Monday 15 June 2009

What is poetry?

I do not know. I do know that I cannot answer the question, What is art?, either.

There are answers that enable us to understand how poetry is constructed.

This site, Thinking Poetry, seems to be a good one for information. I know that the young sometimes decry history, or the study of ancient art, or literature, yet I know we learn much from examining that which we love.

Study the masters and figure out how they created what they did. For example, visit the Margaret Reid Traditional Poetry site for past winners. That will help you find a bar for which you can aim!
We've been studying poetry since the beginning of time:

Fowler, W.C. (1855). The English Language in its Elements and Forms. Harper & Brothers.
Morgan, J. (1814). Elements of English grammar. Goodale & Burton.

However, keep writing, look for the Margaret Reid Poetry Contest for Traditional Verse

They are accepting traditional verse poetry. They mean a poetry form that has been around for
50 years or more. They want poems that follow some kind of formal or informal pattern.
This pattern might involve rhyme, meter, length of line, repetition, or some other pattern, strict or loose.

Feet, meter, forms,
rhythm and rhyme
patterns popular
from the beginning of time.

Forms that qualify include free verse
T.S. Eliot Ezra Pound Walt Whitman Stephen Spender)

"sprung" verse
:
Gerard Manley Hopkins
narrative verse: Alfred Noyes
satirical verse:
e.e. cummings: "my sweet old etcetera" Dorothy Parker
nonsense verse: Edward Lear
lyric verse:
Tennyson
romantic verse:
Wordsworth
religious verse:
James Russell Lowell
children's verse:
A.A. Milne
comic verse and parodies:
W.S. Gilbert A.P. Herbert
also:
sonnets, haiku, ghazals, ballads, odes, villanelles, sestinas, songs, hymns

Check out this Glossary of Poetic Terms describes many forms. And traditional and exotic forms of poetry found on the winning writer's resource pages.


Odes: Praise poetry!

1 comment:

sam said...

Hi Jenn! Thanks for your various comments on my blog and for mentioning the site I'm building.

That traditional verse competition looks very interesting; I might submit a few poems of my own.