\nI\u2019m jumping ahead to poetry because I\u2019ve reached that point in the new writing book, which (have I told you this?) I\u2019m calling Writer to Writer<\/i>, and hoping my publisher will go along.<\/p>\n
On October 17, 2012, writeforfun wrote, I would love a post on poetry! What makes good poetry, how to find the best rhyming words, how to keep good meter…plenty more that I can’t think of right now. Actually, that’s my biggest problem – meter (am I spelling that right?). I tend to “Fudge,” as I call it, the meter so I can fit in the words or syllables to finish the thought, sacrificing rhythm for rhyme. I try not to let it become too extreme, although very few of my poems are consistent enough to be turned into songs. I also do have a hard time with rhyming, usually only using approximate rhyme, but that problem isn’t quite as extreme as the meter.<\/i><\/p>\n
I\u2019m still very much a student when it comes to poetry, although there are poems in many of my books and Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It<\/i> is a poetry collection. Last year I took two poetry classes and every January I attend a poetry retreat for female kids\u2019 book writers.<\/p>\n
Assessing quality in poetry is trickier than in stories. Most of us, I think, are confident in our judgment of novels. Good<\/i> or bad<\/i>, we pronounce, and then we\u2019re happy to spout our reasons, like, predictable or thrilling or boring or great characters, and so on. When it comes to poetry we\u2019re not so sure. The only hallmarks of a bad poem, in my opinion, are forced rhyme and sickly sweet sentimentality of the sort we find in greeting cards – which are fine for that purpose. By forced rhyme I mean something like Then Jack did run<\/i>, so as to rhyme with to have some fun<\/i>. In normal speech or prose we\u2019d say Jack ran<\/i>. The did run<\/i> sounds weird and calls attention to itself. Poems of long ago used forced rhyme. That was the convention back then and not a flaw. But modern poems go for a more natural feel.<\/p>\n
Aside from those two, I go with what I like, and generally I like poetry that speaks to my experience or that opens me up to new experiences. I\u2019m not fond of impenetrable poems that need to be puzzled over for hours, but many poetry hounds love poems that yield their meaning only slowly. Two poets I adore are Ted Kooser and Lisel Mueller. I don\u2019t have permission to reprint any of their poems, but you can find samples online. Both generally stay away from topics that aren\u2019t appropriate for kids, but they\u2019re poets for adults, so you might have a grown-up take a look first. One of my favorite Ted Kooser poems is \u201cA Jacquard Shawl.\u201d Here\u2019s a link to it, but first a warning: there’s nothing inappropriate, but it\u2019s not happy: http:\/\/www.ronnowpoetry.com\/contents\/kooser\/JacquardShawl.html<\/a>. And my favorite Lisel Mueller poem is \u201cMonet Refuses the Operation.\u201d Here\u2019s a link to that one, which is inspirational, and which, in a single poem, represents why I love poetry: http:\/\/www.poetryfoundation.org\/poem\/236810<\/a>.<\/p>\n The point is, decide for yourself what you like and what you don\u2019t. Many poems don\u2019t send me, but the ones that do are worth reading the others for. The ones I love pierce my heart.<\/p>\n As for meter, not all poems have it. Free verse, very common today, has no meter and no regular rhyme, although everything, poetry and prose alike, contains words that rhyme. In my last sentence, for example, no<\/i> and although<\/i> rhyme. Many many many fabulous poems are written in free verse.<\/p>\n My go-to book on the basics of poetry is The Teachers and Writers Handbook of Poetic Forms <\/i>(high school and above, I think, but it may be okay for younger kids – check with a librarian). Here\u2019s a snippet of what it has to say about free verse, \u201c…it demands more of the poet, because he or she must question every word, test the shape and sound of every line, and be able to defend the choices made.\u201d Sounds scary, but the idea is just that you should have a reason for what you do in a poem (which can simply be that it appeals to you that way). And that reason can change over time as we become more experienced poets. I confess that when I\u2019m writing a free verse poem I can become confused about where to end a line. I try it one way and then another and then a third. I rearrange the whole poem and switch back and forth, and finally go with what I like best, which I may change a month later if I revise.<\/p>\n Meter and form help with line ending decisions. In metered poetry, the line is divided into feet, each foot a unit of meter. Accented and unaccented syllables determine what kind of meter we have. Shakespeare wrote in iambs, which is one unaccented syllable followed by an accented one, sounding like ta dum<\/i>, as in the word complain<\/i> or the two words to eat<\/i>.<\/p>\n Here are other major kinds of meter in English:<\/p>\n \u2219 the trochee, which is the opposite of the iamb. It\u2019s an accented syllable followed by an unaccented one, as in the word scream<\/i>ing or the two words jump<\/i> in.<\/p>\n \u2219 the dactyl, which is an accented syllable followed by two unaccented ones. The word care<\/i>fully is a dactyl.<\/p>\n \u2219 the anapest, which is two unaccented syllables followed by an accented one. Into feet<\/i> would be an anapest.<\/p>\n \u2219 the spondee, which is two accented syllables. Very few words are spondees, but here\u2019s one I found online: shortcake<\/i>. This spondee sentence example comes from my Handbook<\/i>: \u201cBad heart, flat feet, sad shoes–bad news.\u201d In that sentence every word receives equal emphasis.<\/p>\n If your head is spinning, maybe this will give you comfort, I once read that it\u2019s impossible to figure out – called scanning – the meter system in a prose sentence or in a line of free verse. You can see meter only if the poet put it there, which I personally find a great relief. I\u2019ll tell you why with iambs, which I understand better than the others – because I took a class in prosody, which means the study of poetic meter and versifying, and our professor went into iambs very thoroughly.<\/p>\n It\u2019s all in the pattern. Let\u2019s take the first stanza from a sonnet I wrote about a new kind of apple. It\u2019s a Shakespearean sonnet, which means it\u2019s written in iambic pentameter with a certain (Shakespearean) rhyme scheme. Pentameter<\/i> means there are five feet – five iambs (ten syllables) per line. Here they are:<\/p>\n The Arctic Apple, perfect apple, skin If you read it out loud in a ta dum<\/i> rhythm I think you\u2019ll hear the stresses, the iambic-ness of it. Of course, that\u2019s a terrible way to read the poem for any other purpose, like meaning or feeling, but try it just for now.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s how poetic notation shows the stresses:<\/p>\n The Arc\u2019tic App\u2019le, per\u2019fect app\u2019le, skin\u2019<\/p>\n The syllable before the apostrophe gets the stress. For example, Arc<\/i> is stressed and tic isn\u2019t. I don\u2019t know how to do it on my computer, but if you want to show the unstressed syllables, you\u2019d put a little u above them.<\/p>\n And here\u2019s how poetic notation shows feet:<\/p>\n The Arc\u2019\/tic App\u2019\/le, per\u2019\/fect app\u2019\/le, skin\u2019\/<\/p>\n What\u2019s between the slashes is a foot (and the first foot doesn\u2019t start with a slash).<\/p>\n Now let\u2019s look at the word oxidize<\/i> in this line:<\/p>\n flesh slow to brown and oxidize; it\u2019s been<\/p>\n My professor explained that we look at relative stresses when we scan – figure out – meter. Oxidize<\/i> is a dactyl; that is, the first syllable is stressed. But if we look at relative stress we notice that we emphasize dize<\/i> a little more than that i <\/i>in the middle. Because of relative stress, oxidize<\/i> works as iambic. If it weren\u2019t for relative stress, metered poetry would be really hard.<\/p>\n It isn\u2019t so hard once you get used to it. If you write ten poems in iambic pentameter you\u2019ll get the feel for it, especially if you use a thesaurus. If you switch words and move words around you can say anything in iambs, because much of English falls naturally into an on-off pattern of unaccented-accented syllables. To make it even easier, it\u2019s okay in an iambic poem to throw in an occasional trochee (called a trochaic substitution) or an occasional extra syllable. It\u2019s also okay to drop the first unaccented syllable in a line and to add an unaccented one at the end. Shakespeare does all of these frequently. Still, most of the poem needs to be in iambs so that a reader can pick up the pattern. Because I\u2019m not very experienced with writing in meter, I try to stick to the straight and narrow, but that\u2019s just me.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s look at these two famous lines from Hamlet:<\/p>\n To be, or not to be–that is the question: They\u2019re written in iambic pentameter but each has eleven syllables, that last unaccented syllable hanging off the end of each line. Both lines contain trochees, trochaic substitutions. I wouldn\u2019t feel confident enough to do it, but this is Shakespeare.<\/p>\n Here it is with the stresses and the feet:<\/p>\n To be\u2019,\/ or not\u2019\/ to be\u2019\/–that\u2019 is\/ the ques\u2019\/tion: Having said all this in a very long post, I found a neat little shortcut to meter worries. For the beginning of Writer to Writer<\/i> I wrote a writing spell, which I wanted to have a strong rhythm and to feel spell-like, so I looked at the witches\u2019 spell in Macbeth<\/i> and I pretty much matched syllables and stresses.<\/p>\n Here are two lines from Macbeth\u2019s witches:<\/p>\n In the caldron boil and bake; And this is what I turned them into:<\/p>\n On the paper, laugh or wail, In some of the other lines I altered the syllables slightly but for the most part I stuck to Shakespeare\u2019s meter, and the result has a strong rhythm. There\u2019s nothing wrong with doing this. It\u2019s not cheating.<\/p>\n So here\u2019s a prompt: Pick a poem or a fragment of a Shakespearean play or song lyrics that has a strong rhythm and go syllable by syllable to come up with a new poem with entirely different words (except for the unimportant ones, like and<\/i> and the<\/i>).<\/p>\n And here\u2019s another prompt: Look at song lyrics that you like and see what\u2019s going on with the meter. Use what you learn in your own poem.<\/p>\n And another: Pick a poem you\u2019ve already written and revise it so that it\u2019s in iambs. Or write a new poem in iambs. It can be short, say six lines.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re in need of poem topics, here are a few:<\/p>\n \u2022 a spell to make something happen or to keep something from happening;<\/p>\n \u2022 a poem about winter or something you do in winter or from the POV of winter itself;<\/p>\n \u2022 a fairy tale told in a poem.<\/p>\n And here\u2019s a final prompt: Please tell me if this was much too complicated, if you wanted to throw your computer across the room, or if it was interesting, or if I went way too deep into the weeds of poetry. Tell me if you felt moved to try writing in meter. I don\u2019t think I\u2019m going to go into this level of detail in the book – or even if I’ll go into meter at all, but I would welcome feedback.<\/p>\n Next week, rhyme, which is a little less complicated.<\/p>\n Have fun, and save what you write!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019m jumping ahead to poetry because I\u2019ve reached that point in the new writing book, which (have I told you this?) I\u2019m calling Writer to Writer, and hoping my publisher will go along. On October 17, 2012, writeforfun wrote, I would love a post on poetry! What makes good poetry, how to find the best […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[103,39],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":369,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions\/369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\na blushing scarlet, flesh as pale as snow–
\nflesh slow to brown and oxidize; it\u2019s been
\nrevamped, its genes were modified. It grows<\/p>\n
\nWhether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer<\/p>\n
\nWheth\u2019er\/ ’tis no\u2019\/bler in\u2019\/ the mind\u2019\/ to suff\u2019\/er<\/p>\n
\n Eye of newt, and toe of frog,<\/p>\n
\n Days of joy and weeks of woe,<\/p>\n