Salutations to rhyming poetry

I have been having fun facilitating a Creative Writing Group: 'Pen Men'.
To that end, I've been boning up on poetry, although most in my group are interested in publishing a book.

For myself, I found this wonderful tome:

Words to Rhyme with: A Rhyming Dictionary

(3rd ed., 2006). Checkmark Books.
A 100-page primer gives readers the essentials of poetic technique, many of which I had forgotten.

• A primer of Prosidy
• More than 80,000 words that rhyme
• A glossary defining 9,000 eccentric rhyming words
• A variety of exemplary verses
• Words rhyming on the last, the penultimate, and the antepenultimate syllable

Now, I know you can go to:

• RhymeZone rhyming dictionary and thesaurus
• FREE Online Rhyming Dictionary

On-line rhyming links - these are fabulous, but this book is great reading. There are far more rhymes in the book than on line. The original author, William R. Espy (1910 - 1999), wrote a number of terrific witty rhymes that illustrate his points. It has been updated by another (Orin Hargraves- writer and lexicographer), and reprinted.

It includes trademarked words (CheapMart, etc.) common acronyms, abbreviations, biographical and geographical names, common new technological terms (blog, pixel), slang and informal words (lemme, gotcha, shoulda, woulda, couda). The final section features some lovely quotes about poetry.

I'd forgotten all I'd taught about rhyme and meter; stanzas; line metrics; forms of lyric verse; single/double/triple rhymes; random, interior, initial and cross rhymes.

If you like writing poetry, or would like to pick it up, this is the book for you! It's a good remedy for fading brain cells, juggling syllables, words, and vocabulary, to make words and sounds fit, and say exactly what you mean. Poetry is carefully constructed and crafted.

I giggled reading it through. Here are a couple of the author's witty verses...

HAIKUS SHOW I.Q.'S

Haikus show I.Q.'s:
High I.Q.'s try haikus. Low
I.Q.'s--no haikus.

 THE EPIGRAM
The qualities rare in a bee that we meet
     In an epigram never should fail;
The body should always be little and sweet,
     And a sting should be left in its tail.

THE CLERIHEW - Don Juan at College
Don Juan
Carried on
Till they switched him from Biology
To Abnormal Psychology
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Click icon for more book review blogs @Barrie Summy

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!

• Wikipedia definition
• Poets.org definition
• Instructions for writing your own ode
• Odes written by Pablo Neruda

Writing Triolet

This is such a great place for beginners to start. You have very few lines to write, really - when it comes right down to it! Wiki says, "often all lines are in iambic tetrameter. and the first, fourth and seventh lines are identical, as are the second and final lines, thereby making the initial and final couplets identical as well."

The triolet is very brief, and tightly rhymed. It is like the pantoum, and takes part of its structure from the repetition.

iambic tetrameter

 x     /   x    /  x   /  x  /
Come live with me and be my love

A capital letter in the frame indicates a new rhyme, lower case indicates a rhyme pattern. Use an on-line rhyming dictionary to help you get started. There are several about!

A frame for the triolet looks like this:

A (first line)
B (second line)
a (rhymes with first line)
A (repeat first line)
a (rhymes with first line)
b (rhymes with second line)
A (repeat first line)
B (repeat second line)


Examples:

• “Triolet” by Robert Bridges (1876)
• “How Great My Grief” by Thomas Hardy (1901)
• “The Coquette, and After” by Thomas Hardy (1901)
• Four triolets by Sara Teasdale (1911)

Writing Poetry - more info

A Few Poetry Styles

• The hardest ever: The Sonnet, with a video.
• Haiku
• Cinquain
• Clerihew
• Writing Tanka
• Triolet
  

Sometimes a framework can help give you structure. Sometimes it only hinders. I have begun a birthday ode to one of my kids, only to abandon the frame, triolet. I couldn't be succinct enough and say what I had to say!
Here are some guidelines:

• choose a powerful beginning and ending
• look for unique phrasing
• prune your poems
• either use repetitions, or refrain from lines that are similar, but do not add another point if it does not add to the imagery
• use strong verbs and brilliant images
• use a photo for a prompt
• write of things that are familiar to you
  
• throw the poem out to the universe for help- friends with expertise can provide feedback and shape.
  

Choose intriguing rhymes.

• present original rhymes
  
• refrain from using today, and say, might and right.
• use sensory works -tactile, visual, olfactory,
• search for a framework that suits you theme or topic.

See: 10 Ways to Improve your Poems, for example!
Here, PoetryDances.ning provides more info on styles. They have a forum where you can workshop your poems! Here is a link to all of Shakespeare's sonnets. You write well by reading other's work!

Forms of Poetic Rhetoric

1. persuasion – leads reader to a belief
2. process rhetoric – assemble a stereo, “How Do I Love thee?”
3. Classification – i.e. science, What is… Defines forms.
4. Cause & Effect – post mortems
5. Compare & Contrast – i.e. Pepsi Challenge, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s sun?
6. Illustrative rhetoric – vista, TS Elliot, East Coker, summerset, Cooper’s Hill.
7. Narrative – short story, beginning, middle, end.

Content and structure: help you to consider something deeply.
Classical tragedy: mouthpiece, philosopher’s reaction = strophe=> shock and horror of the problem,

• anti-strophe => look at one side (from another spot on the stage),

• finally epode = resolution.

Dialectical thesis - consider deeply:

• Wordworth’s Intimations of Immortality.
  
• Ode on a Grecian Urn.

STANZA:
A formal division of lines in a poem. The most common are
• Couplet (two lines) • Sestet (six lines)
• Triplet (three lines) • Septet (seven lines)
• Quatrain (four lines) • Octave (eight lines)

NaPoWriMo: 30 Poems in 30 days

Get ready...April...
This might be the nudge you need!

reading about writing

When I was teaching Language Arts to my gr. 8 students, I scoured the book shelves to find sources of inspiration. I toyed with writing a book about teaching! An acquaintance, who writes fiction, rather than my non-fiction, suggested I read Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within (1986). Natalie Goldberg. This marvellous book opened up my mind and let my pen fly.

I ended up writing some poems, and joined a poetry group in Ottawa. The Canadian Poetry Association has chapters all over the country. It is a great place to go and listen to other, better poets read their works. There are some who publish their own chap books, and this is a great way to share in an inexpensive way.

There isn't much of a market for poetry, unless you are an established author. If you have a poem to publish, you can enter your name and poem into various contests. The League of Canadian Poets provides links for contests. Putting a poem into an anthology is an inexpensive way to publish, and to embed your poem with other's works.

Top of My Lungs is a book of paintings and poems. It is a beautiful book.

Ms. Goldberg's latest: Old Friend From Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir, looks to be a good one, too.







But the best is Wild Mind. It really helped me to teach writing in a better manner than before. Much of our writing as adults consists of reports and business-related writing. I found that it is much easier to teach kids to write about what they know, rather than fiction. Some bright lights will choose to go the fiction route, but most found it easier to write 'how tos' about building a campfire, or making a peanut butter sandwich.


References
Goldberg, N. (1986).Writing down the bones: Freeing the writer within, Boston: Shambhala.
Goldberg, N. (1990). Wildmind: Living the writer’s life. New York: Bantam Books.
Goldberg, N. (1993). Long quiet highway. New York: Bantam Books.
Jilks, J. (1998). Ice storm ’98. Retrieved December 8, 2007.
Jilks, J. (2004). Reading buddies: 2003/4. Retrieved December 16, 2007.
Jilks, J. (2005). Literacy and technology infusion: Multimedia projects for teachers and students. Retrieved December 8, 2007 .
Jilks, J. (2006). Literacy strategies. Retrieved December 8, 2007.