poetically challenged

 

This was originally posted at my old blog sometime last year. I am transferring most of that content over to my newer blogs now.

---

 

In my previous post, I was thinking about poetic inspiration and where it comes from. It’s an important question, I think, for any of us who view ourselves as poets of one sort or another. Or, even for those who wish we could view ourselves as such.

I was impressed by one of the things Wright said in the interview I referenced in that previous blog:

“I live for these moments, but they are so rare that if I were to only wait for them, I would write two poems a year. I try to work for several hours a day to dredge up and amass material that might be useful when this mood of inspiration comes over me. But I believe it’s a terrible mistake to wait for inspiration. I seek it.” (p. 70)

That experience rings true for me. Inspiration is what I live for, as a writer, but it doesn’t necesarily come when I want it to. And it certainly doesn’t come by frequently enough for my tastes. But, that said, I can’t just sit about waiting for it to fall from the sky.

One of the things that I’ve found to be a big help is to experiment with various established poetic forms. I might work for a while on a villanelle (never written one yet that I am proud of), then for a while on a haiku, then on a newer form like the minute. In experimenting with forms and styles of poetry, I get to concentrate on the discipline of how to put together a “solid” poem, even if the content is less than inspired. It was this thought that made me decide to start the poetry challenges I start from time to time, and on which my alter ego’s posts are based.

I often rely on the tools others have made available when I am experimenting with different forms. One that I have really come to like is The Book of Forms. Now, let me be honest and say this: there are some things in the book that kind of irritate me. For one, I find a more rigid definition of poetry than what I agree with. To me, there are various forms of “poetics,” and each has its own tradition that can be of value to the poet. This text is rather insistent (much too often) that a work is only poetry if it pays strict attention to meter. OK. Say it once, if you must, but don’t keep harping on it. (Sorry, have to say that!)

That said, though, I have to move on to what is so valuable about the book. It has a wonderful index of traditional poetic forms. For such a short volume, it gives a nice exploration of the forms and their roots. I enjoy very much exploring through this book the various forms available for us to work with, a little bit about the thought behind the form, and how to begin working on it to make it my own. The book is a very useful resource in this way. And some of the explorations of the various forms have been very enlightening to me, the more I work with them.

What about the rest of you writer types? Do you find any sort of formal discipline that helps generate further inspiration, or does it all seem to get in the way for you? What methods do you use to stay fresh, even when you feel less than inspired?

Lewis Turco’s The Book of Forms provides a wonderful introduction to the poetic process. He introduces traditional poetic forms, and discusses what goes into the making of a poem. The book is mostly made up, though, of a large index of traditional forms and their descriptions.

Even though I think Turco is a little too insistent on traditional forms being the only good forms of poetry, I still find his book a useful resource, and it is one that I often find myself picking up to peruse yet again. It’s been a very valuable tool for me in my writing process.

In the 2007 edition of The Poet’s Market, Cathy Smith Bowers has a featured article about a short poetry form called “the minute.”

The minute is both a syllable-based structure and a rhymed form. The syllable count is separated into 3 stanzas of 8-4-4-4. The rhyme structure is a-a-b-b c-c-d-d e-e-f-f. The syllable count creates a poem of 60 syllables, thus the name “the minute.”

The minute is designed to be English poetry’s answer to the haiku. It’s syllable and rhyme count is part of what creates the haiku-like feel. But additionally important is the minute’s intent of packing a picture of one moment in time into a short poetic verse.

I’ve mentioned before how helpful playing games can be for poetry, and how I like to issue challenges at my other blog site. I recently issued one involving the cinquain. At that site, you have to be a member if you want to post a comment. If you’d rather not sign up as a member there, but would like to post a cinquain, feel free to post one here.

The poetry journal Amaze focuses solely on the cinquain, and has outlined a rather elaborate understanding of what the form is all about. This blog gives a simpler understanding.

The cinquain is a syllable-count structure, and is one that can be a lot of fun to work with. I’ve found that working with traditional forms like this one has given me some mental flexibility in writing poetry. Perhaps you’d like to try your hand at it too, and see if it might help your writing.

I’ll be using this blog space to practice my poetry. I’ll work less on content than on use of a specific form when I post. If I write a villanelle, for instance, I am not so much seeking to write moving content as to gain some comfort within the form.

I am treating this blog, then, as a space for writing exercises. I don’t expect much brilliance here, but I hope it will be a place that will help me gain a greater adeptness in more serious ventures into poetry writing as I go along.

Once in a while, I’ll pop in, in more prosaic form, and share reflections about writing processes too.

Click Here to Advertise on My Blog

Subscribe to poetically challenged