Poetry Lesson 01 -- Quick Summary Free Poetry Course from Cupiderosbooks.com

Writing Lessons

WRITING POETRY -- LESSON 01:

POETRY WRITING CLASSES

QUICK SHEET SUMMARY

WHY DO PEOPLE WRITE POETRY?

* THEY THINK IT EASIER THAN A STORY OR NOVEL

* THEY THINK IT DOESN'T REQUIRE STURCTURE

* THEY SAY IT TAKES LESS TIME AND EFFORT

* THEY THINK POETRY IS MORE ROMANTIC, HARDER, CHALLENGING

* THEY WANT TO EXPRESS THEIR FEELINGS, THOUGHTS, OPINIONS

All of the above are perfectly legitimate reasons to write poetry. Depending on the person's natural talents, length of time writing poetry, and reading poetry, poetry might be easier and take less time and effort. Though in general, prose is easier for writing something to be understood by others.

However, don't confuse easier with quality. Easier and quality don't always go hand in hand. Poetry does lend itself to expressing emotions more readily. Thoughts might be another matter and opinions can be easier or harder. Poetry is an emotional writing technique, but it's highly personal (another reasons why people are drawn to it). Poetry by nature tends toward the symbolic and cryptic because you have fewer words to work with. Symbolic and cryptic writing must be done carefully with a high focus on understandability by the reader audience.

Also to say one is a poet, has a kind of fame about it. Poets are suppose to be romantic on paper at least. Poetry doesn't give you that many words to work with. The sentence structures are tighter, shorter. So yes, poetry is harder and challenging.

Now why would a person want to write poetry given those last restrictions, less words, shorter sentences, more personal cryptic symbols no one probably will understand?

Because it's fun! Write poetry to have fun. Experiment in your poetry. I'm going to list the structures of poetry and the more you know about structure the more you'll be able to say what you want in a poem, even with the restrictions.

POETRY STRUCTURE. WHAT IS IT?

* BONES HOLDING UP THE POEM.

* STEEL HOLDING UP THE POEM.

* ARCHITECTURE OF THE POEM.

* WHY DO YOU NEED STRUCTURE ANYWAY?

Without structure you might as well write some random short sentences, one after another and call it a poem. That is incredibly easy to do. No one may understand your poem, but it is very easy to say those famous two words "I'm finished."

Without structure, you might as well write out some prose sentences in a paragraph and then just break those sentences into shorter lengths at odd or unique places and call it a poem. Most true poets reading it will recognize it's not a poem though.

Without structure, you skip having to think about your poem. What your poem means. Why you are writing it? What effect your poem is suppose to have? Whether it reaches your audience probably is of no importance.

So yeah, you need structure to make the poem shine, stick in the reader's mind, to make sense to someone other than yourself. Think of structure as your friend. You can write better, faster, more understandable poetry with structure than without. If you get good writing poetry without structure, you'll find out you are just subconsciously using structure any way; so you might as well use structure willfully, consciously.

* SAMPLES OF POETRY STRUCTURE

LINE: A short complete or not complete sentence, sentence lengths.

My love is blue unlike the rose.

My love is blue, so blue

STANZA: A group of sentences forming a complete movement/phase or meaning in the poem or even entire poem. Stanza have names by the number of lines they contain. This has nine lines. Couplets, for example, contains two lines. Some stanzas have a number of lines and a rhyme scheme or format. Some stanzas are metered, stresses and unstressed syllables. Stanzas can do amazing things and some stanzas are better for other things than other stanzas. Stanzas can rhyme or not rhyme. Stanzas come in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 or more patterns.

My love is blue unlike the rose.

I doesn't bloom and spread

It's wings. It doesn't soar

High in the sky. So why, O why

Should I follow the clouds,

Hoping for lofty, flowers to

Touch the ground. My love

Floats away out of reach--

Unlike the red, red rose I seek.

Okay. That was a off-the-top-of-my-head poem. It does contain structure beyond the stanza formation though. Paraphrasing a poem is a good way to understand the poem structure.

Rosy Cloud Poem

My love is blue unlike the rose.

(opening line, topic)

It doesn't bloom and spread

It's wings. It doesn't soar

High in the sky. So why, O why

(Peak of the poem)

Should I follow the clouds,

Hoping for lofty, flowers to

(Resignation to loss)

Touch the ground. My love

Floats away out of reach--

(Pinning what could have been)

Unlike the red, red rose I seek.

(ending poem and thoughts)

Check out my blog and click on the Bob Byways link under the blog for "Everything You Wanted to Know About Poetry and were afraid to asks for further explanation of these poetry terms."

PUNCTUATION is structure. Awesome things can be done with punctuation. Use it.

BEGINNING, MIDDLE AND ENDING of a poem is structure

RHYMES or NO RHYMES are structure.

METER: stresses mixed with unstressed is structure.

PULSATION OR BEATS in a poem is structure.

CONCRETE WORDS are structure, good words to use, understandable words. Tree, rock, book, queen, king, girl, boy, rose, heart, air, bell, ring, bitter, sweet, hit, stroke, press, sun, moon. Things anyone can immediately see, taste, touch, hear, smell. Concrete words can be used alone.

ABSTRACT WORDS are structure, but don't use too many. Abstract words tend to be nothing or everything words. Love, hate, pain, frustration, joy, happiness, wonderful, what do they bring to mind? No particular thing or so many things. Abstract words have to be used carefully with concrete words. If you have to choose between abstract words and concrete words choose concrete. Abstract words must be used with concrete words. My love is a red, red, rose by Shakespear comes to mind. Love is abstract. Red rose is concrete.

CONNOTATIONS AND DENOTATION WORDS are structure.

CONNOTATIONS suggests several meanings so they are a good for poetry. These words have a kind of abstractness about them.

DENOTATION words are exactly words like concrete words, but not of the best kind.

Vehicle is a connotation of car. Car is a denotation word for vehicle. As you've notice vehicle could suggests an airplane, buggy, wagon, train, car, motorcycle. Well car is basically a car, maybe some different type of car, Lexus, ford, Honda, but car is all you get out of the word.

METAPHORS are structure. A type of imagery. Imagery is very important in poetry because again it has a concrete-conotation-abstract quality about it. Best of all worlds.

SIMILIES are structure. A type of imagery.

SYMBOLS are structure. A type of imagery that grows in importance as the poem proceeds.

ALLUSIONS are structure. A type of historical imagery. She didn't believe in dropping crumbs in the hopes of finding her way out of the forest of love, if her relationship failed miserably. Well this alludes to Hansel and Gretal.

SYLLABIC LINES are structure. The number of syllables in a line.

TITLES are structure. Go for three or four words or less. A good title can help you structure and write your poem. Don't give the entire poem away in your title. You hint at the poem's meaning or content. You suggests enough emotional content about the poem. This is after all the first thing the reader hears and sees when reading your poem. Whether before or after the poem is done, give a lot of thought to your poem's title.

You can have one line or some lines or one stanza represent a thought, place, mood, time.

POEM MOVIE DIRECTOR

Start thinking of yourself as a movie director, directing a poem. In the first stanza or line we're going to show neutral person not in love. In the second and third stanzas the love of her life comes on the scene. In the fourth stanza, something prevents the lovers from getting together. In the final stanza, they lovers unite and live happily ever after.

If you start doing this in your mind, you'll find it get easier and easier to plot out your poem.

Poems are short in nature. So you can easily contained the entire sweep of the poem in your mind. Whereas this is a little more difficult with a novel. *laughing*

POEM PLOT I

Line 1 or Stanza 1: An emotion is a color is an object

Lines 2 and 3 or Stanza 2: It takes action, action, action, but not an action.

Line 4 or Stanza 3: Takes action in familiar object making the poet suffer

Lines 5 and 6 or Stanza 4: Poet ponders following the object in Line 1 or Stanza 1.

Lines 7 and 8 or Stanza 5: Poet wants something the opposite of Line 4 or Stanza 3.

Line 9 or Stanza 6. Poet wants Line 1 or Stanza 1 object.

If you recognize this poem plot, well I just used it for the Rosy Cloud Poem

WORDS are structure. For example you can take any poem, novel and take one word from each line or as many lines as you want. Then you can make a new poem using those words.

POEM PLOT II

blue

bloom

wings

Why

flowers

ground

out

rose

Blue Ground Poem

Blue mood, blue moon, where in my heart is room.

Bloom mood, zoom mood, let my blood run hot.

Wings fling, trust things, not yet, the unseen.

Why blue, blue mood cause tide-like scenes?

Follow the moment, travel the now in love

Flowering all around. Listen, look and leap

Off the rocky, lonely ground

Out into waiting arms, warm as the

Rose is red.

Now I used those words from Rosy Cloud poem mostly in the beginning of the new Blue Ground Poem. However, you could have put the chosen words in the beginning, middle of the line or stanza!

* FASTEST WAY TO LEARN POETRY STRUCTURE

Write form poetry. Yep. Sonnets, Villanelles, Pantoums and the like. By writing form poetry you will automatically be learning poem structures. Never mind others have created them. If you write enough form poetry, you'll find you can still say what you feel and think.

The point is structure takes learning and great poetry always has good structure!

Those two sample poems I just wrote are free verse, but they have structure. Once you learn structure you will find your Free Verse Poetry FREED UP! You will find many more ways to write free verse.

The second best way is when you read a poem, stop and asks yourself where is the architecture, the structure of the poem. Examine it closely it. So many stanzas, lines, rhymes or no rhymes, beats/pulsations, is it metered or not, what concrete words, how many abstract words, how many metaphors, similes?

* IT'S WIDELY RECOGNIZED A POEM SHOULD HAVE

CONTENT

BEAUTY

CRAFTSMANSHIP (structure) AND TECHNIQUE (creativity)

A SENSE OF BEYONDNESS (something brought from beyond down to earth)

* IT'S WIDELY RECOGNIZED A BAD POEM LACKS

TRUE FEELING/EMOTION

CONTENT (trite subject treatement; far too mysterious to understand)

BEAUTY (inexact imagery, wording)

CRAFTSMANSHIP (structure) AND TECHNIQUE (creativity)

A SENSE OF BEYONDNESS (trite)

POETRY TECHNIQUES

Use your imagination. CREATIVITY IS THE BEST TECHNIQUE. The following are sample lines or stanzas you can put in a poem. This is by far, not all the things you can put in a poem line or stanza!

Something you found.

Something you're shocked about.

Something talks/speaks to you.

Something unreal, surreal

Something transforms from one object to another

Something you use to dislike that you now like

What you learned?

Conclusion about the poem, subject or idea.

Describe how loves develops.

Describe how love fades away.

Describe how love slips away.

Discuss reality.

Something related to hearing.

Something related to seeing

Something related to tasting

Something related to touching

Something related to hearing and seeing.

Something related to tasting and speaking.

Something outside.

Something inside.

Something you summarize

Something we've all forgotten

Something we all remember

Something observed

Something in a place it shouldn't be.

Something not observed.

Something animal or animal like

Something that is a What if?

Denotation of a word verses the connotation of a word

Metaphor.

Symbols that connects or thread the entire poem.

A color.

Something revealed to you.

Image poem.

Category of love poems poem, lost love, found love.

* WRITER AND EDITOR

Every writer has two selves. Writer is the creative self. They're emotional, intellectual want to shout, scream, tell someone one what they feel, saw, heard or experienced. This is the self that will put an entire novel down on paper without punctuation, if punctuation has never been learned. If punctuation has been practiced and is felt okay with, the writer will write as fast as they can with punctuation. This is why studying punctuation is important. Because eventually your writer self will become comfortable with punctuation and it will not hinder her a bit.

Your Editor self is nickpicky, detail oriented, wants to see if anyone else can understand what your writer just wrote in her rash of emotionality and frenzy. Your Editor says, well this imagery about the ball and the spear is rather obtuse, no one will understand it, get rid of one or the other. Let's put some correct spelling and punctuation in this freaking poem or novel. Your Editor self will try to complain about these issues while your Writer self is creating, busy, looking head tilted toward the clouds. DON'T LET HER. TELL YOUR EDITOR SELF TO SHUT UP. SHE'LL GET HER TIME TO FIX THE PROBLEMS WHEN YOUR WRITER SELF IS DONE.

So you'll have to structure this use of time between the two selves you write with. You can alternate however you wish. But in general, let your Writer self indulge in what's to be put on paper creatively; what the overall message of the poem, story or novel is. Then after the creative content is down on paper, let your Editor self tear away the nonproductive stuff, put in punctuation and so forth. Then turn it back over to your Writer self to see that all things important are still there. So yeah, as the poem nears the finished product you might have your Writer self and Editor self working together--this is near the end though!

Structure makes poetry, and prose fiction writing a lot easier. It makes it fun too.

SO GET OUT THERE AND PUT PEN/PENCIL TO PAPER

OR COMPUTER KEYBOARD TO SCREEN AND WRITE YOUR POEM!