Poetry for the hopeless?

Saltheart

Saltheart

Bitter Giant
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Aug 22, 2006
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I'm interested in studying poetry and poem writing, but I have absolutely no clue about meters or internal rhymes and other things like that: basically, I am hopeless when it comes to poetry.

So I was wondering if there are any tutorials or other online resources you guys recommend to an amateur in poetry?
 
No, I don't know any web resources; my poets' manual and rhyming dictionary is dead tree (and exceeding battered) But, unless you're intending to write classical forms, do you require intensive information about rules and limitations? Most poets I've met (and almost all of them are amateur - if it's difficult to live off book sales, which it is, how much harder to sell enough poetry to sutvive) started by writing things, and only moved on to analysing and perfecting, and studying (rather than reading and absorbing) traditional styles. How many pedants are going to ask for a sestina or a sapphic? (yes, I know one too, but)
Which is not to say there mustn't be lots of sites explaining the difference between anapestic heptameter and trochaic tetrameter, and conventional rhyming schemes, and very enjoyable it can be to try and fit an idea into a rigid, conventional format, but poetry is about emoition, communication of things that cannot be transmitted by conventional symbolic language; form,as ever, while important, follows function.
 
Poetry is always being re-invented. All you need is a condensed message.
best i could find in a short time is a basic revision advice page poetry.com: Poetic Techniques

Rhymes and near rhymes should be obvious enough. with use of accents you can do anything :) Meter is just the natural emphasis of each syllable. hard to find at first, but once you get the hang of it, you can use it or ignore it as you see fit.
the most important part of a poem, in my opinion, is the rhythm. if it flows off the tongue, it will help your message.a great deal.
Be creative, and check out some of Shakespeare's work, John Donne, or maybe G. K. Chesterton.

if you want some advice on a particular work, just post it here and we'll criticize it like crazy ;)
 
Ok....The modern concept seems to be to ignore the standard types of poetry encouraging an "anything goes" philosophy.

Not a lot of poets out there know of-or appreciate the more regimented forms such as Ballads, Triplets, Quatrains, sonnets, etc....but they do exist with definite rules to structure and composition.

If you are serious about the classic types of poetry, I might recommend Clement Wood~THE RHYMING DICTIONARY argueably the best book on the subject. He goes into the fine details of these forms in an easy to understand format. I consider him essential for anyone with a serious interest in poetry.

Also, The Realms Of Fantasy forum has a place for poets who are interested in challenging themselves with classic challenges.

~Frank
 
Actually there shouldn't be any true rules to poetry in my belief but there is some stuff i have learned about the rule biten side of poetry. Now if you read poetry from a while ago like edgar allen poe's writing you will not see many free versed poems. Instead u'll see the A B A B type or AA BB. I'll show you an example. This is an exert from the poem "Alone" my favorite by Edgar Allen Poe


From childhood's hour I have not been (A)
As others were; I have not seen (a)
As others saw; I could not bring (b)
My passions from a common spring. (b)

You see that each line rhymes with the one after it. The next exert poem is a Ab Ab i wrote.

My heart stands frozen in ice (a)​
And I realize that love and trust (b)​
Isn’t something that shall suffice (a)​
Although they both earned respect neither is worth the fuss (b)

Ice and Suffice Rhyme
Trust and Fuss Rhyme
You skip a line and make it rhyme with the one after that.

Then there is always the Free verse which looks like this, "another exert of another of my poems"

Now it is too late and they fall,​
wings broken by the mere idea,​
till they hit the ground​
there they find peace,​
will never be found.​
 
Be careful in "breaking the rules" of poetry by ignoring what's been classically done. It's like abstract art or law - you have to know the rules if you're going to break them properly.

Otherwise, instead of poetry, you'll have oh-noetry.
 
And,despite the name, even vers libre has its own structure, and must scan...

There still is plenty of room for traditional poetry, especially with genre poetry these days. My suggestion would be to go looking for good guides to poetry overall, both classical and modern, onlihne or "dead tree"... the broader your set of tools....
 
A couple of sites I've used are Shadow Poetry -- A World of Poetry at Your Fingertips, which has a pretty good guide to diferent types of poetry, and RhymeZone rhyming dictionary and thesaurus if your stuck for rhymes.

I should point out that I'm an extremely amateur poet, writing for my own enjoyment or for one of the poetry teams in another forum I frequent, so I don't consider myself an expert or anything like it! :)

As Chris said, it can be a lot of fun to try the conventional forms. It's also good exercise - the more types you try, the easier it will be to see what sort of structure (if any) you favour, you'll get practice at writing lines of diferent syllable length, etc.

Basically, the best thing to do is write something and ask people you can trust to be honest for an opinion. Criticism can be annoying sometimes, I know, but as long as it's constructive it'll help you to improve your writing. And remember to have fun while you're doing it! :)
 
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