Journal # 9--On Poetry

Now that you've had a chance to dwell with poetry awhile, reflect on what you feel is its usefulness and relative importance in the grand scheme of the universe. What would life be like without poetry? What arguments could be made for doing more poetry than we do in public school?

Did your experience this time around change your relationship with poetry at all? Which was the easiest poem to write? Which was the most difficult? Are you left with any questions about poetry or poets in general? Have you any desire to read and/or write more poetry independently of this class?

Writing a Lyric Poem

Several things may help you to write an effective lyric poem. Consider the following:

Lyric poems do something. While a poet may not be entirely sure where his or her lyric is headed when beginning, a lyric manages to express emotion, capture an experience or even imagine "what if." Some lyrics may do any combination of the above.

Lyrics may be free verse poems. The key word here is 'may.' There is something to be said for letting the mood and sense of what is being described determine the length of lines and whether or when rhyme is introduced. It is possible to write a lyric using a set form or one that defies form entirely.

Lyrics, like most poems, should sound good when read aloud. Pay close attention to the language you use. Is it too prosy? (i.e. does it sound too much like the language you might use in letters or essays?). Is it possible to eliminate some dull words or introduce more exciting ones? Even free verse poems have rhythm--does your poem speed up and slow down in appropriate places? If your poem doesn't rhyme much overall, one or two rhymes may be quite effective. What other sound effects can you employ, such as alliteration or assonance?

A Couple of Examples:

"Aunt Jennifer's Tigers" by Adrienne Rich

Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen,
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.
They do not fear the men beneath the tree;
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.

Aunt Jennifer's finger fluttering through her wool
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.
The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand.

When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie
Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.
The tigers in the panel that she made
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.


"The Hollow Men" by T.S. Eliot

Narrative Poetry, a note

Simply put, a narrative poem is a poem that tells a story. But more than that, it is a poem that combines storytelling and poetry. A story written in verse and an imaginative poem with a very thin thread of narrative are both narrative poems, but neither fully exploits the possibilities of narrative poetry. Both the story aspect and the poetic aspect of the narrative poem are stronger when they are balanced and essential parts of the whole. What this means is that the poetic form should enhance the story, rather than just being incidental. Examples of a good balance of poetry and story are found in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and Christina Rossetti's “The Goblin Market.”

Why Poetry?

But why choose to tell a story as a poem instead of as a short story or novel? The story part of a narrative poem could probably also be effectively written as a short story, but the effect on the reader will be different because short stories and poems use different techniques. So even if your story is a good short story, you could try writing it as a poem to change the way it works for the reader. The story as poem might accentuate different motifs than the story as short story. Perhaps as a poem it would be more visual or more immediate in effect, whereas as a short story it is subtler or takes longer to sink in. You probably won't know until you try it and see what happens.

Characteristics

While a short story generally has some kind of rising action leading to a climax and then a resolution (though this becomes less true as writers become more experimental with form), a narrative poem often ends before the action is resolved. Thus a narrative poem may present an unsolved or unsolvable mystery or situation. An example of this is found in Edgar Allen Poe's fantastic rhyming poem “The Raven.”


Try writing your own story in verse. You might want to use your skills of imitation in order to settle upon a type of stanza that you can use.

Narrative Poetry

The Ballad of the Monkey

by ewcwriter


It is some monkey business
going back a year or three
a matter whose like ‘twas unseen
in o’er a century.
When to Niagara a circus came,
escaped from that circus
a cunning and clever monkey
fled to Stamford Campus
He stoppeth by the office guidance
to make a timetable
and picked some courses from a list
of which he would be able.
Math, he thought, would be no fun
and science seemed such nonsense
‘twere monkeys enough in tech already
but in English he’d have a chance.
Devitt and Pierce, Baty and Martin
the choices they seemed rough,
but then he found a class in which
a monkey could pass unconscious
And that is how the monkey came
to be in Writer’s Craft.
He spent a week just watching all
and every day he laughed.
Never before had he heard such fuss
over such a little chore.
Some days he could not hear at all
when Char and Adam snored.
But the loudest sound of all by far
Nearly drove him out of his mind.
‘Twas the day when ballads were at hand
and my how those kids whined.
Well, not all, not quite there were a few
who thought poetry had merit
to separate the hearty from Hale,
the monkey’s from the ferrets.
The monkey knew, he knew he knew
a poem could be magic
and those who say "I can not"
are nothing less than tragic.
And so it was when report time came,
students ranked from best to worst
of all the students: boys and girls,
the monkey he was first!
It is some monkey business
going back a year or three
a matter whose like ‘twas unseen
in o’er a century.

The Sonnet

-usually a thinking poem
-14 lines
-iambic pentameter (10 syllables/line is “close enough”)
-abab cdcd efef gg rhyme scheme (or other variation)
-generally poses a problem in first four lines, explores the idea in the next four lines and undergoes a shift in the next four lines.
-couplet at the end gives it closure

Sample:

SHAKESPEARE’S SONNET 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.