POETRY LESSON 06:
POETRY WRITING CLASSES


POETRY BEAUTY?

*   OBJECTIVIST CONCRETE POETRY?
*   PERFECT VERBS AND NOUNS
*   VARY YOUR SENTENCE STRUCTURE
*   WORD AND RHYTHM  AND  SOUND
*   METAPHOR, SIMILIES, ALLUSION
*   WORD REDUCTION

Several structured poetry or writing techniques makes poetry beauty: Words and verbs, nouns and sounds, senses stirred through hearing, seeing, tasting, touching and smelling.  Along with the rhythm or beat of meaning forged imagery.  Good word reduction makes poetry beautiful, too.  Good content makes poetry important as well.  The combination of all this makes unforgettable poetry rich in content and style.

First, poetry's mysterious beauty comes from word selection.  Perfect or just right verbs shows, not tells, perfect or just right action.  Perfect or just right nouns shows, not tells,  perfect or just right objects.  Perfect verbs and nouns deliver messages to reader's five senses of hearing, seeing, tasting, touching and smelling.  Perfect verbs and nouns carry perfect meaning.  Perfect verbs and nouns deliver perfect sound and rhythm.  Perfect verbs and nouns deliver concrete imagery--if all the before is satisfied.  I call this Objectivist Concrete Poetry.  Objectivist after Ayn Rand philosophy of Objectivism: We can only tell what this world is first by and through our senses.  We submit this sense data to our minds and souls for interpretation.  Objects in the poem must directly link or emerge out of things one can see, taste, touch, smell and hear.  Abstract words must die or be bound to concrete words, if they are to remain in the poem.  The poet must write for her blind readers out in the world, who have no clue what her "love her," "his drive," "her pictureresque," her beautiful park," or shooting star," means.  The Objectivist Concrete poet writes for those readers who cannot as of yet read people's minds!

If--this cannot be achieved through only nouns and verbs, best adverbs and adjectives must be sought out. 

Objectivist Concrete Poetry does not mean one cannot talk about abstract concepts, love, faith, time or truth.  It simply means the poet should apply writing structure, concrete words and imagery geared to feed the five senses, to render her poetry effective.  Her poetry is a plant living imagery of seed, concrete dirt or nutrients, feed by tasting, touching, smelling seeing, hearing of the plant and structured according to the carbon dioxide rhythm and sun rays beat to reach upward into the sunlight of truth and clarity.



*   THREE TYPES OF SENTENCE STRUCTURES

Poems are short.  Poetry sentences are short.  Nevertheless, they are sentences.  Writing consist of three sentence structures.

1) Simple sentence.  Mary clutched her balloon.  Subject and Verb. 

2) Mystery sentence or periodic sentence.  Mary ran--clutching her balloon--because the paddle boat started pulling from the dock.

3) Add on sentence.  Mary caught with the boat,  before it left by waving her ticket high in the air, hoping the busy ticket taker would notice her. 


*   VARY YOUR SENTENCE STRUCTURES

To write stanzas or paragraphs well, use a variety of sentence structures: Simple, Add on, Mysterious, Simple, Mysterious, Add on, Simple and so forth.   

Also make some sentences long, some short.  Your average sentence should be thirteen words.  The shortest can be anywhere from one to five words long.  The point is variety.  Sentence variety will assure you apply some rhythm to your poem or prose.

Turn on your Readability Statistics in Word before you spell check your poem to find this information out.


*   SOUNDS BEAUTIFUL POETRY MAKE?

1) Alliteration:  The leaves lift and tilted in tiny sunlit breeze and lay still.
L's and t's.  Alliteration is usually the repetition of consonants.  Consonants make subtle sound, but still recognizable sounds.  Constants could represent the black keys on the piano.  Most don't play the black keys except to contrast.  Alliteration can be used with Assonance.

2) Assonance: O how the wolfs howled all night as I cried and Why, why why?
O's and y's.  Assonance comes from repetition of vowels.  Vowels make the most music in a word or line.  Long vowels make more sound than short vowels.  Vowels could represent the white keys on the piano.  Most play the white keys.  Assonance can be used with Alliteration

3) Onomatopoeia: The crackled of brown leaves and scratching bark revealed the squirrels at play.  Here the words represent actual sounds.  Slap.  Bang.  Ting.  Ka-Chinge.

4) His one good leg looped as his black cane tapped the ground very hard.
Meter rhythm matches the words rhythm in the sentence.  Readers can see and hear the sound of a canned man trying to run.

5) Meter can match any mood you want,  Happy moods bubble up from light upbeat meters iambic and anapest meter.  Scary or downbeat meters are trochaic and dactyl.

If you started on this lesson, go back to the Poetry Lesson 02 on Words for more on meter sounds.

6) Stanzas produce sound.  Think of stanzas as a movement in a symphony and you'll see what I mean.  An opening stanza could be an overture for example. 

7) Form Poetry doesn't belong to anyone.  A woman can produce a great sonnet, sestina or lune.  What makes great poetry is effort, knowledge, skill and writing, writing, writing and of course reading. 


*   USE METAPHORS

The puppet drinks from his strings.  Metaphors are dishonest lies. 
The poet does not tell you this.  Readers find figuring out the lie thrilling.


*   USE SIMILIES

Why is Cupid holding a Diana-like bow and arrow?  Similes are honest truths.
The poet tells you something is something else or is like something else or is as something else.  Readers appreciate this honest. 


*   PERSONFICATION

The forest trembling seeing Diana return for her bow after her refreshing bath.
The poet tells you something dead or not alive is suddenly alive and has an opinion you should pay attention to.


*   USE ALLUSION

The Queen of Oecilk rejoiced her return from victorious war did not take ten years. 
The poet alludes or indirectly tells you something about the past, Odysseus returning after victory in Troy was held up by the Gods for some ten years because of his arrogance.


*   WORD REDUCTION

The Puppet drinks his string.  The more words you can reduce, polishing the words like a diamond, to produce the best word caret, the more beauty you will give to your poem.


  *   START YOUR COLLECTION OF BEAUTIFUL POETRY

As you read poetry, start a collection of beautiful poetry.  Save these in a Word document.  Examine what makes the poems beautiful.  Look closely at nouns and verbs, words and rhythm and sounds and imagery and content.  Put the poem away and asks these questions:

1) What images came into your mind from what words?
2) What senses came alive to you from what words, lines or sentences?
3) What do I honestly remember from that poem?
4) Write four words or images the poem made to you.
5) Will I read this poem again? Yes or No?


  *   BEAUTIFUL POETRY FOR YOU









































































SO GET OUT THERE AND PUT PEN/PENCIL TO PAPER
OR COMPUTER KEYBOARD TO SCREEN AND WRITE YOUR POEM!






This page was last updated: August 31, 2009
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This page was last updated: August 31, 2009
Louise Labe  (1526-1566) France

XX!

What grandeur makes a man seem venerable?
What hair? What color of his skin? What size?
What kind of glance is best? What honeyed eyes?
Who stabs a wound that is incurable?
What song is proper for a man to sing?
And who is singing pain perceives it well?
What makes a lute sound sweet and amiable?
What natural qualities are flattering?
I tell you nothing, for I feel unsure;
moreover, love has made my judgement poor
but one fact I am deadly certain of:
all the world's beauty that may cause alarm
and all of art contriving nature's charm
could never fill me with a wilder love.



Marina Tsvetayeva (1892-1941) Russian

...I'd like to live with you
In some small town,
In never-ending twilight
And the endless sound of bells.
And in the little town's hotel--
The thin chime
Of an antique clock.
Like little drops of time.
And sometimes, evenings, from some attic room,
A flute.
A flute-player by a window.
And huge tulips at the windows
And if you didn't love me.  I wouldn't even mind.

In the midddle of a room, a great tile stove.
And a picture on every tile:
A heart, a sailboat, a rose.
And our beyond our only window.
Snow, snow, snow.


Nina Cassian (1924-   )  Rumanian

Knowledge

I've stitched my dress with continents,
bound the equator round my waist
I waltz to a steady rhythm, bending slightly.

I can't stop my arms
plunging into galaxies,
gloved to elbows in adhesive gold;
I carry on my arms a star's vaccine


With such greedy sight
my eyelids flutter in the breeze
like a strange enthusiastic plant.

No one fears me
except Error,
who is everywhere.