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| Site Picture Challenge February 4 |
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Lovers
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Write a poem about the picture you see above. Be sure to post it to the category Challenge-Picture. Have fun!
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| American Life In Poetry |
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The One I Think Of Now
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BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
Here the Maine poet, Wesley McNair, offers us a vivid description of a man who has lived beyond himself. I’d guess you won’t easily forget this sad old man in his apron with his tray of cheese.
At the end of my stepfather's life
when his anger was gone,
and the saplings of his failed
nursery had grown into trees,
my newly feminist mother had him
in the kitchen to pay for all
those years he only did the carving.
"You know where that is,"
she would say as he looked
for a knife to cut the cheese
and a tray to serve it with,
his apron wide as a dress
above his workboots, confused
as a girl. He is the one I think of now,
lifting the tray for my family,
the guests, until at last he comes
to me. And I, no less confused,
look down from his hurt eyes as if
there were nothing between us
except an arrangement of cheese,
and not this bafflement, these
almost tender hands that once
swung hammers and drove machines
and insisted that I learn to be a man.
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| Featured Site Tool |
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Poet Resources
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Poet Resources are tons of links to the outside world of poetry. Research the following areas to find the very best the world has to offer:
Around The World- Websites.
Blogs & Forums- Chatter.
Conferences & Conventions- Plan a trip!
Contests & Grants- How to.
Databases & Search Engines- Research!
Dictionaries & Etymology- Discovery.
Independent Bookstores- Wordly.
Kids & Teens- The safest and best sites.
Organizations & Clubs- Other places.
Promotion & Publishing- Learning and help.
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| About Poetry |
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Choose A Style
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What style should you adopt to most readily express yourself, find an audience, and get the piece published? The current style of literary realism is generally very plain, homely and direct. Will this do?
Literary Realism
It hardly matters what we call it: literary realism, the informal, the contemporary and prosaic. It's the current idiom. If you want to be published widely, to win awards, grants and commissions, then this is the style you'll adopt. It is easily written and digested.
It is not burdened by foreign traditions, and enables self-expression to begin immediately. All subjects and genres of poetry are facilitated: meditation, lyricism, social comment, satire and public pronouncement. What more is needed?
Poetry, or at least what many readers consider poetry. Acutely observed, sensibly written, unabashedly direct, and astringently intelligent as many contemporary pieces are, the larger public misses the stillness in the blood that a good line of poetry creates.
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| Poetry Writing |
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Thoughts On Meter
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by J.C. Hewitt
I rarely focus on meter when I write poetry. In my college days I took many of my style cues (though not my content cues) from William Carlos Williams, Charles Bukowski and others who wrote in an imagistic style. Meter will always have a place in poetry, but in the 20th century the move was away from forms and meter and towards less structured styles.
The beauty of poetry though, is that there is room for everyone. If you want to write sonnets, you are still welcome at the party. If you want to write stream-of-consciousness free verse, that's fine too. People who rhyme? Well that's kind of like inviting smokers to the party. You still like them; you just wish they would stop (that's a joke).
Here are some arguments for and against the use of meter and form:
What are the reasons to use meter?
**It adds structure.
**It is a framework on which you can build a poem.
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| Site Challenge February 4 |
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Write A Rondel
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A rondel is a verse form originating in French lyrical poetry. It is a variation of the rondeau consisting of two quatrains followed by a quintet (13 lines total) or a sextet (14 lines total).
The rondel was invented in the 14th century, and is arguably better suited to the French language than to English. (Not to be confused with Roundel, a similar verse form with repeating refrain.)
The first two lines of the first stanza are refrains, repeating as the last two lines of the second stanza and the third stanza. (Alternately, only the first line is repeated at the end of the final stanza). For instance, if A and B are the refrains, a rondel will have a rhyme scheme of ABba abAB abbaA. The meter is open, but typically has eight syllables.
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| Famous Poets |
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John Keats (1795 - 1821)
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John Keats's mother, brother, and good friend Richard Woodhouse all died of tuberculosis, which was then termed "consumption." He long suspected that he had the disease himself, and when on February 3, 1820, he had a severe hemorrhage of the lungs, he knew that he could not survive another English winter. Despite moving to Rome, he succumbed to "consumption" in the winter of 1821.
The realization that he was likely to die an early death gives poignancy to lyrics like "When I have fears that I may cease to be/ Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain" and "O for ten years, to overwhelm myself in poesy!" It also perhaps explains Keats's astounding productivity, for he did not start writing poetry until just a few years before he died.
The son of a liveryman, he was thoroughly working class, not the sort expected to have poetic aspirations. His mother, Frances (Jennings), remarried two months after his father's death in 1804 but left her husband soon after and died in 1810. After their grandmother's death four years later, the brothers were left alone.
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| About Our Poetry Site |
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