Poetry empowers the simplest of lives to confront the most extreme sorrows with courage, and motivates the mightiest of offices to humbly heed lessons in compassion.
― Aberjhani
I’m a great believer in poetry out of the classroom, in public places, on subways, trains, on cocktail napkins. I’d rather have my poems on the subway than around the seminar table at an MFA program.
— Billy Collins
The world is full of poetry. The air is living with its spirit; and the waves dance to the music of its melodies, and sparkle in its brightness.
— James Gates Percival
As you might have guessed from the above quotes, workshop number six, run by Paul Vermeersch, was one of the two workshops that dealt with poetry. He began by talking about words themselves.
Words matter, ideas don’t. It’s the execution of the idea that makes a word good or bad. Words don’t just say things, they do things. Choosing the right word matters. When words are doing something different than what they’re supposed to, that’s ironic.
The right word can create tone or mood, give connotation or texture to your work, and rhythm and speed to your poem. Polysemy is a word or phrase chosen to mean many things.
He then went on to cite Canadian poet Dennis Lee, whose careful choice of words is apparent in his work. He’s not trying to say something, he’s trying to do something. He often starts with a sound and there’s a strong rhyme and rhythm to his poetry that continues its musical quality.
It’s really a matter of following, not my nose, but my ear, hearing what the poem wants to be. I may be as surprised by the end of it as the reader is.
— Dennis Lee
Then we were asked, what is the poetic line?
The line is the basic building block of making a poem. It’ consists of all the words that occupy the same horizonal space. Lines of poetry exist because of the way we read. Meaning does not create a line, but a line can create meaning.
A caesura is a break within a line. Initial caesura is found near the beginning; medial is found near the middle; terminal caesura is found near, but not at, the end of the line.
End stop lines with punctuation or a natural conclusion.
Self-enclosed lines follow proper grammar.
Enjambment – sense and syntax of line continues beyond the line.
Line breaks prevent you from reading the way you would prose.
They
Slow
Things
Down
Line breaks can sew confusion or provide clarity:
The old man the boat
The old man
the boat
The old
man the boat
Ask yourself:
What do I want the poem to say?
What do I want the poem to do?
How do I want the poem to sound?
Can I place the line breaks so the poem accomplishes all of these aims?
While this workshop started out strong, for me it kind of fell apart after this. One of the participants claimed to write exclusively sonnets, but he often used hyphens at the end of the line. He couldn’t understand why people didn’t like this and wondered if he should be doing it that way. The instructor’s response was: “You’re the boss of the poem, the poem’s not the boss of you. Do what you want.”
Sorry, but to my mind, if you’re going to write a sonnet, you need to follow the rules, otherwise you’re writing a sonnet-like poem.
We talked a bit about the Glosa , Erasure poems (also known as Blackout Poetry) and the Cento verse form.
For the remainder of the workshop, the instructor referred to a 20-page hand out that he’d emailed to us the day before. I don’t know about anyone else, but I didn’t think to bring a printer with me to the retreat, so I was kind of lost. And seeing as we were encouraged to use a notebook and pen in the workshops, few of us had a tablet or laptop to consult.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
WORDAGE REPORT
THE WEEK IN REVIEW
Despite the weather being absolutely beautiful, I did manage to spend some time in my office last week. Not too much though, because even with the window open it got kind of warm in there. Yesterday there was a warm breeze coming in the window. This is only April, I’m a little worried about what the summer is going to be like this year.
I’m still finding it hard to focus, so not much extra in the writing department. I did not do a master list, but I did do a daily to-do list – once.
The words are there, they’re just all jumbled up in my head and I still have to work to straighten them out. Now one of my problems is, what do I want to work on? It’s like when I would go to the video store to rent a movie – there was too much selection and I could never make up my mind which movie to pick.
NEW WORDS:
1847+0+460+808=3,115
DOWN 372 – words from last week
Well, that’s not surprising, considering I missed Monday’s post completely. I just didn’t have anything to write about. My other posts were longer, but not long enough to make up for Monday.
I did a fair amount of hand writing, but that doesn’t really count in my wordage totals. I guess playing word games doesn’t really count either, does it?
But to show my pure intentions, I did go into my office one day, intending to work, and . . . the power went out. And yes, I know the laptops both have batteries, but there still wasn’t any internet connection to do research.
Goals For Next Week:
Get all my blog posts done and maybe a few extra words besides.
EDITING:
2 hours
Which is better than nothing, I suppose. But it wasn’t on Elemental Spirit, I was playing around with some super short fiction – just changing a word here, a comma there.
Goal For Next Week:
Keep working on An Elemental Spirit.
TECH & TRAINING:
Ummm, no. I got nothing here.
Goal For Next Week:
Learn something new. Figure out Dropbox.
POETRY WEDNESDAY:
I have a folder of poetry forms on my desktop and when I went through it I couldn’t find one I liked enough to attempt, so I researched a bunch more forms and last week’s poem was one of them. Even though it was another weird one, I liked it better than the one from the week before.
Several years ago, someone on a poetry forum I was on asked for submission of poems to a specialized anthology. There was a central theme, and our poems were supposed to help tell the story. I thought it was kind of cool, so I submitted a poem and to my surprise it was accepted. And further more, I was going to get paid for it. I think a whole $5.00. LOL
Anyway, for a couple of years, nothing happened, then I got an email from the organizer who said the book was still a go. Then nothing again for another few years until last week, when I got an email explaining that the original publisher had backed out and he was working for someone else now, but even though he’d lost touch with a few of the poets involved so he couldn’t use their poems, the anthology was still a go, he’d just work around the missing poems. Cool, eh?
Goal For Next Week:
Find another new poetry form to share.
CRAFTING:
We had a couple of guest speakers at our regular stitchery guild meeting, and seeing as it’s not considered rude to be working on something while someone’s talking, I worked on my embroidered pillow case and managed to finish it. One down, one to go.
And wouldn’t you know. One of the ladies was down-sizing their stitchery stash and I ended up bringing home a couple of crewel kits. There’s a small one with hummingbirds so I can re-learn how to do crewel work, and a bigger one with a mother and baby tiger laying on the grass. Like I didn’t already have enough projects.
I’m putting off the jewelry I was going to make until I’m able to take possession of the baker’s rack, so . . . not any time soon. *sigh*
Goal For Next Week:
Better organize my sewing bag, either start the second pillow case or find something new to work on.
WHAT I’M READING:
I finished The Knockoff Eclipse by Melissa Bull, and The Writing Retreat, by Julia Bartz. And Goodreads sent me a friends update, letting me know that the daughter marked Run, Rose, Run by Dolly Parton and James Patterson as one she’d like to read, so I texted her so she didn’t buy a copy – I had one. So I ended up reading it, too, so I could pass it along. Now I’m reading The Last Heir to Blackwood Library by Hester Fox.
Goal For Next Week:
Keep reading.
THE WEEK AHEAD:
Still kind of disappointed in myself over the lack of writing, but I’m not going to beat myself up about it because that would just lead to a downward spiral. Yes, my recliner is more comfy than my office chair, but I need to get over it. When I’m in my office I do well, it’s just getting there that’s the problem.
I really need to get back to list making, if for no other reason than to make me feel like I’m accomplishing something during the week.
I’m keeping my goal of editing for an hour a day. If I put Elemental Spirit onto a USB stick, I can edit it on my other lap top, the one that has TraxTime on it so I can keep track of how long I’m working.
I’m also going to keep the goal of making a master list on Sunday night, starting tonight, and then divvying the tasks up through the week. Time well spent, methinks.
I’ve got a bit more on my plate this week. I have a stitch-in at the library on Tuesday, I have a blood test on Wednesday, and a poetry seminar on Thursday afternoon. Then Thursday evening I have a conflict of interest. There's a poetry reading I'd like to go to, but it's also the series finale of Star Trek Picard. While I'd really like to go to the reading, is it worth missing Picard for?
Yes, I know I could have my TiVo record it, or even watch it on On Demand at a later date, but any Trekkie will tell you it's not the same.
But, there’s still little excuse not to spend some more time in my office. I was in there all afternoon yesterday, and only went back to the living room when the battery died on my laptop. Yes, I know I could have just brought the cord in there, but I promised myself I’d work until the battery died. So there. LOL And actually, another advantage of working in my office is that when I’m running on battery I tend to stay off the internet unless it’s important, so no gaming. It really sucks up the battery juice.
Let’s hope I can get my head out of my butt this week and actually get some work done for a change.
Wish me luck.
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