User:Labombarde/Poetry

Daily Encounters with Poetry

The night before: what I can't and won't do

Decide big questions

I can't and I won't decide any of the big questions.

Personally, I don't find a newspaper article poetic just because its author has decided to break it up into lines that look like a poem. But I'm not going to get into any of that. If it's poetry to you, great! If not, move along and don't try to convert me.

Just because the topic "rhyme" appears in this text won't implicate rhyme: just because it rhymes won't mean it's poetry; nor does failure to rhyme preclude it from being poetry.

On any topic, I'll present the basics as they are generally understood, but then will usually dance away from rigid adherence. Like any religion, poetry's spirit is in the living and the loving, not in dry hollow rules. Two words may not be in perfect rhyme, yet may be the best pair to be married at the close of a poem that in every other couplet rhymes as perfectly as the strictest professor would demand. A villanelle that strains against its repetons may best expose the insanity of the cycles in the poet's eye.

Yet I give all due reverence. A juvenile delinquent who breaks a rule for no better reason than to break the rule does not necessarily improve the poetic justice of the sentence that will be handed down to him in lieu of the one he might better have chosen with more thought.

Create a poet

I can't and I won't make a poet out of you.

Nor can anybody else, even the most practiced of poets or professors.

Only you have that power.

Aid a critic

I can't and I won't show you how to analyze a poem.

How to understand a poem. How to see a poem or hear a poem. How to get into the poet's head where and when the poem emerged.

I can't make you love poetry, but at least I can't do anything badly enough to make you hate it. I won't try to influence your tastes for certain poets or styles of poetry.

I would only suggest that one not criticize out of pure ignorance, nor by proxy on the mere word of another. One need not ever be forced by a parent to taste a single Brussels sprout to know to decline the opportunity; but then one who has been fortunate enough to avoid a Brussels sprout ought not pretend to be the expert on its taste.

If you were to print out this text on suitable paper, the pages might serve as a napkin for your dining on the poetry of other poets. Past that, it's not intended to serve as a restaurant guide.

Dictate the sequence

I can't and I won't dictate the sequence.

The ordering of the sections in this text represent a rough approximation of the linear order in which I drafted the material. As much if not more than could always have been achieved by flipping pages in a book, an electronic text openly allows for reorganizing, skipping around, jumping from link to link. If you wish to make sure you don't miss any of the good stuff by skipping around, you can even download everything to your own file or transfer this to your own Wikibooks subpage and reorganize any material you've skipped down to some later section for eventual reading.

The rationing out of content day by day is admittedly somewhat arbitrary. Although a practicing poet ought to never let any period of waking pass without writing down at least one word meant for a poem nor let any period of sleeping pass without dreaming the same, each poet must find her or his own pace. One might easily spend a year on couplets before moving on, while another might skim through half this text in a single crash cram of an evening.

Finish this book

I can't and I won't ever finish this book.

That will be your job.

Download the text to your hard drive and change it to say what you would have it say.

Better yet, copy it over to a subpage under your own userpage at Wikibooks, where its text was drafted, and make your own links and add your own examples and change the order all around and republish it.

You'll see these last two suggestions repeated through every section of this book: either build your own file or set of files on your own computer; or else create your own Wikibook subpage or set of subpages. Like everything else I can and won't do, I can't and won't tell you how to gain the greatest value out of this text. But I can think of no better way for you to do so than for you to collaborate with me on this exploration through poetry.

Day 1: Prepare!

Come back to day 1 every day

If you've never written or read a poem outside a school classroom, you may not have a clue how to prepare to write or read a poem. You may even be unaware how great a difference preparation makes.

Or if you've published dozens of poetry books and read every major and minor poet one might name, your preparations may have become as stale a routine as dragging a brush through your hair upon waking. Let ritual become too automatic, and you may miss the beauty of a unique twist of hair.

So return to this day and its page every day of your journey through poetry.

Exercise 1: Prepare your preparations

When I admitted I would never finish this book, I suggested that you download the text of this book to your own hard drive or copy it over to your own Wikibooks subpage, revising and extending it on your own from there.

If you downloaded this book to your own hard drive, set up a supplemental file for making notes on your own preparations for writing and reading. If you copied the text over to your own Wikibooks subpage, then set up a new subpage for your notes on preparations.

Then, never stop developing that supplemental file or subpage. Come back to it every morning as you start a new day of encounter with poetry. Revisit it every night to reassess how you might have been better prepared.

Prep is my own personal Wikibooks subpage on preparations for writing and reading poetry. If you take this exercise seriously and use Wikibooks for your own version, feel free to add a link to your version here.

Day 2: Couplet

Smallest hand: A pair

     When all began, before there was an earth
     or heaven, just by speaking God gave birth.

A couplet is a pair of lines of verse.

Frequently the ending words of a couplet rhyme, as in the illustrative couplet given above. However, rhyming is not necessary for two lines of verse to be considered a couplet, as in the following alternative version of our first couplet.

     The page was blank before there was an earth
     or heaven, then God filled it up with words.

Also, it is common for each line of a couplet to have the same meter, as in both of the preceding examples. Again, however, matching meter is not necessary for two lines of verse to be considered a couplet, as with the following further version.

     The page was blank before there existed word, 
     then God wrote.

A couplet may stand alone as a complete poem in and of itself. Alternatively, a couplet may comprise a distinct element within a larger poem. For example, an English sonnet closes with a rhyming couplet. A villanelle is based on a pattern that repeats the two lines of a rhyming couplet throughout the poem. A triolet is similarly based on repeating lines of a couplet for which the two lines do not rhyme.

Some types of couplets have been given names of their own. We'll come back around to that another day. For now, we'll consider one couplet the same as any other.

Daily practice

Beginners or experts alike, avoid or despise the couplet at your peril! Even if you never write a stand-alone couplet, an English sonnet, a villanelle or a triolet, or any other poem for which a couplet is an integral part, couplets are as ubiquitous in poetry as weeds that can invade even the deepest concrete of Manhattan.

     A couplet a day
     tastes like fine chardonnay.

Don't scroll down a screen of this text from one day to a next without writing a new couplet. Make a new couplet a morning exercise like rolling out of bed to a set of push-ups.

Learn how a couplet can feel like walking, left foot right foot. Learn how a couplet can feel like breathing, in out in out. Learn how a couplet can feel like chatting, question followed by response. Learn how to pull surprise through a couplet where a rhyme suggests one ending that you go ahead and use in an unexpected way or else avoid with a different rhyme or else avoid rhyming altogether. Learn something about a couplet that you can add to this paragraph in your own version of this text.

Exercise 2: Your turn to write couplets

Draft a couplet. Rinse and repeat. Daily. Don't ever stop. The rest of your life, don't let a day go by without drafting a new couplet, unless you follow a skipped day by first catching up for the day you missed.

Write a couplet for every occasion. Write a couplet for every feeling. Write a couplet using every possible rhyme. Write a couplet of every reasonable length.

If you downloaded this book to your own hard drive, set up a supplemental file for drafting couplets and notes about couplets. If you copied the text over to your own Wikibooks subpage, then set up a new subpage for your couplet exercises.

Couplets is a subpage that will include my own application of this exercise. If you take this exercise seriously and use Wikibooks for your own version, feel free to add a link to your version here.

Day 3: Write write write

     Write.  And write.  Then write.
     Each word will turn out right.

Nothing teaches writing as well as writing. Nothing beats writer's block as decisively as writing.

Write what's left over from your dream when you wake up. Write your first couplet of the day before you roll out of bed. Write what you'd rather be doing than what you will be doing instead. Write how your morning differs from mine. Write some words that rhyme.

Always keep paper and a pen nearby. Even if you type out e-mails on the fly on an electronic device that goes with you everywhere, don't let that replace the feel of the letters and the words flowing from your head through your hand into the pen through the ink onto the paper. No other feel is quite like it, no other touch quite so inspiring. Knock out two dozen pages a day electronically, and that one word you scratch out on the 3x5 card sitting at the edge of your bathroom sink - the word that you would have missed and forgotten if you'd shrugged off reaching for your iPhone while brushing your teeth - that word will be the most powerful word of the day.

Other books on writing carry similar advice about keeping paper and pen ready, and it's just as easy to ignore them the same as you'll shrug off this tip. You'll pay for a writer's workshop and go along with the idea only as long as it's one of the required exercises, still not getting the hint. Maybe writers should start treating it like a closely guarded secret, not make it seem so obvious, speak in hushed whispers of specially treated paper and magical ink. One day, you will go back to day 1 and make it part of your daily preparation to have paper and a pen on hand just for your writing, and nothing at all will happen, or so it will seem until years later when you realize you've been writing ever since. Just do it.

Exercise 3: Write

Today's exercise is simple: simply do as it says: Write.

If you take this exercise seriously and use Wikibooks for your own version of a daily writing journal, feel free to add a link to your subpage here.

For starters, repeat exercise 2, writing a new couplet for today, working toward developing the habit whereby you will do so without being reminded. But don't count your couplet toward today's writing exercise. Write something else, something new, something that isn't aimed toward any particular couplet.

Although much of the content of any of these exercises may be quite rough draft and frequently rther personal, for me the writing contemplated by this exercise crosses the line into privacy that I would rather keep to myself, thus will not yet provide a personal link as I am doing with other exercises in this text until I can segregate out material I wouldn't mind making available. If you take this exercise seriously and use Wikibooks for your own version of daily journalling for purposes of writing and reading of poetry, feel free to add a link to your version here.

Day 4: Perfect rhyme

     I rhyme with ease,
     if only to please.

     Rhymes can come easy
     without being sleazy

     (although little's easier
     for making it cheesier).

Perfect rhyme is what most people think of most of the time when one refers to "rhyme."

• Among two or more words, the final consonant sound (if there exists a final consonant sound) is exactly the same and the final vowel sound is exactly the same, as with "ease" perfectly rhyming with "please," but not with "peace" nor with "ooze." If the last two syllables of each word are considered to be rhyming, then the same relationship holds for the next to last syllable: the sounds are identical, as with "easy" perfectly rhyming with "sleazy." And although more rare, the same identical relationship would hold for the preceding syllable if the last three syllables of each word are considered to be rhyming, as with "easier" perfectly rhyming with "cheesier."
  
  
• No matter how many syllables are included in the rhyme, the stress on any particular syllable within each word must be the same as in any of the other rhyming words.
  
  
• The consonant sound preceding the rhyming syllable or rhyming syllables must be different for the different words.
  
  For example, the words "write" and "right" used in the couplet at the beginning of day 3's discussion are not considered perfect rhymes although they satisfy the other two conditions for perfect rhyming, since both words begin the single rhyming syllable with the "r" sound. On the other hand, "not write" would be considered a perfect rhyme with "got right" on the basis of the final two syllables of each group of words comprising the rhyme (although composing a sensible poem with that set of words might be a bit of a stretch).

Perfecting the perfection

Despite the terminology, use these distinctions as a field guide to the nature of one species of sounds, rather than holy scripture regarding the purity of "perfection." Just because "writhe" is not a perfect rhyme to "night" doesn't mean it isn't the right word to use for a poem you're writing about how rough your sleep was. If "writhe" and "night" work, don't bend the line to try saying how writhing seemed so "right" or discolor the nightsweats until they feel "lithe," merely to stretch for a false sense of rhyme perfection.

But likewise, don't disparage the perfect rhyme as quickly as so many aspiring poets claim to do. Many are the young writers who turn up their nose at rhyme while grooving to iPods piping in everything from country music to rap, virtually all of which is heavily marinated in perfect rhyme. And even if you'll listen to lyrics without ever wanting to write a single perfect rhyme, knowledge of perfect rhyme can deepen a writer's awareness of the more common sound sense that no poem can escape. With "writhe" and "night" recognized as close cousins, it might be a mild stretch to claim that all words distantly rhyme with all others in much the same way as all humans may be distantly related to common ancestry, but the stretch would not be entirely useless to the art of writing and reading a poem. One who too lightly dismisses perfect rhyme risks missing much of the music within even the most carefully crafted unrhymed free verse.

Rhyme dictionaries

See Wiktionary's Rhyme Dictionary.

Distance yourself to find how close we all are

If you're coming to this text with an innate aversion to perfect rhyme, then perhaps the exercise for you would be to find words that have no perfect rhyme within the English language, like "orange" or "silver." Those might be the words with which you would then feel most comfortable partying.

And for someone who despises perfect rhyme, almost as fun to be around are the words that may have another word that perfectly rhymes, but that word simply wouldn't fit well in any reasonable poem without badly stretching credibility and sense. Such words are almost as good as words that have no perfect rhyme, since they tend to be just as lonely.

Start filling out your guest list with those two groups, then start working your way out from there until you get to the most basic rhyming words like "day" and "night." Now, for those basic rhyming words that have large families of perfectly rhyming brothers and sisters, make sure you know those siblings well enough to ban their presence at any party in the same room (as in, at the end of a line) as any of their own family. Do this complete exercise all the way from "silver" to "night," and you will understand the power of perfect rhyme as perfectly as the best rhymester, even if you never rhyme so much as a single couplet. And even your most unrhymed lines absent of all alliteration and assonance will show the muscle you will have gained from the exercise.

Exercise 4: Keep your own rhyme dictionary

Existing rhyming dictionaries are highly recommended, of course, since not even the most learned person knows every single word that rhymes with any given word. But just as each word has a special meaning and a particular sound and a certain touch to each individual, so too will rhyme connections feel different for you than they do for me. You'll find that exploring rhymes on your own will carry you far beyond where the strongest winds of the best rhyming dictionary can ever hope to blow.

Again, as has been stressed throughout this text, this will be where electronic media - and Wikibooks in particular - can show its value. Start a supplemental file or a Wikibook subpage for your own rhyme dictionary; and before long, you'll find yourself thumbing through your own more than through the standard dictionaries (although of course the standard ones should never be completely discarded or ignored).

So let's start your own: list all the words you might use to end the second line in a couplet meant to perfectly rhyme, where the first line ends with the word "bay." And unless you have some other couplet that presses in on your day, write today's couplet with ending words that come from that rhyme set.

Rhyme Dictionary will be my Wikibooks subpage where I will be developing my own personal rhyme dictionary as suggested by this exercise. If you take this exercise seriously and use Wikibooks for your own version of a rhyming dictionary, feel free to add a link to your subpage here.

Day 5: Read read read

Never stop reading! And don't limit your reading!

I've scarcely gone a day the past 50 years without reading something. And most of those days, part of that something would be a poem or a book about poems or poets. But for too many of those years, I was too cautious about my reading, wary of being "influenced" too much in any one direction. If I had those five decades to read all over again, I would read ten times as much and with no restraint whatsoever. One can never be influenced enough, nor can one suffer permanent damage from such influence.

Even if the muse fills your entire day with words of your own, stretch the day an hour longer if need be to fill it even further with words written by other poets.

Exercise 5: Keep a poetry reading journal

Poetry Reading Journal will be my Wikibooks subpage where I will be keeping notes on poems I am reading, as suggested by this exercise. If you take this exercise seriously and use Wikibooks for your own version of a poetry reading journal, feel free to add a link to your subpage here.

If every day you are seriously repeating every exercise from every preceding day, then by today you should already be nearing the point where you'll be encountering the question of how serious you intend to be about writing and reading poetry. We're still only dabbling with the simplest basics - preparing, reading, jotting down notes, collecting rhymes, and scribbling out couplets - yet already these exercises taken seriously should occupy an hour or more of concentrated effort during the day, not to mention invading our thoughts throughout the entire day. Will it relax back down to a casual hobby for you from here on out? Or will you have to start a triage order for all remaining tasks? and will poetry take hold and never for a single day consume any less of your existence than it does now?

Day 6: Humble iamb

     An iamb's not an iamb (at least, not
     in English, in which this text will be taught).

Day 7: Listen to poetry

As we discussed several days ago, perfect rhyme is characterized by the sound of words. And for all but a few very rare exceptions, the sounds of words is important even to poems that don't rely on perfect rhyme. Yet even for students or practitioners of poetry, too often a poem is experienced only by silently reading the words printed on a page or displayed on a screen.

Poems are meant to be heard!

Get in the habit of listening to poetry read aloud.

Day x: Join a local poetry group

In the beginning, God
gave his first draft the nod.

God can be perfect enough to get it right the first time. We should rarely allow ourselves the arrogance to think it anything but an accident if we can do the same.

Scrap pile

The word

Rhyme

Rhyme generally refers to an implicit relationship between two or more words based on the similarity of sounds among those words. One word is said to "rhyme" with another if the one word sounds similar to the other.

• See also "eye rhyme," based on the appearance of each word as spelled out, as contrasted with the general sense of rhyme based on the sound of each word.
• "Rhyme" may also refer to a set of lines or a poem that employs rhyme. In this text, except as otherwise obvious from context (for example, in reference to a "nursery rhyme"), "rhyme" will be taken as meant in the sense stated above, that is, in the relationship of similar sounds between words).
• Except as otherwise specifically addressed, rhyme is discussed in this text in the context of common English. It has been generally taken as given that rhyme is more restricted in English than for numerous other languages. Thus, for example, such relative restriction of rhyme is often cited as a major influence leading to emergence of the English sonnet form, which is slightly more relaxed in its rhyming demands than the earlier Petrarchan sonnet form.

Eye rhyme

See eye rhyme.