Question

General poetry discussion.

@e.mccormick just wanted to start this thread because we were kind of highjacking that thread.

Anyone else is free to join this discussion as well.

Answer 1

Anyway @e.mccormick I just wanted to respond to what you had said regarding challenging poetry structure.

I don't write as much poetry as I used to, but I too enjoyed writing strictly structured poems. Most of what I wrote was such, although I did have phase of free verse which I found to be relaxing and cathartic. I liked sonnets and ballads, but more often invented my own structure and cadence rules which were just as challenging.

Answer 2

Yah, well, I did not put my alliteration example in there caus that really would have hijacked things. LOL


Evil Trappings

I see that an age of woe and worsted wool wearers has won the way of warding off wondrous web warmth. In other words, it is evident by your absence that the older generation has interfered with your ability to get on the internet.

Perhaps the petulant perturbation of presence by a person of peer province has prevented pseudo-realistic presence. In other words, maybe it is the annoying friend that is keeping you from the web.

Oh, such a show, these trappings of woe, for trapping not they are but a real relegation of thine own desire's import unto the whims and mercies of others. They have not the care or conscious to take account of your heart felt desire to be left unto thine own ways, entreats, and enjoyments. Instead, they do but force upon you some other acts of their own design in which they do delight, but to which do cause you only that droll situation of foppish illusions of entertainment draped over a palatable and perpetual aggravation.

You have my own dear and generous understanding for this deplorable state of affairs. Why, but for this dastardly situation, we could hold between us a flock of topics. Each one would flit back and forth, opening the doors of the mind, as we bring to life the greatest topics of the moment. Instead, there is this echo as a dead pin drops to the floor of the gray concrete room that has been made of our desires.

Is it not such a lamentable tale? Where do the moments of doldrums get stored? How does the heart's chambers deal with this sluggish, green gray blood that is forced into our veins by the apparitions of others' desires?

Ah, kitten, for such you are in years, it is not the play of saber tooth or old toms that you do desire. It is not a ball of yarn or catnip that entices you. Even a mouse holds no sway. It is a different entertainment you wish to play. And these long tails of bristle whiskered elders do keep an odd bent when you do but mention that.

Birds, they say, birds have brains that fly, they protest. But the bird you wish to ride is one of graceful soaring and a freedom that spans over continents. What is so terrible in that, you wonder. But to their limited comprehension, it is not the games they played at when their tail was short and their fur was fuzzy. They can not see past their own whiskers and do design to retract your own vision to their grasp.

I feel your clamorous distress at this gilded cage. I slip you bits of feathers for your pillow and do but hope it is enough to help you dream well.

Answer 3

I love it!

Answer 4

Wrote it for a friend some years back. She was on a vacation where they paired her with someone much younger and all the grandparents were there so she was just sort of feeling lonely and left out at times as they discussed things above or below her age.

Answer 5

Nice. I like it. It's well crafted. How much time did you put into it?

Answer 6

Ummm... an evening. Yah, one sitting. So an evening.

Answer 7

Wow. That's pretty good. It would have taken me at least a day to write something like that. :p

Answer 8

I think a lot of has to do with the moment. I mean, I did this in one moment... a moment I lost:

Something unfinished

My eyes do see another me in such brilliance and color
if ever to be the one I see, the world's princely brother
loved and redound, amazing abound.
The truth seems quite harsh, I have no such

I had it. I started it. I lost it.


Yes, I actually put "I had it. I started it. I lost it." as the end. I literally had more and it went away. I was so irked at losing it I never came back to try and fix it.

Answer 9

I totally know the feeling. Been there ... more than once. Lost a whole novel once ... literally and figuratively. Hard drive failure. Lost 15 chapters worth. Didn't have the gumption to start over. A lot of it was purely inspired writing (had a dream).

Answer 10

I had one I called Short Sword Blues. It was about a guy knifed in a bar, set in a medieval setting, but using more modern themes for some things. I think that one took about a month to write. I kept tweaking little bits.

So it is not all about the moment... but yah, I find I do my best in those fleeting times.

Oh man, that is a hard loss. I know I have some stuff scattered on different drives that I am not sure if I will ever get back. =/

Answer 11

Yeah I literally cried at first. I'd poured about ... heck I don't know ... 400+ hours of writing and about half as much research time into it. It sucked bad. I got over it. Moved on. As for poetry, I have a poem that I put about two months into and I still don't like it. I think sometimes when it comes to poetry, I try too hard. I mean, I'll get something out, but then like you say, I'll spend forever "tweaking" it.

Answer 12

And the work can get a bit obsessive. I had been doing so much poetry work and review at one point that I fell into doing some natural cadence in other things I wrote. It was when I was taking my college English class, 101 or 102... well, the teacher noted that one of my papers had a poetic flow to it. LOL.

Answer 13

Hah. I was just reading over my term paper from ENG495 and I can't imagine what it would have been like had I slipped into a fugue like that. lol It was on theories of creativity and quality. Not much room for poetic license. Although the instructor I had probably would have gotten a kick out of it and given us a good grade anyway.

Answer 14

Hehe. Well, this was just cadence and flow, so not that much license used.

Answer 15

Sometimes a long piece like that first one is nice, but other times I like working on short bits that get it all done pretty fast. They don't really need more.

Try as not to try as can,
for deeds to heart make the man.
In bosom bold is but thought,
but kind deeds are more than not.

I also switch between rhyme, alliteration, and more free form stuff at times that is more an idea than a poem:

Hope flows from the heart. I see in a different way that which is but a dream. It is not as such to me. A dream is more and less than what people think, see and feel. It is the sum of all these, and yet their divisors.

Knowing this to be true, I gain my dreams as I leave them behind. As I reach for them, they change, and what I grasp is neither the dream, nor the process. It simply is the actuality of what is. Thus where I started in dream, passed in life, and achieved in the end, are all different, yet still one.

Pass into the eye of your own self. It is no easy task, this understanding.

The reward is worth the cost.

Answer 16

Nice. you have talent my friend. Were those items off the cuff or had you written them prior to this discussion?

Answer 17

They are some things I have on this machine. Don't even remember when I wrote all of it.

Answer 18

LOL I like how you refer to your computer as "this machine" like it's some foreign piece of equipment that you are not quite sure how it works or what it does.

Answer 19

Oh, no.... as in not the next one over that I know has other stuff or the backup drive or the one across the room that has old stuff but is not plugged in. I meant the literal this.

Answer 20

Still funny.

Answer 21

Well, I need to get some sleep. Work tomorrow... going out to the middle of nowhere. Wheee.

In life divided,
health provided,
yet one sided,
becomes.

Sleepily I sit,
not yet fit,
bed to git,
Yawn.

Answer 22

Yeah I think I drifted off before you @e.mccormick

Answer 23

@jaide034 I shouted at you from here because we were starting to hijack that thread with our convo. I wanted to say in regard to the Tell-Tale Heart being one of your favorites, when I was in grade school my brother and I had a record (vinyl) of Poe stories read by Vincent Price. It included the Tell-Tale Heart, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Black Cat, and The Premature Burial. We would listen to it with the lights out and get the pants scared off of us. I wish I still had that record. It didn't survive over the years.

Answer 24

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzyYzK94UU4

Answer 25

NIce! I vaguely remember seeing that years and years ago. I'll have to watch it when I get a spare hour.

Answer 26

Price was a wonderful match for Poe and other suspense authors. That borderline between horror and intellectual was something he could pull off with skill.

Answer 27

Little something I like to call psycho-smart. lol