"a right guid-willie waught ..."

Your assignment is to find the full text of the annual song sung on the eve of January 1st.

Read it, scan it (in your mind, if it's library book or something like that) and learn from it.

To me, its author is a master of pretty much everything I've been saying this year.

"But what's the mortar?"

Studying foreign languages that are really foreign (those that force you to learn their grammar before you can read them with any continuous ability at all) can benefit those who want to learn more about their own language.

I came to that kind of language learning late.

That feels odd for me to say, since I was picking polysyllabic words out of newspapers when I was ... well, really young. (But no one should push a child to learn to read, IMHO. I wasn't.)

People I met in college who were really good at, say, Latin, started at a relatively young age. (Whether they were pushed or not, I have no idea.)

I never learned to read continuously the languages I took in college. But that doesn't mean I learned nothing. Just doing it with even moderate success under grading pressure exercised the language "muscles" in my brain sufficiently to help me write better.

If you're not in school now, maybe you could try to teach one to yourself -- but that's really hard! (You've got to test and grade yourself, as well as check your own homework.)

Maybe you could read good books about language in general, instead. I'm afraid I have no suggestions beyond the Otto Jespersen book I mentioned earlier this year.

The idea is to get your hands directly onto the building blocks of your medium -- language. I wish you the best of luck.

---

This is my last post of the year. I plan to take a break from weekly posting for a while. But during that time, I'll try to do my best to post as it seems most people do -- whenever the mood strikes and the opportunity presents -- as often as I can.

Happy holidays.

"Words, words, words ... "

Words are the bricks in our buildings.

Yes, we can use them to build a wall between us and our readers, or we can use them to construct edifices for them to explore. It's up to us.

What's great about English, in particular, is the richness of its many nuances. We have denotation, connotation, historic definitions, associated or applied definitions, plus various "senses" depending on context. And various usages, depending on the application of those "senses."

Wow! Sounds pretty complex when you think about it.

Usually, these things are intuitive to most users of the language. We poets join the linguists in consciously thinking about them, but we have different aims in so doing.

Expression is what we do, but it doesn't hurt to have a little background in the architecture of language before we begin to express ourselves.

Yes, You -Can- Use Colored Chalk ...

You may want to add some "personality" to your verse, especially in sequences.

The most well-known examples are the collected poems of Robert Browning. Famous for his dramatic monologues in blank verse, Browning also wrote some in rhyme -- sometimes in experiments so bold few dared to try them (at least that I know of).

He almost always invented a character (or used historical ones) to "deliver" his poem, prompting the reader to discern for themselves who was "talking" and why they were saying just what Browning had them say.

Swinburne (mentioned many posts ago) and Thomas Hardy (same) were among the few who emulated Browning's rhetorical method with success. Both also made their own forays into metrical expression, again following Browning's example.

But there's another, more subtle, use of developing a "persona" for some of your poems. Again, we return to Shakespeare: it has been suggested that his sonnets are less like letters or diary entries than they may appear.

The master dramatist may have chosen elements of other people's personalities, or (more likely) just invented some of those elements, and carefully blended them with his own to create a "spokesman" for his personal poems.

This is pretty much "upper-level" stuff for a writer: it takes a lot of self-knowledge to see how this could be done as an individual, and a lot of skill to actually pull it off.

But I thought I'd pass it along now, in case you have some of those poems that are a little too personal you can't bring yourself to burn.

Ask yourself this: does the mirror occasionally reflect someone else?

My "No Chalk" Day

Ahem, pay attention class. Time for the weekly lesson ... (raises chalk in hand and approaches board behind him -- then freezes).

I have no lesson for you today, or really anytime. It's a persona I put on just to help me phrase things here.

And that's especially true today, since I can offer nothing better than a link (which, as usual, you'll have to copy-and-paste into your browser, I'm afraid) to three things much better than I can offer.

Or, perhaps you'd enjoy some winter exercise like a walk to the public library in your neighborhood.

In either case, Poetry magazine's December 2008 issue has three articles I can recommend to you enthusiastically.

An interview with Seamus Heaney, a memoir by Fannie Howe and a book review by Michael Robbins all deal with subjects I've touched on here -- and in far greater depth than I can.

They are at poetryfoundation.org . Just click on the magazine cover in the upper right corner of the home page, then click on "Table of Contents." Scroll down that page to find the articles.

Enjoy!

The Long and Winding Mirrorball

It's funny (strange/ha-ha -- either or both, depending) how what we write ends up as a mirror.

You set something aside after you finish re-reading it 20x ("I can't believe how ... ," etc.), and then come back to it and see yourself reflected back in it.

It can make us a little sad, or feel grateful, or both or something else -- but whatever it does to us, we've just (if it works at all) polished a mirror. Is it reflecting something somebody else has been seeing all along (in you, on you, from you ...), or is it something completely new?

Is it -- in other words -- a revelation or a self-revelation (or both)? Do you add "merely" to "self-revelation," or can you confidently state this revelation is unique to time?

These questions are very hard to answer. But, I think they're important, nonetheless.

Seeking the answers can put us a little further on the path to the next poem.

This is a journey, isn't it?

That's icky ... .

Ick.

Though it's not a word as such, it's an expression we all know.

An "exclamation used to express disgust" -- that's according to the Oxford American. (It's in the dictionary, so I guess some might say that makes it a word.)

Now, think of how many famous rhyming poems you know right off the top of your head that use -ick as a rhyme sound.

OK, get an anthology and look through it. See how many you find rhyming -ick.

Not having an anthology to hand, I'll stick my neck out and say, "not many." (I'm sure when I do check, I'll be somewhat surprised. But I'll welcome that.)

My point is that just because a word rhymes doesn't make it a good one. "Euphony" -- yes, that's part of what I mean. But also, "association" -- that is, what the reader is likely to associate with the word or the sound itself, if anything.

Sick, trick, flick, pick, slick, stick, kick, d--- , chick, brick, lick, hick, quick, tick, wick and ... yick (OK, not a word). Et cetera.

Clique, pique, meek, sleek, reek, geek, creek, etc. for slant rhymes.

See what I mean? If you're not going for overall humorous effect or satiric bite, you're going to have to justify using that rhyme sound somehow. And there might be very good reasons, beyond the two I've mentioned. But they're probably going to need to be specific.

There are other sounds in this category, BTW. I've just picked (ouch!) an obvious one.

And, there are ways to get away with using some of them, if necessary. Maybe I'll get into that another day.

P.S.: If you look at this post carefully, (including the title), you'll spot two easy "get-arounds."

"Getting so much better all the time!"

I've made small but significant edits and additions to the July 7, 2008 entry in this blog, the one titled "I knew that, but I didn't know I knew that."

The title's ironic because I am learning more, bit by bit, about the subject of that particular entry.

Keep scanning, mark your caesuras (in the day, I used // in very light pencil) and have fun! :D

Next time, I hope to get more into recognition of good rhyme sounds.

Ouch!

I'm learning the hard way (is there any other?) that sometimes you write a poem that's just for you.

Though you never (or hardly ever, that I can recall) hear of a "professional" poet writing a poem for themselves and no one else, I have a feeling that, if they were honest about it, they do.

Now, if people know about you, and they are curious about your work, they're going to get their hands on these poems someday, too. And you'll be judged by those probably more than any other thing you've done, whether those "readers" have the acumen or finesse to interpret them correctly or not.

So, you've got to write those private things knowing you'll either have to burn them yourself as soon as you write them or leave them to scrutiny at a time and place out of your control, and maybe beyond your consent.

That's why you never hear a "professional" poet admitting he or she has some private work.

I'm mentioning this now, my dear readers, because if you've been reading these little messages all year, you may have noticed your work improving. And that means you're starting to attract more attention.

It feels good, at first. But beware: there are thorns woven in those laurels.

"Trochee trips from long to short ... "

The last resolution I'm going to deal with for now is really for trimeter, specifically trochaic trimeter:

TUM ta TUM ta TUM ta TUM

If you're writing a trochaic line, you pretty much need that extra TUM on the end of the line. There is no additional 'ta' at the start of the next line, either.

I forget what that extra TUM is called just now. But you need it in lines of trochees, or your line just keeps on rolling down a winding staircase. (This is also true for lines of dactyls.)

After this, for the next few weeks, I'm going to get back to talking with you about more general matters. See you then.

Masculine/Feminine

One more, I think, on (mostly) pentameter resolutions, and then I'll try to move on.

Here's the last major one I know of (the others being variations on the first two):

taTUM taTUM taTUM taTUM taTUMta
TUM taTUM taTUM taTUM taTUM

This is really (for my purposes, anyway) a pentameter resolution from the Augustan Age, as best I can recall.* Shakespeare, for instance, wasn't this persnickety. If a line had a "feminine" ending, so be it. He didn't (as best I recall) have an overwhelming need to "resolve" it with a TUM at the start of the next line. But if that next line rhymed with the "feminine" line, it had to measure out the same way.

taTUM taTUM taTUM taTUM taTUMta
taTUM taTUM taTUM taTUM taTUMta

Milton was the same in his rhymed verse, as far as I know (and both authors in blank verse, as well).

You maybe can see by now these "resolutions" are also opportunities for a softening effect, just as the others I've mentioned can punch things up a little, or even shape them up some.

Next time, a resolution you normally see in shorter lines of verse.

___
*(11/7/15) Since I first posted this, I've had an opportunity to test this particular resolution out: it doesn't work, at least in English. Go with Shakespeare and Milton. Pope and every other major poet does it that way, also.

(Re)Solving the prepositional dilemma

The most useful resolution I can think of, besides the one I mentioned two weeks ago, is this one:

taTUM taTUM tata TUMTUM taTUM

or wherever you need to put it in the line.

English has so many prepositional phrases ("in a ... " "at the ..." "to a ..." etc.) that this one comes in very handy.

But, this use also has its demands: the poet will need a strong pair of one-syllable words (better known as "adjective" followed by "noun") to fit the TUMTUM that follows.

And that's just one example.

Keep scanning!

Fundamentals

It's probably important to remember at this point to avoid taking things too seriously, in poetry writing and in life.

Writing poems in meter and rhyme needs to be fun at some point, even when you're not necessarily trying to be funny. 

I just read something on a wiki that points to this. 

"Most people's deepest vocational passions fall within three categories: teaching, healing and creating," it said. 

Is there a better definition for the calling of "poet?" 

I've written before on how relating experience in poetry can teach, how the craft of the poem can heal and how the power of creativity is, well, creative.

Doing good can be enjoyable. In fact, it should be. 

So, go do some: write a poem. 

And, don't be too self-critical, but remember: a poem must work for its audience as well as for the poet.

Resolve it!

If you've been writing strictly iambic lines, please don't be offended by the last post. I was not calling your verse "doggerel."

But it's possible that others might.

It's all about (remember that post, dear readers?) sticking to what you feel is right. And, about making changes in what you're doing only when you feel it's good and proper.

Resolutions are ways to keep your verse interesting to readers. But there are reasons to keep things regular, in some cases.

For instance, I've been looking at verse for hymns pretty closely lately, and most of those I've studied come out in straight "ta-TUMs." They need to do that, I suppose, to fit the requirements of the musical measure: SM, CM, LM, etc.

Also, poems purposely written with a hymn-like feel will likely do the same (think Emily Dickinson, for one).

But perhaps it's nice to know the lines don't need to do that, as long as some simple guidelines are kept in mind.

And there's something you may want to keep in mind as well before those guidelines are approached.

Here it is: a caesura is a slight pause or break in a line of English verse. Shorter verse lines, such as the tetrameter or trimeter, usually leave that little pause at the end (usually alternating with period or semicolon stops).

Those of you who are studying pentameter verse may have noticed the caesura usually falls somewhere in the middle of that line.

I say "somewhere" because those of you who've been scanning pentameter lines probably have noticed that it's (fairly) rare for one of the masters (Shakespeare, Milton, etc.) to split that third foot in the middle with a caesura. So there's naturally some variation in where that little break goes, pentameter-wise.

It's considered a good thing. :)

Running from the Dog

It's a word for bad writing: "doggerel." My handy dictionary says it comes from Middle English and refers to "dog Latin" -- apparently an insult.

Non-scholars back in those days (I imagine) would have experienced Latin outside church in metrical form, for the most part. And bad meter would result in some pretty "dog-gone" poetry.

For our part, it's what we dread: being called a writer of "doggerel." We toilers in the "traditional" field can pluck some pretty rotten grapes (or apples, or peaches, or ... ) when we just don't pay attention to what we're doing in meter.

Almost always, your English doggerel is going to come out stepping too regular: ta-tum, ta-tum, ta-tum, ta-tum, ta-tum. Line after line after line of it just ends up sounding stupid or forced. Dog-gone it.

But highly irregular meter is going to be just as bad, in the sense of not sounding like verse at all. It's the insult at the other end of the metrical-insult continuum: "prosaic."

Where's the balance? OK, you have been scanning poems, haven't you? You have been scanning a lot of them, right?

You've nailed "Lycidas," and "In Memoriam" and a bunch of sonnets by now -- and you don't need me any more ... . (sniffs away teardrop)

Ta-TUM ta-TUM TUM-ta ta-TUM ta-TUM

It's called a "resolution".* What's above is only one of several possibilities.

But you know that already, right?

Next time: That little pause.


*Note: The actual term is 'substitution' for English prosody. The term 'resolution' comes from Classical prosody. I use 'resolution' here to remind people of music, as in 'resolving' a note or chord from dissonance to something that sounds more regular. I don't think I'm the first to do this.

And the winners are ...

Here they are: my five winning blogs, as required by my own Premio Arte Y Pico award.

They are:

www.ramblingrose.com/poetry/formalpubs.html

The entire site is very good, by a poet who has already won prestigious awards for her poetry. What I'm awarding is this particular page. She maintains it, and it should prove useful to you.

www.osfrjournal.blogspot.com

A place to publish, yes, but really a place to read about other poets. Again, a maintained site well worth your while.

www.klstil.blogspot.com

A fine "diary" blog by a conscientious educator.

www.carolpeters.blogspot.com

A blog in My Blog List opposite, by someone I know, I like and I respect. She always posts others' work, though her own is excellent.

www.donaldhall.blogspot.com

A blog in My Blog List opposite, by someone I don't know, and whose blog never fails to introduce me to something I didn't know before, even if a particular post concerns a poet I do know something about.

Each of the winners must:

1) Choose 5 blogs that you consider deserving of this award based on creativity, design, interesting material, and overall contribution to the blogger community, regardless of the language.

2) Post the name of the author and a link to his or her blog by so everyone can view it.

3) Each award-winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award.

4) The award-winner and the presenter should post the link of the “Arte y pico" blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award.

5) Please post these rules.

Congratulations to all!



....

A rose is still a rose (even a little one)

I'm not the biggest fan of "The House of Life," the sonnet sequence by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It's a Victorian-era classic, no doubt, but I just think Rossetti's real gift was for painting. That his verse was as good as it was is amazing.

OK, that said, I think one of his sisters was his superior when it came to the written word. Christina Rossetti is best known for a children's story (in verse), and for the words to a beautiful Christmas hymn.

However, this reputation does not convey fully her poet's skill and versatility. Allow me to provide at least this link to the treasure trove of high-quality verse this lady left us. Try

http://gutenberg.org/etext/19188

Or, perhaps better still, you might search your local bookseller for the Penguin Classics paperback of her complete poems.

She has several sonnet sequences of her own you may wish to explore.

My list of award winners is almost complete. I hope to have it for you next time.

Papa (or Mama), Don't Preach!

I remember one night in particular. It was "Open Mic" again, and, as usual, I was enjoying myself -- listening to great material and excited about reading my own.

Then, one well-intentioned, but (to me) misguided individual got up to read her work for the first time. A rhyming ditty in a semi-hip-hop vein, the poem meandered from her early wayward life to one of the straight-and-narrow.

OK, that was it, right? No -- that was just the preamble. The rest was a sermon in (not-very-well-done) rhyme. It seemed interminable, verse after verse.

Several minutes later (well past the courtesy limit -- and limiting in turn how long the rest of us could read), she finally concluded with an angry-sounding ... something.

I applauded, as did the others, just barely.

There's a place for what's known as "didacticism" in art. Teaching, rather than preaching, is allowed -- if you know what you're doing.

I feel that the work of (AFAIK) Alexander Pope wasn't preachy, and neither was (what I've read) of George Crabbe (though there were sermons implied in his work). Both are kind of hard to read for me, because the didactic tone, however well done, can wear me down pretty fast.

In general, I think we have to try and avoid both preaching and teaching. Expression is what we're looking for, and if, in that expression, we find something new we'd like to pass along, I think that's certainly OK. It's what we're all about, in fact.

But when we dwell on it ad nauseum, be it from the mountaintop or the pulpit, we are imposing on our readers' or listeners' time and trouble. And, usually, we are doing it from an attitude of arrogance (however unwittingly). That last is the real "tell," isn't it?

Who wants to listen to that?

But it's a temptation I think we, as poets, need to stay alert in avoiding.

The forum we're allowed can be such an easy trap.

(BTW, as I was editing this thing two days after pre-posting it, I realized I'd just fallen into the trap myself! See what I mean?)

Next time: The lesser-known (and better) Rossetti.

\o/

I received an award last month from kayla in her blog found here

http://ocdliveshere.blogspot.com/

Details are at her July 29, 2008 entry. BTW, her blog is a candid and courageous account of her successful confrontation with obsessive-compulsive disorder. I recommend highly it to you, along with her creative blog

http://www.thefourteener.blogspot.com/

Long-time readers of my blog will notice we share an interest in that meter, among other things creative.

Thank you, kayla. :)

I must also add the award conveys several responsibilities to its recipients. One of them is that I find five other blogs to award, as well.

Nominations are welcome! 

The Seed's the Thing ...

A lot of what we do involves sequence. We choose a word, then another, and then another after that.

The meaning, the sound, the structure all must follow in a certain order. Not so in free verse. After all, it's called "free" for a reason.

What happens, in traditional verse, after we get to the last line?

"The End?"

Not necessarily. Sonnet sequences were common, once upon a time. As were sequences in "rime royal." Et cetera.

You don't necessarily have to narrate to establish a sequence. You need just a line of thought, a developing feeling, an insight. An intuition that grows into something bigger, like a tiny seed into a live oak.

Some say Shakespeare's sonnets, when unscrambled, tell, or at least imply, a story. Want more? Google "Sir Denis Bray."

Don't you love it when I give you homework?

Sound Weaving

Euphony has its place, especially among the discordant. If all you do is string pretty sounds together, you may have something nice-sounding, but meaningful?

You may need to blend the sweet with the not-so, weave wool into the silk, to get the right effect or to find the right word.

I guess that's why they call it "art."

Down the Road We Go

Rhyming sits at the summit of the euphonic art. It's not just a trick or a tack-on to your traditional poem.

Like tires on an automobile, it's what meets the road as far as the sound of a traditional poem goes (or doesn't go). The ancient art of alliteration forms the axle, the urgent but gentle substructure of assonance the spoked wheel, but rhyme is the rubber on the road, the place where you feel the bump.

And like automobiles (or personal computers), traditional poems are evolutionary devices: the early "motor coaches" of the Model T and Benz era (and before) laid the groundwork for the latest Lincoln or Kompressor models. The new ones are faster and fancier, for sure, but essentially no different.

You may not write like Shakespeare or Chaucer (or need to), and you may not speak quite the same language, but you (and I) must drive the same highways.

Why It's Hard ('cause ...)

First, you might want to glance at the previous two posts to make sense of this one.

Second, you might want to review this entire weblog (so very nice, thank you, Google! :) ) briefly to get a better sense of What This Is All About.

And Third, you might want to consider this: the physical sound of your poem becomes a lot more important once you start to rhyme.

Not to say that free-verse poems don't sound good. It's just that they don't have to sound "good" to the ear, necessarily, to succeed as a poem.

But euphony becomes crucial when you start to rhyme. Even if you want to make disharmonious sounds with words, you still must consider what sounds good before you make your words sound "bad."

Really good rhyme sounds are both numerous and euphonic. What's euphonic depends on you, naturally. And your aesthetic. And your taste. And your critical ear. And your ... .

All the stuff I've been talking about, in other words. In combination. All at once.

See now why it's hard?

Rhymes in Time (We Know!)

To me, the art of choosing rhyme words is less about finding a word at the end of a line that says what you want to say and, to boot, sounds a lot like another word in an earlier line. It's more about finding the word that does do that, but also sets you to thinking.

I was looking earlier today at a poem about someone getting a new knife. It's great song-like poem that has a nice twist, and it explores that twist a little.

One end word was "glint." The poet didn't rhyme that word (though he did others), but he could have, thought I. He could have chosen "hint," "tint," "stint," for instance. Each of the words would have ended up dramatically changing the course of the poem's meaning.

For that particular poem, it would have been a bad idea. But that's not always the case.

Sometimes choosing a rhyme that ends up changing the entire course of the poem can make something run-of-the-mill a lot better. I've found that it can improve the entire poem, in fact.

The idea is to stick with good rhyme sounds at the start, ones that give you the most possibilities. In other words, stick with rhyme sounds with the most words in standard English.

"Glint" i'nt one of 'em. So the poet did the right thing in that case.

Words that (merely) end in "-ing" or "-ion" don't count. There are reasons for that, and I'll go into why another time.

You can get a rhyming dictionary to help you find those good rhyme sounds.

Or, you can refer to a book I've mentioned earlier. It's one you might have: a copy of the sonnets of Shakespeare.

The Drama of the Phoneme

I remember getting funny looks from my fellow English majors (and alums, later) when I talked with enthusiasm about my Phonemics class.

Not everyone felt it was odd, but some did. Phonemics is the study of what phonetically gives a language its meaning. The "bilabial fricative" made famous by the late (and lamented) George Carlin is phonetic, but not phonemic (well, formally, anyway).

From at least the Renaissance, writers on poetry have been fascinated by the subject. Especially, which phonemes fit their aesthetic, and which do not. Dante wrote about it (I read a translation of the book, I forget the title, as an undergrad. For fun. No kidding.), as have others.

The funny looks came more from the free-verse poets. That's natural. A Jackson Pollack is going to look pretty much the same in oil as it does in tempera, or just wall paint. It's the materials of the unconscious that are important in that particular aesthetic practice, IMHO.

Now, Pollack fans are going to assail me over that, as would any free-verse fans: the details do matter to them, they might say, just not in the same way. That's OK. Diversity is important. IGT.

But to the formal poet (even part-time), the technical details of what, say, makes a "d" sound like a "d" are important, as what certain phonemes sound like in combination, also.

As well as the "supra-segmental phonemes." (The wha ... ?)

In English, they are: stress, pitch and juncture, as best I recall. Which makes for a dramatic language, don't you think?

____

Afternote: (2/8/11) The book by Dante was De Vulgari Eloquentia. I don't recall the translator's name.

Push and Pull

You most certainly can improve a free-verse poem by introducing an element of dramatic tension into your conception.

In rhymed, metrical verse, the tension is already there (in a sense). Look at Shakespeare's sonnets: see if you can tell how he interplays tension and slack from line to line, quatrain to quatrain, then to the final couplet.

Food for thought?

"I knew that, but I didn't know I knew it ... ."

I made an "interesting" mistake a few weeks back.

In the post about Gerard Manley Hopkins and his "sprung" rhythm, I said a scholar had possibly confused the Hopkins prosodic invention with so-called "fourteener" verse, which I said does not count unstressed syllables strictly.

I was the one confused.

I later reasoned (correctly) that the verse form wouldn't be called "fourteener" if the unstressed syllables don't count.

A "fourteener" line of verse has fourteen syllables, obviously. The verses are often formed as a "ballad" quatrain, alternating four iambic feet with three in rhymed lines.

Clearly, I was muddled. I do realize that, in music, "meter" is only one aspect of rhythm, so metrical verse written for songs needs more of a flow to allow a composer to fit a melody to the words (see Byron's "Stanzas for Music" for an example).

However, the more I try to explain verse for hymns (short measure or meter, long ... , common ... etc.) the more ignorance I expose. It's not something I studied way back (though now I find it really interesting), and I seem to recall being told in a poetry class as an English lit major to ignore it (as literature goes, anyway).

Here's an overview:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen

Look for the entry called "Hymnody and Hymnology" there.

This much I knew: hymns are metrical poems set to any one of several "tunes." What I'm learning: syllable count in hymnology is very important. (It's usually printed in the lower right corner of the hymn entry in hymnals.)

The End of the Line

When you're writing, you just write, like now, right?

Sometimes, yeah, off-the-cuff does the trick. And for poets, when we're in the thick of composition, that first blast is what we use to launch a poem -- and it often flies offhand.

But that's when planning and thinking ahead works for you. So, when the time comes, you and your mechanical pencil, Sharpie, Etch-A-Sketch, or whatever, are ready to go.

The last word is important in every line of poetry. Just look at the poems that have truly impressed themselves on your psyche over the years: they usually have very strong end words for every line. Clean, powerful, resonant end words can almost serve as a map for the basic sense of the entire poem.

So, when it comes time to rhyme -- those end words become doubly important. And that's why your planning, your aesthetic, your understanding of structure, your basic sensitivity to rhythm ("pulse"), etc. start to show their importance. They become like fingers on the potter's hands: they know where to go all by themselves, even while the clay is still spinning under the running water.

---

As an aside, something may be worth mentioning in these, Our Troubled Times: it's during economic slides downhill when people look to the arts for help the most. That's when diverse movements in the arts often find the most sustainable growth (think: The '30's or the '70's).

Often, when the boom times start their "squeeze" cycle, many artists and writers get spun out in the mad scramble for "mo' munney." We then have to pick ourselves up and/or put ourselves back together (with help from our friends) -- and we use our material to help us.

But in Times Like These, The Folk depend on us to do our very best. To paraphrase John Mellencamp: "Our Time is Now!"

Systole/Diastole

"Pulse action." Works in dishwashers. Works in verse.

But at what pressure? You decide!

His Dead End

I think it was the summer of '77 or '78 that I finally figured out "sprung rhythm." The prosodic invention by English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins started out as an experiment in poetic language, then evolved into a full-blown poetic technique that allowed Hopkins to write some really memorable verse.

The details are outlined in letters that Hopkins wrote to his friend Robert Bridges, who became poet laureate of England. The two shared an interest in "quantitative" prosody, where you count syllables not by stress/unstress, but by "weight" (my term). These letters were reprinted in a paperback of Hopkins' work (by Penguin?) that I bought from a used bookstore in, I think, '75.

I won't spoil the fun for you (if you're just starting the scans I mentioned a few posts ago, you've got a ways to go, anyhow). But, if you're really interested, I suggest you focus first on Milton -- especially the way he handles resolutions across the caesura. (You'll have fun Google-ing that!)

A bit on NPR last week about Hopkins started me recalling all this. The "expert" being interviewed (who was expert on Things Historical about GMH) got it all wrong on the poet's verse technique. He may have gotten it confused with "fourteener" verse, where the unstressed syllables in a line are not counted as strictly (which is why it's often used as lyrics in songs).

For the record: Hopkins did count the unstressed syllables in his lines. It's just for what that matters. (Hint: It made the heavily stressed ones "spring" off the page.)

But, near the end of his short life, Hopkins complained bitterly to Bridges that he'd hit a creative dead end. The self-imposed "rules" to sprung rhythm just grew and grew over time, and they seem to have hemmed him in creatively.

Letting things get too complex can do that. Study the rules of formal verse, for sure -- just be sure to loosen things up when you write.

We're looking for those interstices, remember?

Angle of Dissent

There's this funny thing about censorship: it reveals more about the psychology (or, better, psychopathology) of the censor than anything else.

Yes, censorship is destructive, for sure. And that hurts all of us (especially you and me, dear readers -- which is the subject of today's post). But -- in and of itself -- what the censor chooses to black out, cut away, chop up or otherwise destroy says a lot about him or her. Primarily (pun intended by sheer accident), it describes what they're most afraid of.

And what they're most(ly) afraid of -- usually, anyway -- is revealing their ignorance. About what? That is often the most revealing factor in the equation.

OK, on to today's subject: The Purpose Behind This Entire Thing. ("Ooooo, is he really going to tell us this now?" Um, yeah.)

And What This Is All About (I've decided) is metapoetics. Nobody that I know of ever did an update to Ari's old lecture notes on poetry (guess what it's called), the way Boole and his friends did to Ari's lecture notes on formal logic.

You see, I'm a believer in the old school. I'm also a believer in using the bricks of the old school (and the tips and tricks of its masons) to build the new one.

And it's in the irrational interstices within the fabric of traditional verse where the New World of poetry lives. But when we censor (ourselves or anyone else), all we're really doing is willfully ignoring that meta-reality.

Together, I think we will find the "book beside the Poetics" (really bad inside joke here). I really do.

Tie One On

I rarely open the post editor of this blog with any firm idea of what I'm going to write about.

There have been exceptions, especially at first and recently. But Spontaneous Me just can't stay away long. Today is (another) one of those days.

In this blog, I've tried to give you some options for setting your own guidelines for writing poetry from the traditional point of view. I think they may work equally well for free verse, too. But not for me. When I'm free, I gotta be ME!

Not that writing traditional verse (I'm not fond of the term "formal verse" -- it implies starched collars, scented drawing rooms and a well-developed taste for antiques. Absolutely nothing wrong with any of that -- it's just not my approach, that's all.) is necessarily The Poet In Chains. It, to me, means the reverse: you're in control, not the poem.

So, where does inspiration enter the picture? If your muse is insisting "Write this!" -- how do you deal with it if she happens to be wearing formal attire at the time? Dispassionately.

Duh ... aren't you supposed to be "passionate" about something to do it well? Isn't that what "they" all say? "They" might, not me.

I'm here to be straight with you, my friends. And I'm telling you that you need to develop a dispassionate sensibility for your poetic passions -- especially when your muse sets you alight.

(Hint: look up "dispassionate." Open a new tab {or window, if -- like me today -- you're using IE6} and go to Wiktionary and look it up! Right now! See what I mean? Being "dispassionate" doesn't mean you don't care, it means caring enough to do your very best -- my apologies to Hallmark (tm).)

----

OK, so I've now decided it's OK to say "formal verse" if by it you mean your muse had a really nice evening gown* on when she struck the match.

*or tux, or ... . (You get the idea, I'm sure. ;) )

A Rhyme In Time (We Hope)

This is kind of a test of Blogger's new post-ahead option. Since I post from the public library these days, I won't be here to post on Monday, as I usually do here. Memorial Day, guys.

So, if you can read this on Monday, then Blogger's "scheduled post publishing" works!

BTW, I've made some small but significant edits on the previous post. See if they clear anything up for you.

Fallacious Pathos

It may seem that I was contradicting myself last week when I pointed out the illogicality of a coined word (at least as its original definition went), then continued to praise a certain logicality of organization in traditional poetry.

Especially since free-verse poets (like me) often sing the praises of nonlinear thinking (and feeling) in the first place.

Superficial logic makes for a poor poem, IMHO. And it rarely has much to do with an organic thing like human language.

My emphasis on a logical outline for fixed-verse poems (did I just coin the term "fixed-verse?" I hereby take credit, until someone shows me otherwise. ;P ) comes from experience, and it mainly applies to the outline itself. I outlined a possible outline for a metaphorical conceit in last week's post.

And that brings me to today's topic, my friends. A rather strange dude named John Ruskin described the issue for all writers in an essay on it called "The Pathetic Fallacy."

I'll let you look this essay up for the details, along with some of Ruskin's other works (His book The Stones of Venice is his best-known.). He's one of those late Victorian writers who could make a prose sentence work like a Liszt sonata.

But for here and now, I'll do my best to sum it up: you fall into pathetic fallacy when you metaphorically give natural forces or objects human feelings, as in something like "the winds weep for grief over lost Lenore."

OK, I don't think that's in "The Raven." I just made it up. Ruskin called the fallacy "pathetic" after the original sense of the word indicating "suffering," as in "experiencing." In your poem, when you have the wind weeping or starlight laughing or some such, you're giving human attributes to inanimate forces.

And that's why I stress a little planning in the "pre-poem" phase of writing fixed-verse poems (I've now decided I hate the term -- so please attribute it to someone else!): it's just so easy to fall flat on your face.

I believe there is an exception (in a manner of speaking) to the pathetic fallacy: it's found somewhere in the distinction between symbolism and allegory.

Maybe I'll get into that someday.

Conceited Metaphors

As best I can recall, a word in today's title recalls an earlier subject: making up words.

"Conceit" is some kind of parallel formation from "deceit" -- as if a "conception" of something true is the opposite of a "deception" of something false. You can see the cracked logic right away, can't you? But logic rarely puts a word in the dictionary -- usage does.

And in the case of a so-called "metaphorical conceit," usage is often the problem. (I know I'm careening all over the place today, but ... well, it's that kind of a Monday! Windy, that is.)

Another earlier post pointed you, dear readers, to the sonnets of Shakespeare as models of English form. And we can return to him as the model for the metaphorical conceit. Basically, the idea is to take a single metaphor and then keep running with it to the end of the poem (or nearly there, anyway).

Let's say I compare metaphorically (no "like" or "as" -- remember?) my love's heart to a bird's wings beating. Then I compare her voice to a bird's chirping, then her touch to a feather's, etc.

And then maybe I can sum up with some idea of the fragility of love compared to a bird's fragile body, something like that. (Hey, maybe I've got something there ... !?)

The trick to a successful conceit goes back to what I've been saying all along: you've got to think it through first, apply some logic to its structure and some taste to its execution, and then set it aside for awhile before deciding on how well you did.

What prompted this is an effort by a columnist in a newspaper recently (I won't say which one) that made one of the worst attempts at a metaphorical conceit I've ever read (in prose, at least).

This writer seemed to think the very notion of a metaphorical conceit was somehow whimsical and kind of artificial -- but that didn't stop him (or her) from threading it through the first five or six paragraphs of the column. As if to say, "I'm so clever, but I don't need to take what I've done seriously!"

You do need to take it seriously, even if your tone is "tongue-in-cheek!" Because you're communicating, and that's never something to fool around with.

That goes double for those of us who write in the hardest form of creative writing there is. Even though we appear to do it for no practical reason at all.

Especially so -- because whatever value it possesses lives within what we've created.

Pencil It In

You gotta scan it yourself, if you're going to learn traditional verse. There are too many little ins and outs involved not to. Yes, it's great to have that pamphlet (forget what it was called) that gives you an overview of the different meters and such. But there's no replacement for scanning poem after poem yourself -- sort of like going to the gallery and learning painting from the masters.

What I used as a scanning text was my old Norton anthology from Poetry 101 (or whatever the course was called) -- a nice fat book, nice clear print with enough linear spacing to pencil-in (lightly!) your scans, and widely available. I owned the book, it wasn't going to anyone else, and there was no need to feel I was destroying posterity. The book was a teaching tool to start with, and I was just using it for some personal extended homework.

It was extended, all right. I ended up scanning (and analyzing) in pencil every poem in that edition (the seventh, maybe?) that rhymed or was in blank verse. From (Philip) Sidney to (Cecil Day-) Lewis.

I'll go into what I did in more detail later. But first, friends, choose your scanning text carefully -- please.

Swish!

It is my solemn duty to me to inform you that most of your stuff is going to be crap.

That may not be news to you, or it may. It's something to keep in mind, nonetheless.

Personally, I don't keep stuff I do that I think is bad. I know others who do. It's up to you.

There are arguments pro and con ("What if you throw it away and you're wrong?" "Why keep mistakes? You'll just repeat them!"). All I know is I can only remember one I wish I'd kept instead of tossing, and that was nearly 20 years ago! (And the only reason I regret tossing it is because it was a good start at a style I resumed writing in ten years later.)

The point is, if you keep your crap, you're probably going to be keeping a lot of it. Flushing it just feels so much better.

At least it does to me.

Lost in Translation

If you're going to put words together on a page and call it "poetry" -- well, that's not too hard nowadays, is it?

But if you're going to put lines together that rhyme and fit a set metrical pattern, that's different, isn't it?

I say this because I'm sure by now, dear readers, you've given it a try. And you've set that try aside, and then re-read it -- only to find the poem you were so proud of the day after you wrote it is now pretty embarrassing.

I don't say that to insult you or bring you down. It's just what happens. I know this, because too many of my attempts have hit the bottom of the trash can to suit me.

Where lies success? Rewriting? Maybe, but all I ever did was flog a dead horse. Revisions to a successful poem? Of course, but top-to-bottom rewrites (of an already bad poem) were a waste of time. They were for me, anyway.

So try this: Take a batch of your free-verse work that you feel good about, and choose one that you really liked but maybe didn't take off the way you wanted. Or maybe one that has kind of a shape to its structure, but its free-verse "dress" fits too loosely.

Now, take that poem and "translate" it into traditional verse. Your "translation" may be a sonnet or a ballad or something else. Just start from the top and see what happens.

When you're done, set the new version aside for a time. First for a day, then for a week, then for maybe a month. Ask yourself what your poem gained by the "translation" and then what it lost by the process.

Keep both the free and traditional versions in your poetry file. Then do another "translation," maybe from a fresh free-verse poem. Repeat the review process.

Be honest each time, but not brutally. Don't beat yourself up over it, in other words. Enjoy doing something few poets ever do (or admit to doing -- that I've heard, anyway!).

See where it takes you.

Poison Pen(s)

Here's an old story of how a poet used satire creatively and constructively at the same time.

A long-standing dispute between two tribes beat the usual path to resolution: an army from Tribe A took one side of the field of battle, while Tribe B's bravehearts lined up opposite. As was the tradition, each side gave a turn to its best poet before the battle began.

The first bard did what was expected, singing the praises of his tribe and trying to frighten the other side out of its wits.

The second bard did something else. After a short peon to his tribe's military prowess, he began to make fun of the other tribe. In doing so, he made a pun on that other tribe's name. This pun was so good, it made his tribe start laughing. Then some bystanders started laughing, too. The other tribe's king started to look embarrassed, and his generals began to turn away.

The result? The other tribe quit the field. But instead of go back to their homeland, they actually joined a neighboring tribe and took their name!

In other words, the pun was so effective that it stuck. And the poet had not only saved many lives from among his tribesmen, he also eliminated the enemy completely -- without killing a single person.

Although it's not a part of the story (as I heard it), I'm betting he nailed the pun with a rhyme.

As far as English traditional poesy goes, you can take the tack of Chaucer and leave 'em all with aching sides, or do like Pope by condemning "not the sinner, but the sin." Either way, your responsibility as a poet remains intact when you use satire.

After all, aren't we all just as guilty?

"Who did this?" "You did."

The title is my recollection of an oft-told story re: Picasso's "Guernica." It seems a Nazi officer saw this enormous (and, frankly, ugly) painting and asked the artist who was responsible for it.

The story goes that Maestro Pablo calmly replied as he did to imply that the Nazi "practice bombing" of innocent civilians during the Spanish Civil War was responsible for the carnage his canvas captured so memorably.

We call "Guernica" art not because it's beautiful -- it isn't. We call it art because Picasso used his Cubist aesthetic toward something that really mattered: a protest over an insanely cruel act that tragically presaged so many, many more. And because he did it so sucessfully that he could even insult a Nazi officer and get away with it.

And that's kind of what I meant last time about a developing a personal aesthetic. What I meant by that is not some "philosophy of art" that can be used to either deny the worth of what you're doing or to affirm some High Leader's "cult of personality."

Whether it's "art for art's sake" or a bust of Lenin looking like a bald, mustachioed Superman, it's not coming from a personal aesthetic. (Or Stalin, or Mao, or Saddam Hussein, or {insert name here}.)

What I did mean by the term is simply this: a working philosophy of what you're doing as a poet, and why.

But just remember: it can cost you.

What do I mean by that? Think Federico Garcia Lorca.

Who's that? Try "Take This Waltz."

Ah, The Years Go By ...

When you ask yourself questions about poetry first, do you then just go ahead and start writing?

Like, (er, excuse me, "as in the case of") when you think things through, decide on a few issues and then start a poem draft. Is that a good idea?

I don't think so. You're still "Spontaneous Me" at that point. (Did you really think I was not an Elements of Style guy? But I'm also a Spunk and Bite guy -- that's why I blog, friends.)

The purpose for "asking yourself questions first" is, at the end of it, to decide on a personal aesthetic. An aesthetic, to me anyway, is a philosophy of art (actually, a philosophy of beauty, but you get the idea). And poetry (as we're discussing it today, anyway) is a fine art. So you've got to have a working philosophy before you can write any, successfully.

The problem is, you've already got one -- you just may not realize it. That's what the "question-asking" stuff is for (for the most part).

The reason I'm going into all this (remember, this is a blog about traditional verse) is because a working aesthetic is essential to the pentameter/ABAB stuff. Like using logic, it wouldn't seem to be the case, necessarily. But it is, IMHO.

What some poets may have forgotten in the nearly 100 years that free verse has reigned supreme (OK, technically about 90 -- since the end of WWI) is part of the aesthetic of free verse: its very logos is unconscious, which springs to the light of conscious day from the very process of writing free-verse poetry.

This has been understood for a long time. In fact, using it as part of a common understanding for free verse before even entering the "tennis-without-a-net club" was at first an essential requirement. And it remains that way, but it's assumed rather than understood.

My previous posts have been aimed at other assumed facets of this "common understanding" (that modern poetry is a flowering of the unconscious aesthetic impulse outside the usual rigors of traditional logic, classical rhetoric, standard practice and performance, etc.).

If all this sounds like I hate modern free-verse poetry, then it's coming out wrong: I love it. I love the process of it, the "playing" of it in public, the sense of shared result (even when privately held) that comes from it. In my roughly half-century of pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain (not very successfully, I'm afraid), nothing else comes close, for me at least.

But I think it's because I've failed to avoid pain so often that I've become equally attached to the "trad" approach.

It doesn't dull the ache: it gives the ache its meaning.

The Forensic Caesura

It was purely by accident that I dropped Galway Kinnell's name a post or two ago.

Not.

Long ago and about a block from here (I'm writing from my Olde Hometowne), I bought a little mass-market paperback. I was still a Poundean (or was it -ian?) and looking to fill out my "How to Read" list of translations.

That's when I saw it, on the rack (wooden, next to the wall) just past the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section (where I'd bought all those Tarzan and Doc Savage books five-six years before) -- a new translation of the (according to the Gospel According to Ezra) untranslatable Testament of Francois Villon. This one was by a relatively unknown poet (unlike John Ciardi -- whose Divine Comedy translation I'd read the year before) named ... yeah, you guessed it.

This thing cost (as I recall) something like 85 cents. It was worth a lot more to me than that.

The best thing about this excellent work was its candor -- it strove to translate Villon's rough language with modern-day vigor, but without sounding "modern." The next best thing to me at the time was the Introduction (or maybe it was the Preface?). That's where Kinnell outlined his methods for discovering the truth behind Villon's fabled obscurities.

The answer was pretty simple: the "obscurities" weren't obscure to Villon's original readership. Kinnell combined historical research with language analysis (the concrete kind, not the abstract "signifier/signified" kind) to uncover what Villon was actually referring to when he referred to it.

And Kinnell applied his own considerable poetic talents to render the result of his discoveries in semiformal verse that was simultaneously kinetic and entertaining.

I can't remember if Kinnell used this term or not, but I'll use it: his work was an example of "forensic poetry."

He wasn't translating Villon as a scholar, he was translating Villon as a poet aided by his academic skill. And what was so dramatic for me was that I really dug it, so much so that I never forgot it (obviously!).

I think writers can use these same techniques in a general way for their original verse. They can use it to ask themselves the kind of questions Kinnell asked of Villon's work: "What does this really mean?" "Who is it written for (or to)?" "What does it mean for readers in general now?" "What might it mean for readers to come (unanswerable, really, but worth pondering)?" "What is the context for what I've written?" "Does my meaning apply to people's daily lives?" "Does it need to apply to them?" Et cetera.

Just a thought. Maybe I'll get to caesuras someday ... .

From C to Shining c ...

(I've decided I like posting "top of ...". But, that could change ... .)

Here's a potential vade mecum you might want to consider, from a poet you might want to avoid. Admirer of Swinburne, Ezra Pound played the pundit, edited "The Waste Land" (his blue-pencils are still controversial), and wrote a lot of confusing academic verse in something he called Cantos. An early poem of his was a sonnet ("Portrait d'une Femme"*) that conformed to his critical standards and wowed me as an undergraduate. I was a Poundian for my whole four years. Ah, college ... . It's a blessing those years don't last!

Anyway, toward the end of his checkered (stained, really) career and life, he edited (with Marcella Spann) a compendium of useful verse called Confucius to cummings: A Poetry Anthology. Handy and fun to read (I think you can safely ignore his notes, except for one), it gives you in one place whole batches of traditional verse outside the academic "canon" that are very helpful to study.

The only note of Pound's worth reading is an appendix (I think -- I don't have the book to hand) on Thomas Hardy. That's right, the novelist who quit mid-career to write poetry. Pound includes a Hardy poem or two in the Browning mode for the anthology proper, but he later lists a whole bunch (yeah, "bunch," as in flowers) of his theme-related verse re: a mid-life love affair. It's eye-opening and candid (Hardy's love-affair stuff, not Uncle Ez -- please!), and it's worth getting Hardy's Complete out of the public library to find 'em from Pound's list.

As far as versification goes, Hardy did some very interesting things in those poems. (I'll let you figure just what those things are for yourself now, but I may post on that someday.)

Anyway, why not thumb through C to c at your local bookseller sometime, and see what you think? I don't believe you will waste your time.

P.S.: For St Paddy's Day, there's one in the Pound book you can Google today that will be worth your while: "I Shall Not Die for Thee" by Padraic Colum. The page I found links to his Gaelic versions as well.

*Editor's Note: No. It was "A Virginal." Do you see why the confusion occurred?

Leave It to the French

It's not worth it. Really.

I've tried, and I can just tell you: it's not worth it.

What is "it?" (*sings* "It's in your face and you can't grab it!") "It" is writing English poesy in French forms.

You'd think that would be obvious, but so many try it, even well-known published poets. Why? Because English verse forms are boring, that's why.

Let's face facts: traditional English verse is basically iambic pentameter in couplets or quatrains. Ecch. But it's what works. ("Rhyme royale" is the two rhyme-forms stuck together, basically.)

You don't need me to prove it: look at Shakespeare's sonnets or his narrative verse. He just didn't do triolets or ballades (AFAIK, anyway). But he knew what did work within the confines of our common tongue.

There are exceptions to what I'm saying: Shakespeare wrote song lyrics for some of his lighter plays that are outside the standard "box" of English poesy. And modern greats like Dylan Thomas and T.S. Eliot adapted French forms for some of their finest work.

But if you look at the lyric poems of a writer like Swinburne, his own French-form material is very slick and expert -- yet kind of empty.

What I'm saying is that the free-verse poet trying out traditional verse for the first go can save a lot of time and trouble by avoiding French-form English verse.

Postscript, friends: That doesn't mean you can't benefit from reading it: I think Swinburne's translations of Villon are a great source. So are, in that and many other respects, Galway Kinnell's, for a modern take.

Back Formation's Back

There should be a hard-and-fast rule: Never discard a book.

You never know when you're going to need it, you see. But then, there are those moving costs -- so we should all be glad for public libraries (which is where I'm writing this, BTW). The book loss I'm bemoaning today is Otto Jespersen's Growth and Structure of the English Language. (I think that was the title. I always just called the book "Otto.") I'm not talking about the legendary Danish scholar's monumental work on the history of language, but a 250-page paperback where he sums it all up in plain English (is that a pun? I don't think so.).

The reason I'm bemoaning its loss right now is that old Jespersen really went into some detail (for the common man, anyway) about how this language we're using puts words together. He really had that subject down pat.

My reason's reason is that formal verse is almost guaranteed to require the poet to invent a word at some point. You're going to need a certain rhyme or a certain phrase in a certain meter, and you're going to be stuck without the ability to make up a word. And you can't just make one up out of whole cloth, either. Why? OK, "2938470ujre." That's my new made-up word. Like it? Great! Know what it means? No? Well ... .

In other words (OK, a kind of pun), there are rules for inventing words from other known words -- and Uncle Otto (he was avuncular, but not my uncle) knew them. I think you should find this book or one like it, and then I think you should make it your vade mecum for creative language. (See, no handy English term for "a companion reference book" -- so I had to use Latin. Now see why you'll need Otto?)

You won't need to make up a word often, but when you will -- you'll have one (with Otto's help) on the first draft.

Rules, rules, rules ...

The device I'm using to write this down and send it to the world is (so I'm told) fundamentally based on the work of a man who taught himself high-end algebra. He used that notation as the foundation for his discoveries in the world of symbolic logic.

What George Boole found out was that (recalling my logic class -- the good one -- again) things don't have to actually exist to work in a syllogism. (If I recall correctly,) Western medieval commentators on Aristotle apparently assumed existence of the objects in a syllogism -- a conceptual mistake righted by Boole's work.

My point here (yes, I have one) is that when poets begin to use logic, we have to extend that conceptual framework out even further than Boole did. Love has its logic, irony its rules, anguish its regulations -- and we have to discover them. For ourselves. And then find words to fit them -- sometimes whether those words exist or not.

What It's Not All About

"It's all about the ... ."

How many times have we heard that lately? Something (pick a topic: person, place or thing) is "all about the" something else (fill in the blank). Rarely do you hear "it's all about the" method, the means, or the manner of that something else.

And there's a reason for it: the "it's all about the" person, place or thing is just too glib. Too slick. Too easy. And, for those reasons, it's also false.

The hardest thing about writing poetry -- at least as I'm able to see it -- is in getting real. I mean, that's "what it's all about," wouldn't you think? But go to an average poetry reading sometime -- even by published poets -- and really listen to what's being said. How much of it is honest? How much of it is the poet's self-selection of the truth? How much is self-justification? How much of it is the poet trying to hide -- from you, from him or herself? You might be surprised at how much honesty you really hear! Or, maybe not ... .

We look at the Anthology of ... or the Collected Works of ... , admiring the poet's power of expression and nuance -- and perhaps not think of the other stuff. The stuff this outstanding poetry we now admire stood out from.

And when you look at some of that "other stuff", you can see readily what makes the collected or anthologized poetry stand out from the rest: honesty. Fidelity to truth, at least as much of it as the poet is able to apprehend and communicate through the medium of poetry.

It gets down to the word itself. I can remember one poet saying that some activity or another (walking in the woods, admiring a sunset, whatever) really "stokes my muse." How on Earth, thought I, do you "stoke a muse?"

You can stoke a fire, you can obey a muse -- but how do you "stoke a muse?" OK, what he obviously meant is that this particular activity really got him in the mood to write poetry. But his mixed metaphor betrayed his (perhaps unconscious) feeling that he was in control of the process -- the fact that the process was there long before either of us existed did not seem to occur to him. And his cracked verbiage revealed that flaw in his thinking.

I do remember logic class: I remember it clearly because the first instructor was so bad I decided to audit the same course a year later by a professor I really respected (and, in memory, still do). He spent at least a month going over so-called "informal" fallacies: not the "therefore, all men are Socrates" fallacies of formal logic, but the "When did you stop beating your wife?" type of fallacies. Those are the kind of fallacies that crack your thinking before you even begin to reason.

It's important to mention now, because I hear those informal fallacies all the time: hasty generalization, jumping to conclusions, ad hominem arguments, etc. The title for them all is more Latin: non sequitur. "It does not follow."

Emotional honesty is vital to all expression, especially poetry. Its very life blood is most transparent in free verse. Which is one reason that particular form remains popular: the minute you "talk falsely" at Open Mic Night, you're busted.

But in formal verse, craft can sometimes disguise dishonesty: emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. That's why you have to have a solid purpose and a strong foundation before you can start writing it successfully.

Setting a Course

OK, more with the metaphorical conceits: if you're an explorer, you need to have an idea of where you are going before you can set sail. So you may end up discovering Hispaniola instead of India, but that's how discoveries are made.

And you'll need a compass, or a sextant, or know the stars, or have a really good sense of direction before you shove off, m'hearties!

Traditional verse starts with logic. Duhh ... . No, I'm not going to try and pretend I'm a qualified philosophy instructor. But I am suggesting that it helps to have a basic idea of syllogistic structure when you're starting out to write poems that fit into that "traditional" mode.

In short, the rules of rhetoric (actually studied as a kind of "communications theory" in the Middle Ages) demand a certain structure, and rhythmically rhyming posey fit into that early category.

Of course, the art of poetry (no matter what kind you're writing or what age) insists that the poet "bend" rules -- backwards and sideways and every way possible, if necessary -- in making his or her point. The "rules" in this case are the audience's or readers' expectations. They've got to have an idea of where you are going -- and so, dear poet, do you.

I'm off to find a copy of Eliot's "Ash Wednesday" here in the library stacks. So, my friends, 'til next time ... .

"Out!" "You're crazy! It was on the line!" "Still out."

If you're playing poetry "tennis" without a net, it's not tennis anymore. It's still poetry, but it's a new game. Now, what are the rules for the new game? Do you make them up as you go along? Do you change them as the service changes? Do both players agree to the changes beforehand, or is it more fun to figure them out as you go?

Each of these questions, and many more, must be answered, if the game is to continue. And that's what writing in free verse is all about. You, the author, read your latest draft to the coffee house audience on "open mic" night -- and you decide the next move based on the reaction you get: trash it, rewrite it, or type it up and stick it in your "chapbook" folder. Or your poetry circle's reaction helps you decide that next step. Or your best friend's. Et cetera. It's all part of the game: the audience in each case knocks your serve back to you, and you decide what to do with it. Not that you need a positive reaction to make that decision: you can decide that maybe the audience is wrong, or that your point was not to be liked in that case. (Some people thrive on others' hatred, as long as the hated is in control of their reaction, usually. Trust me on that one.)

But when you're writing in traditional meter (and rhyme), you've got the net up: you're playing The Game. You're not doing "word jazz" anymore, you've gone classical. Not that you can't read your trad stuff aloud on Open Mic at the cafe -- it's just maybe a little odd. Either the audience members tune you out, or they go: "What did you just do?" You put the net up, that's what you did.

So, trad verse is going to have some different expectations when you start to show it, or read it, to someone else. Which you're eventually going to do, right? OK, they may fish it out of your humble possessions after your wake, but they're going to see it. So before you write anything down (or just get it going in your head), you've got to start with those expectations in mind. The net is going to be there. Then what?

You decide. That's poetry, man.

A Different Game

I think it was Robert Frost who called writing in free verse "like playing tennis without a net."

What I believe he meant was that, once you remove the net, you don't have tennis anymore. You have a new game: it might be on the same court, using the same ball and racquets -- but you'll need to change the rules (as you go) to keep the game interesting enough to continue playing.

Because writing in "traditional" verse (using the net) is so long out of custom, it becomes a new game when we take the net out of mothballs and start playing tennis again.

To me, writing poetry is a game: words, images, metaphors communicate (serve) the meaning (thoughts, feelings) from poet to reader (or listener). The rules are understood by both parties: it is a game played by intuition.

And (re-)introducing the net changes things. But, no matter which form of the game you're playing, if played fairly, both sides win.

Here We Go (Almost)

This blog is a work in progress. So stay tuned, because I intend to post at least once a week.

I'll be writing for other writers, especially other poets who feel they're successful in writing free verse, but have found writing in rhyme and meter frustrating.

There are no quick fixes: nothing worth doing comes without practice. But I can point you in the right direction, so that "traditional" verse will be an option for your expressive instincts.

See you next time.

What Is In It (Is What Is In It)

The purpose of this Blogger account will be to discuss how to write "traditional" verse. It will be very non-traditional -- that, dear reader, I can promise. We'll get started in earnest next time.