Oh crap I think I'm guilty of a few of your 'don'ts'!! I will make me feel bad now if I do what you said don't do lol. I really loved the poem by Jon Silken - really moving! Thanks for sharing :)
Think of it all as advice rather than dos and don'ts. Feel free to take as much or as little of it as you please.
I'm glad you enjoyed the poem. I love the way the persona uses pronouns to describe his son in the opening lines to distance himself from the pain of what's going on.
This bit got me :(
And then slowly the eye stopped looking
Inward. The silence rose and became still.
The look turned to the outer place and stopped.
With the birds still shrilling around him.
And as if he could speak
He turned over on his side with his one year
Red as a wound
He turned over as if he could be sorry for this
And out of his eyes two great tears rolled, like stones,
And he died.
Thank you! Your answer to my question makes a great deal of sense. I guess the summary would be to not try to enforce patterns on myself unless they are somehow really beneficial for the work. But at the same time if it really is screaming at me for a pattern, I shouldn't break it just to avoid having one. @tinypaleokitchen realized yesterday that I'm writing more poetry than prose at the moment. I find that terrifying. And yet I'm still doing it. I guess you hit an on switch that is not agreeable to me turning it off again. :-(
Thank you for answering my question and even providing a great example. There were a handful of interesting questions, and I particularly liked the one by @rahlee. At times, short poetry tends to be something that I love the most. You just have to stay focused and every word counts (even more than in longer poetry.) I admit I struggle with reading longer pieces as well (mainly due to attention/focus, not out of disinterest).
Overall another incredible session! Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions.
I agree with short poetry. I think if you can get the right and deal with the finest points of concentration then you're setting yourself up for working well on longer verse.
As ever, thanks for reading. I'm glad you're continuing to enjoy it. I'm not sure if you've noticed yet but @nikisteem and I have a short poetry comp going on atm. Submissions close tomorrow.
I didn't know that, I am a bit out of the loop nowadays. Let me go search for it quickly and see if I can come up with something good.
After hitting a bit of a stump with my longer poetry, I did go much shorter, and it helped me with my longer poems as well, so you are definitely right on that.
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I upvoted your contribution because to my mind your post is at least 9 SBD worth and should receive 74 votes. It's now up to the lovely Steemit community to make this come true.
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To be honest....many writers, myself included can learn much from your Q&A! and most of all those with egos the size of steemit should be able to takeaway a lot more than they put in when it comes to your advice. Hope your message reaches more people !
Thank you for sharing this. I loved all your views here, therefore I will resteem it, not only for my followers to see, but for my future reference as well.
Poetry for me is exactly the opposite of prose. Poetry, for me, is organised verses and lines. Each line can evoke powerful messages, where the poet has own reasons for using a word to depict something, but can leave different interpretations to the readers.
I like structured poems, as well as, free-verse. With free-verse, I am not bound by the rules in writing the poem. I can have as many syllables I want in each line, or even when the last words in each line don't even rhyme.
As for the indentation, I guess the poet wants to put emphasis on a message or how he/she might want to leave an impact to the reader.
I too enjoy both form and free verse. I think both have their place and both can be equally profound when done right.
Thanks for reading. There's a lot more to come.
Oh crap I think I'm guilty of a few of your 'don'ts'!! I will make me feel bad now if I do what you said don't do lol. I really loved the poem by Jon Silken - really moving! Thanks for sharing :)
Think of it all as advice rather than dos and don'ts. Feel free to take as much or as little of it as you please.
I'm glad you enjoyed the poem. I love the way the persona uses pronouns to describe his son in the opening lines to distance himself from the pain of what's going on.
This bit got me :(
And then slowly the eye stopped looking
Inward. The silence rose and became still.
The look turned to the outer place and stopped.
With the birds still shrilling around him.
And as if he could speak
He turned over on his side with his one year
Red as a wound
He turned over as if he could be sorry for this
And out of his eyes two great tears rolled, like stones,
And he died.
Thank you! Your answer to my question makes a great deal of sense. I guess the summary would be to not try to enforce patterns on myself unless they are somehow really beneficial for the work. But at the same time if it really is screaming at me for a pattern, I shouldn't break it just to avoid having one.
@tinypaleokitchen realized yesterday that I'm writing more poetry than prose at the moment. I find that terrifying. And yet I'm still doing it. I guess you hit an on switch that is not agreeable to me turning it off again. :-(
Yes, that's exactly right. As far as I see that's the beauty of writing free verse.
I'm glad you've caught the bug. Your poetry is seriously going from strength to strength.
We'll see. I doubt it will stay that way. But perhaps you will have to tell me if anything is worth going mainstream with instead.
Thank you for answering my question and even providing a great example. There were a handful of interesting questions, and I particularly liked the one by @rahlee. At times, short poetry tends to be something that I love the most. You just have to stay focused and every word counts (even more than in longer poetry.) I admit I struggle with reading longer pieces as well (mainly due to attention/focus, not out of disinterest).
Overall another incredible session! Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions.
I agree with short poetry. I think if you can get the right and deal with the finest points of concentration then you're setting yourself up for working well on longer verse.
As ever, thanks for reading. I'm glad you're continuing to enjoy it. I'm not sure if you've noticed yet but @nikisteem and I have a short poetry comp going on atm. Submissions close tomorrow.
I didn't know that, I am a bit out of the loop nowadays. Let me go search for it quickly and see if I can come up with something good.
After hitting a bit of a stump with my longer poetry, I did go much shorter, and it helped me with my longer poems as well, so you are definitely right on that.
Thank you for this series. It is such a great reference for our members and other poets.
This makes a lot of sense. There's a lot to think about here. Brain hurting.
Thanks for reading mate. Glad you're finding it useful.
Congratulations! Your post has been selected as a daily Steemit truffle! It is listed on rank 10 of all contributions awarded today. You can find the TOP DAILY TRUFFLE PICKS HERE.
I upvoted your contribution because to my mind your post is at least 9 SBD worth and should receive 74 votes. It's now up to the lovely Steemit community to make this come true.
I am
TrufflePig
, an Artificial Intelligence Bot that helps minnows and content curators using Machine Learning. If you are curious how I select content, you can find an explanation here!Have a nice day and sincerely yours,
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To be honest....many writers, myself included can learn much from your Q&A! and most of all those with egos the size of steemit should be able to takeaway a lot more than they put in when it comes to your advice. Hope your message reaches more people !
Thanks, Niki. I'm glad all of these posts are having a positive effect.
This was a great read, but then again, your posts always are.
Bex isn't the only one writing more poetry than prose at the moment. But it doesn't freak me out in the least.
I can't thank you enough for all these great lessons and all the support and encouragement.
Hugs
It's good that they're having an impact. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for reading.
Thank you for sharing this. I loved all your views here, therefore I will resteem it, not only for my followers to see, but for my future reference as well.
Poetry for me is exactly the opposite of prose. Poetry, for me, is organised verses and lines. Each line can evoke powerful messages, where the poet has own reasons for using a word to depict something, but can leave different interpretations to the readers.
I like structured poems, as well as, free-verse. With free-verse, I am not bound by the rules in writing the poem. I can have as many syllables I want in each line, or even when the last words in each line don't even rhyme.
As for the indentation, I guess the poet wants to put emphasis on a message or how he/she might want to leave an impact to the reader.
I too enjoy both form and free verse. I think both have their place and both can be equally profound when done right.
Thanks for reading. There's a lot more to come.
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