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This folder is for discussion about poems, the study of the varying poetic structures and poetic theories and applications.

I think that I'd particularly like to learn a little more about language as it connects to poetic rhythms. I've never been able to fully grasp the difference between iambic pentameter and the other types of poetry :D

I'm with you on that. That's why I started this folder, as an aid to learning. So far, it's book learning. I'm hoping some seasoned poet can pop in and give some input.

GR is hiccupping this morning. I'll have to add topics later.

I have a feeling that this section will be hopping. There's poetry in varying forms, which is appealing at different levels, from literature to advertising jingles.

I used to write poetry (and have had a couple published), but have no clue as to how they are constructed; except to say it is like visual music. It has to "sound right" and "look right" at the same time.
a poem creates
a nuanced vision
of sensory manifestation
that is almost
tactile.

writing poetry is akin to seducing words
until they wantonly act out your fantasies.

Dianne wrote: "writing poetry is akin to seducing words
until they wantonly act out your fantasies. "

I love that description, Dianne.

Why, thank you :)

I'm quite happy with how it turned out too. If anyone wishes to deconstruct and analyse why it "works" please, be my guest. I'm facinated to understand something that I do by feel. music, words, movement and images all have overlapping and entwined edges for me. I find it very hard to distinguish where one mode merges with the other then transforms. It's more nebulous than dialectic.

Dianne wrote: "Why, thank you :)

I'm quite happy with how it turned out too. If anyone wishes to deconstruct and analyse why it "works" please, be my guest. I'm facinated to understand something that I do by fee..."

Cadence... for me that's it. Everything important has a cadence. Heartbeat. Breathing, even the fall of our feet when we walk. If you remember the movie "Dead Poets Society," one of my favorites, where they did the experiment with three students walking in a circle, then, with in so much time all three were walking instep with no idea why they chose to do that.

of course, I may be waxing down the spiritual rabit hole here... to me that's what music and poetry have in common is the cadence, patterns of sound that match pressure and function.

Wow, I'm getting in too deep. I need to go back and get my floaties.

I, Curmudgeon wrote: "Wow, I'm getting in too deep. I need to go back and get my floaties. "

Run, rabbit, run! LOL.

Now now, there is no reason to be xenophobic here. Bunnies are people too.

Don't panic! :D I'm sure it's possible to go waaaaay deeper! I agree, cadence is a huge part of it...but there's more too. Whilst not meaning full synathesia, the line between sound and sight is blurred and fuzzy. In a quantum mechanics superposition, frequency of wave vs point of change-over sort of way (ok, who's slipping down the rabbit hole now ;) )
given also that what we perceive and process cognitively also is an influence...other species for instance see smells and taste sounds...and so do we. (just most of us aren't aware of it).

Careful with the blurred and fuzzy talk...the Bunnies are getting nervous... we don't want a stampeed here.

And, at the risk of sounding like Pinto talking to Donald Southerland in that wonderful documentary on college life "Animal House."... yes, wave theory, or rather frequency is all about cadence and about so much more. There is a certain uniformity to the universe here.

Why do solar systems resemble atoms and work in similar ways. Light is all about our ability to precieve the slightest minute difference in frequency and Dopler principles affect light as it does sound, or our preception of it.

So, when you hear a train coming, the sound is at it's highest pitch, and when it disappears from sight, the pitch is at it's lowest. When it is closest to you, you hear it's "True Frequency" or pitch.

And, these patterns are repeated all over the universe and micro-verse (or what ever you call things on atomic and sub-atomic levels for general reference...other than calling it sub-atomic particles maybe?)

and, even though we may not understand why, our senses are able to precieve these minute differences in the movement of subatomic particles.

I am beginning uni at last this week and one idea popped up in my literature unit on poetry. That theories of poetry tend to describe it as hard. Yet I've always seen poetry as language in its simplest and hence in its most pure and beautiful. Does anyone else concur with me?

Jonathan wrote: "I've always seen poetry as language in its simplest and hence in its most pure and beautiful. Does anyone else concur with me?"

Maybe I don't. First, I think poetry often appears to be simpler than it is. Or, maybe I mean it is often complex, despite consisting of few words, or the fewest possible. Second, I'm not so sure I think there is a link between simple and pure.

I think poets create the cadence or rhythms very deliberately. Some by sensing what sounds right, others by consciously making choices about word use so that accents, syllables, vowels and consonants create a pattern and/or have some effect. It seems like it would be an awful lot of work.

I think poetry can be complex but not in the way that people assume. People assume that poets always are thinking about technique and some do, yet I've found that many poets simply work with what sounds and feels poetic.

When I say simple and pure I do not mean simple in the sense of stripping everything away, though poetry often does that, but of removing the necessary complications of language in prose. Of removing what distracts from the artistry and creation. That is why I feel purity of language connects to simplicity. There is this poem I was shown by my lecturer that I feel really grasps the idea of poetry as I see it:

An Introduction to Poetry
Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

When people think of language creations as complex I often think they then go and read into it something that is not there, 'beating it with a hose' and torturing 'a confession out of it'. That is not how I see poetry, I see it as simple in that often it is simply as the author reveals, rather than some deep and hidden complex and convoluted idea.

Jonathan wrote: "When people think of language creations as complex I often think they then go and read into it something that is not there, 'beating it with a hose' and torturing 'a confession out of it'. "

I agree completely that this happens. At the same time, I think it is extremely beneficial to reread and reread poems and discuss and discuss again. It's important to anchor interpretations but it's fun to explore tangents too.

Enjoyable Billy Collins poem too. Thanks. I may use it in class in a few weeks (after we've beaten a few more poems with hoses first!).

Jonathan wrote: "Jonathan wrote: "When people think of language creations as complex I often think they then go and read into it something that is not there, 'beating it with a hose' and torturing 'a confession out..."

Oh exactly (by the way this looks like I'm quoting myself lol)! So far we pointed out that the real thought behind such a poem is not that we cannot analyse poems, but that it is a mistake to read too deeply into it and see ideas and expressions that perhaps may not be in there. To use the idea of water-skiing I think the danger area is when you lose sight of the shore with the Author's name upon it. I feel the same goes for any novel or work of language that you should not 'overanalyse' it to the point of obscurity.