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Compliments for putting your thoughts, in some sort of verse which certainly rhymes;
Excuse my prosaic response, which remains sceptical (not the same as cynical, I should add).
Yes, many types of poetry, and if you want to see most if not all put in their different forms, including rhyme, then John Hollander has done the job brilliantly in Rhyme’s Reason (highly recommended)
The rules of verse are very important, and must be broken. What’s a rule for if not to be broken? In fact, if you present very formal poetry, rhyme, scan and all, it’s correct but – boring.
Free verse is also very popular in a day when people who don’t read poetry just write what they want to say when feeling lyrical or moody. Free verse doesn’t scan, doesn’t rhyme, well, it’s free.
Except
Just as verse which doesn’t rhyme has to obey rules which are actually quite difficult if they remain a poem (Eliot is big on this, the poem’s structure is like a concertina rather than a metronome), so free verse has to obey rules of the language if it’s to be a poem rather than a prose piece broken in arbitrary fashion into line. The lines are actually not arbitrary in free verse – they’re not structured by rhyme or rhythm, yet they’re not arbitrary.
But none of the poems here are in free verse. In fact, they tend to be very conventional in their formality, and remind me of Children’s Britannica poems charmed me when I was 10
To write formal verse – rhyming at the end of each line – is to give a structure, and for most people this is poetry. Scan usually follows – in fact I don’t know when it doesn’t follow in a good poem – but a poem which rhymes so formally without scanning in some way (and there are complicated ways, I know, a la Marianne Moore), such a poem is a bad poem written by someone who wants to get across Patience Strong type sentiments and doesn’t realise that rhyming and an artificial loftiness alone will not do. It’s so formal it demands formal rhythm (usually), and the rhythm in all the poems here need to be improved.
They’re not my sort of poem, but that doesn’t matter. Why should they be? But they are not really poems, either, more like semi-poems. Rather than just write on regardless, I suggest take note of any criticism and improve it
you can scan very formal poems such as these quite easily – read them aloud and see if they have a rhythm
Hey Diddle diddle,
the cat and the fiddle
the cow jumped over the moon,
the little boy giggled madly to have such fun
and the dish ran away with the spoondoes not scan, and the poem demands scansion, or it’s bad. It jars the ear. If you don’t have any ear for rhythm, then it doesn’t matter, jar away, it’s not a crime (though some would say it is)
Easy to scan. Just change line 4, where the offence occurs, maybe put laughed instead of giggled madly. Hey presto, it’s a poem, and quite a delightful one.
You can put the above in many different forms, of course, but the original nurdsery rhyme is usually the one which sits easiest with the ear.
The alternative is to obliterate the difference between good and bad poems.
Only little changes are needed – really. Nobody write sacred words, so no need to be frightened if you have to edit a little
:roll:
bought a recent film called Poetry, about an old woman with the beginning of Alzheimer’s who joins a poetry class, and from there a poetry group. She is stumped, can’t understand the teacher, feels very inferior to the others in the group, who are all bonhomie and wine while she sits demurely. At the same time, she is approached by a group of rich people who want her to raise a lot of money to pay the mother of a schoolgirl who had been gang-raped by some schoolboys, and then committed suicide – the rapists had been their children, and included the grandchild she had been raising, and the payment was guilt-money to protect the careers of their boys.. She raises the money, the woman is paid, she then goes to a member of her poetry group, a police insp4ector, and quietly informs him of their names, and becomes the only person in the class to write a poem, an amazing one about the girl.
To me, those can be the best poems, written at the end of your tether, and anyone can write them, anyone.
Well i really don’t know…..
you leave for a few days and…
some kind of poetry troll does see fit to…
well sees fit to TROLL a pleasant and
gentle thread of simple poems and
quiet contemplation of simple means.This is not a thread for any budding or wannabe Poet Laureate
it is quite simply a place for simple poems to hopefully create a
pleasant ambience for simple enjoyment for anyone who does
see fit to stumble upon aforementioned simple thread.That is about as pleasant and simple as i can put into words the
reason for this thread and me being rather reserved that is as simple
as it does get to explain to any budding troll.I hope more people do decide to add to the thread and in so doing
will add to the simplicity and pleasant nature for what the thread
was intended for.Here endeth the lesson.
So if someone doesn’t say “oh how wonderful” but suggests there might be some room for improvement, that makes them a troll?
Art in whatever form is subjective and we won’t all like the same thing. It doesn’t mean the art is bad, it just means it’s not to our tastes. When you put your art in a public domain then you are inviting comment yet hearing anything less than positive can seem hurtful for after all, this is your baby. But surely if that comment is intended as constructive, to help one better ones work, it should be welcomed for at least that person cared enough to make it.
Encouragement takes many forms and sitting there typing “oh how wonderful” if you feel there is room for improvement is rather like sitting in a restaurant telling them that yes, the meal was wonderful, when in reality you have a sore jaw from trying to chew the tough steak and a tummy chill because the apple pie was still frozen in the middle. Very British but it doesn’t encourage any improvement. Criticism is like advice though, freely given but not always welcomed.
Someone I used to work with used to say “Here’s some advice; it’s up to you what you do with it but treat it as a gift. Some gifts you are delighted by, some gifts go straight into the rubbish bin, and some gifts you’re not sure about so you put them to one side, take them out every so often and look at them and sometimes they go into the former pile, sometimes they go into the latter pile and sometimes you realise it’s a gift to be shared with others.”
Maybe the criticism, which I feel was intended to be constructive and given with the best of intentions, should be treated in the same way.
Many thanks, Jen, and a good post.
Mellow, I’ve made my point, Why don’t you set the ball rolling again with a poem, I’ll not interrupt?
F##K OFF
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