a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by _refugee_
_refugee_  ·  3668 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Poems Are Easy Cuz They're Short

    writing poems is all about sticking to conventions,

Poems must rhyme. Viciously, fiercely, rhyme, and if syntax must be murdered to do it well BY GOD I'VE GOT THE TAR AND FEATHERS, LET'S GO! Sentence structure is only put there for prose, it's okay if I compeletely invert this phrase because I HAVE TO MAKE IT RHYME! Preferrably in rigid, rigid iambicor trochaic pentameter or maybe quadrameter but if you use those words to me I may just blink silently and then say "Bless you."

Couplets are the only acceptable way a poem can rhyme. Or maybe quadrains with 3/4 rhyming lines. Or maybe quadrains that consist of two couplets.

I should use the words "thee" and "thou" in my poems. Don't poems use that kind of language? I certainly should not use slang or current talk. In fact, poems should be Victorian in diction, through and through. No poetry has been written since the Victorian era. I must make reference to heaving bosoms and limpid pools. (The limpid pools are her eyes, duh.)

The things I write about in poems must always be pretty.

At the end of the poem I must make sure to tell you what my poem is saying, you know, to sum it up. For good measure I may do this three or four times. That's to make sure you really get it, see?





humanodon  ·  3668 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Haha! That "thee", "thou" and "thine" shit drives me nuts. What's worse, people tend to attribute those pronouns to formal poetry, even though those pronouns belong to the informal register. Sure, I get that most people are unaware that the surviving register is the formal register of Middle English, but most people learn in school that Shakespeare became popular because he wrote for the masses, not for the elite. It's not like it's some huge leap in logic.

Have you ever thought of doing more than one blog entry on popular misconceptions about poetry? Next month is more of that Nana-whatever, but for poetry.

_refugee_  ·  3668 days ago  ·  link  ·  

So, usually I have a couple of blog-post-ideas in the wings at any given moment. Because dang it it's hard to come up with an idea on the spot every week. So I come up with stuff, write it down, and shelve it. Some posts I've been working on for months on the back-burner - I'd like to do a "Form Doesn't Mean Formal" post about sonnets, but a) I "used" one of the sonnets I'd been intending to use for that post in a different post, and b) I try to meet certain metrics whenever I do a "Three Poems" post - I try to include a female and a foreign writer in each mix - so it's staying on the back burner til I can meet these metrics. Usually I know whatever post I am doing next though of course with topical stuff it changes.

As for "popular misconceptions about poetry" I have had a similar idea but a little more personal. I'd like to do a post about "things in poems that give me pause." Like, little red flags that I may notice in a poem that start making me think twice about whether I want to keep reading it. Cats are actually one of these red flags, as are gerunds. AND, couplets especially with syntactically garbled lines. It would be a more personalized post than your suggestion. I do like your suggestion but I've noticed I'm not comfortable making sweeping generalizations about stuff. However, on the other hand, there are certain mistakes that beginning poetry writers do make over and over again and the aforementioned couplets and "garbled syntax is okay" are definitely among those. Part of it is that I don't want to seem like a pundit coming down from some place "on high" saying "Don't do this!" You know, like what room do I have to tell other writers what to do?

Popular misconceptions about poetry could take a different bend than that though. I would like to take a poll first! That could be fun.

humanodon  ·  3668 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    I've noticed I'm not comfortable making sweeping generalizations about stuff

I can understand that. What I was thinking was more along the lines of, "Do poems have to be pretty?" and then some examples with a larger point in mind and maybe a little discussion of those poems definitely not a pundit-style What To Do and What Not To Do.