. It's an interesting read on

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_dactyl

I tried my hand at it in a recent submission entitled "Basic Double Dactyl Training" and followed the proscribed format, except I couldn't quite manage a 6 syllable word for one of the lines, so a purist would have chided me for the variation I used.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun to do, challenging, and therapeutic too because I'm sometimes as somber as Anthony ever was.

ha! i saw that when i went googling
I must go look up that poem of his - sounds something we owe it to ourselves to read at least once in our lives.

 

[greenmountaineer]

ha! i saw that when i went googling
I must go look up that poem of his - sounds something we owe it to ourselves to read at least once in our lives.

I forewarned that I could be as somber as Anthony Hecht ever was, so continue forewarned as well:

www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=179058

I know you're from the other side of the pond as we say over here (with deference to so many of our traditions thereof), and it is not my intention to refer to a period of your country's history out of its context, but I loved the way Hecht started the poem with the religious persecution under Cromwell before the Holocaust in WWII which took the reader's attention away from the Germans to a dark side of humanity that has no boundaries. This is horrific as I said in the earlier post and the highest expression of art IMO for what it makes me think about with no offense intended to "fuck, suck, and lick poetry,"which has its place.

 

[EroticOrogeny]

I forewarned that I could be as somber as Anthony Hecht ever was, so continue forewarned as well:

www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=179058

I know you're from the other side of the pond as we say over here (with deference to so many of our traditions thereof), and it is not my intention to refer to a period of your country's history out of its context, but I loved the way Hecht started the poem with the religious persecution under Cromwell before the Holocaust in WWII which took the reader's attention away from the Germans to a dark side of humanity that has no boundaries. This is horrific as I said in the earlier post and the highest expression of art IMO for what it makes me think about with no offense intended to "fuck, suck, and lick poetry,"which has its place.

That is brutal, as you said. So hard to image that people are capable of such actions. Amazing, too, are the artists who express these and other aspects of life. Most of us fall in the vast venal middle.

 

[butters]

I forewarned that I could be as somber as Anthony Hecht ever was, so continue forewarned as well:

www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=179058

I know you're from the other side of the pond as we say over here (with deference to so many of our traditions thereof), and it is not my intention to refer to a period of your country's history out of its context, but I loved the way Hecht started the poem with the religious persecution under Cromwell before the Holocaust in WWII which took the reader's attention away from the Germans to a dark side of humanity that has no boundaries. This is horrific as I said in the earlier post and the highest expression of art IMO for what it makes me think about with no offense intended to "fuck, suck, and lick poetry,"which has its place.

i read this.


thankyou.

 

[butters]

That is brutal, as you said. So hard to image that people are capable of such actions. Amazing, too, are the artists who express these and other aspects of life. Most of us fall in the vast venal middle.

the sorrow, for me, is that brutal times make brutal men - make us less than men/women; even without war, there are people being brutalized who are then forced into further acts of atrocity.

when hope's snuffed out there is no light. interesting, the contrast Hecht made between the martyr clinging to his faith in a hopeless, horrific situation and the Pole ... the one seeking the kindness of The Light, the other relinquishing it ...

no light! no light!

 

[LadynStFreknBed]

I actually thought of this thread the other day when I was on that website- poetryfoundation.org, because I was reading some of the villanelles that were published in Poetry and most of them I would not consider being completely true to the form because of changes to the last two lines. Of course, some could say those represent the modern villanelle. My personal taste is when the villanelle is completely true to the form and when the repeated lines are brought together in the last stanza, they produce a twist or another perspective on the poem while reinforcing the theme or message of the poem. It's not easy to do. I tried to do this in The True Treasure which started out referring to pink folds as female anatomy then ends with it referring to the brain... but, I'm not sure I've made the shift clear to the readers though.

I guess I am a bit of a purist when it comes to forms. I'm not one to say that poets shouldn't bend the forms. I guess I just expect myself to use the forms to say new things instead of bending the forms to my will.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

I actually thought of this thread the other day when I was on that website- poetryfoundation.org, because I was reading some of the villanelles that were published in Poetry and most of them I would not consider being completely true to the form because of changes to the last two lines. Of course, some could say those represent the modern villanelle. My personal taste is when the villanelle is completely true to the form and when the repeated lines are brought together in the last stanza, they produce a twist or another perspective on the poem while reinforcing the theme or message of the poem. It's not easy to do. I tried to do this in The True Treasure which started out referring to pink folds as female anatomy then ends with it referring to the brain... but, I'm not sure I've made the shift clear to the readers though.

I guess I am a bit of a purist when it comes to forms. I'm not one to say that poets shouldn't bend the forms. I guess I just expect myself to use the forms to say new things instead of bending the forms to my will.

I wish I had read that before your explanation because I am left wondering whether I would have got the shift or not

 

[maxcreigs]

here you go, bflagsst, a few either already published or aired online. I've a fair amount of newer material but am considering where to sub or if even to sub at all. a smallish one: and still i stare her hands, her dress, her hair all fail to tear my gaze aside from eyes whose sadness is a shockwave breaking over me they say she's crazy the .

 

[butters]

here you go, bflagsst, a few either already published or aired online. I've a fair amount of newer material but am considering where to sub or if even to sub at all. a smallish one: and still i stare her hands, her dress, her hair all fail to tear my gaze aside from eyes whose sadness is a shockwave breaking over me they say she's crazy the .

ok, - i'll rephrase that. this is a copy of my post. so, maxcreigs, what is it you're trying to say?

is this a matthew craig alt?

sigh

 

[Trixareforkids]

Bumping this thread for a good thorough read later, but umm, this post really caught my... eye

Never say I can't make a title into smut...



So is it ritual?
A formula for desire,
or desire constrained by a formula.

As she bends and flexes her form
mesmerizing me with the sequence
she follows
religiously.
Flexible shape
which for me would be contortion,
performed with grace
and a sultry smile
that leaves me forgetting to breathe.
Yes, breathe.
That rhythmic rise and fall
I seek to compel upon her
or she compels me
to fit a shape
encompassing both of us.
Both of us.
Rings so right
I groan at the thought
and trace my ego upon her skin
with a finger dipped in decadence

So what if she seeks ritual.
Her desire, content.
A formula subject to change.

 

[twelveoone]

a few years ago, i started looking at some of my older pieces with a more of an eye to dissecting their make-up than to what they were saying. some seemed to have a far better cohesion than others, not exactly slant-rhymes or particulars of metre, but i went through looking at their sounds. I discovered those that worked best for my ear had certain reps of sounds that ran throughout any given piece, and the use of hard and soft sounds was integral to what was being said. I ran through stuff, bolding the sounds, often just the vowels and was honestly surprised by what i saw - i'd not thought about the make-up of a poem this way before, nor do i (even now) TRY to write with this in mind but am now aware of it when i've written and can apply it to edits when looking to improve a work.

did I say I fear you?
did I say I love you?
...hmmm, the ghosts of other metres...

ahh, fuck forms

btw trix, Fool's poem would be classified as Free verse, and operates in a set of structures that are also used in Formal poetry. Formal; line length (vertical and horizontal (sets)), rhyme scheme (EOL in some), Free discards line length, and most often the scheme for rhyme.

So is it ritual?
A formula for desire,
or desire constrained by a formula.

As she bends and flexes her form
mesmerizing me with the sequence
she follows
religiously.
Flexible shape
which for me would be contortion,
performed with grace
and a sultry smile
that leaves me forgetting to breathe.
Yes, breathe.
That rhythmic rise and fall
I seek to compel upon her
or she compels me
to fit a shape
encompassing both of us.
Both of us.
Rings so right
I groan at the thought
and trace my ego upon her skin
with a finger dipped in decadence

So what if she seeks ritual.
Her desire, content.
A formula subject to change.

Known by a variety of names, but what it performs is an encasement, one of the things it does is give an illusion of depth.
Now of course there are other things, but these would be the first the eye would see.

 

[twelveoone]

I see poets doing acrostics down the center of sonnets, busting up poems in two halves. Creating odd spaces, dropping punctuation usually takes away from a poem. I don't want to solve the puzzle of the mechanics before figuring out what the poet's saying. The sonnet, and maybe poetry in general hasn't developed much mechanically since Robert Herrick discovered enjambment. ee cummings pretty much shows the limits of radical mechanics.

...line mechanics

 

[UnderYourSpell]

Bumping to re-read later.

 

[champagne1982]

Anthony Hecht, one of my favorite poets, and one of the most somber you'll find who wrote about the Holocaust ("More Light! More Light!" is the most horrific poem I have ever read) <snip>

Audio of More Light! More Light! This poem is even more chilling when heard read in the poet's own voice.