Poetry- Writing and Reading

Writing Poetry: Ready, Steady, Go!
By Aylin Graves

So you are a beginner in poetry and need some easy tips to get over “the block”? First and foremost, remember that you are not alone! Any aspiring poet needs to work hard to produce a good poem. Do not be scared. If you write a lot, strive for the best expression, trust your instincts as you go and remember the following points, you may find that you have written a memorable poem!

Before I pass on to my tips though, perhaps I should warn you against building your expectations too high! Naturally, this mini article cannot turn you into the best poet that you know. This article can only be a guide. Writing is, after all, a little bit like skiing. If you’re not experienced, you will need a ski instructor to accompany you and ease your fears; yet, you are the one who must eventually complete each manoeuvre. You can learn tips from your instructor but he cannot ski for you — you have to do it yourself. I know it looks scary but only so at the beginning! If you ski a lot, you can become a good skier. If you write a lot, you may or may not become a good poet, but at least you will learn to listen to your inner voice, face the “contents of your heart” and enjoy this special and fulfilling activity! Here are my tips. Ready? Steady? Go!

1. Dare it!

Although there are many sources that claim they can teach you how to write poetry (such as this very article!), keep in mind that there is no perfect recipe that anybody can give you for a good poem. This is excellent news because it means you will be free to experiment on your own (mostly in a sink-or-swim fashion) and produce your own unique poems. This is crucial as each poem will be both a process and a product of exploration and discovery – not only of your “self” but also of the world around you. Exploration is a difficult thing but as author Octavia Butler points out: “Poetry forces you to say what you have to say”. Indeed! So a good tip to start with is: Dare to say what you have to say and do not be shy or intimidated. Your poem is unique, it is an exploration of yourself and the way you see the world. Nobody but YOU can produce this particular poem! Dare it!

2. Write it!

Remember that content comes first! The rhythm and rhyme and other stylistic features will arise later if you write from your heart. Choose a topic that provokes your thoughts and emotions because otherwise you may find it difficult to be sincere.

So, you have a good topic now, what next? Are you going to sit around and wait for the muse to appear and give you the magic formula for your poem? By all means, NO! Start writing this very minute! Write systematically. Write freely. Write even though you run out of ideas. Close your eyes and try to visualize your topic. Then play around with it in your head. Look at it from different angles. Write freely any thought and any feeling it inspires in you. You do not have to use all of these ideas in your poem later but remember that you need ideas and free-writing is a good way to generate them. Also, ideas are sneaky. They can (and mostly do!) come to you when you least expect them and then they go away quickly before you even know it. So when an idea comes to you, note it down. Do NOT rely on remembering it later because you may not. Go around with a notebook that you can fill with ideas and NEVER discard an idea because it is not good enough. All ideas are important –some of them will just need more time to grow. So treat your ideas with respect, write them down, play with them often, and let them grow.

When you feel you have enough ideas, draft your poem. (Yes! A poem needs multiple drafts too!) And go on doing that until you feel comfortable with your content, word choice and language. Once you have a draft that you are happy with, the next step will be styling your poem.

3. Style it!

When you have a draft, read your poem out loud and remember that a good poem sounds at least as good as it looks on paper. So read it out loud and listen to your words. David Mc Cord, the poet, says “a poem, like rain, should fall with elemental music”. Decide if your poem does that. No? Then the best thing to do is keep your content but play with the words and their order to achieve rain-like music. But do not get caught up too much in this. The only true concern here should be your own feelings about the poem. Does it sound right to you? Yes? Voila! You have finished your poem.

Before I close, a few final words by Ruth Gordon from her anthology of poems Peeling the Onion:

“Like the onion, poetry is a constant discovery. Peel the onion, layer after layer, until its very heart is reached . . . it adds taste, zest, and a sharp but sweet quality that enriches our lives”.

So are you ready to add your life that extra zest? If so, ready, steady, go…

Aylin Graves is a teacher trainer and writing instructor. She owns MaviZebra Communications, an online writing and editing center. Visit MaviZebra at: http://www.mavizebra.com.tr.

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Three Poems: The Monkey Man of Lima, Plus Two More
By Dennis Siluk

What Hides behind the Minute?

What hides behind the minute?
It seems, no one really knows;
How many times will we wakeup,
To count the minutes gone?

The rose was dead when I arrived;
The sword, was rusty and dull;
The window curtain was open,
And there was music in the hall.

Oh lovely minute, where art thou?
One, is not like the other—:
Whirling in an earthly orbit,
As the boundless world discovers.

#675 5/18/05 [at the bookstore café; Roseville, MN USA]

12) Vietnam: Shrapnel

Here under the ball of blood
In Vietnam, the moon rises
The battlefield reeks with flies—
I swear I’ll come out in one piece,
Or die…

The air—is melting Hot!
The heavens vomit shrapnel out.
A towering inferno—
My helmet, ashes and stones
Shrapnel rips by my face
The ground shakes.

You know you’re all alone
With the blast and heap of metal.
One dies today, trapped…
In the middle of the blast;
Two wounded!…

#671

The Monkey Man of Lima
[Miraflores]

Advance: He is the last of his breed, I do believe; the Monkey Man of Miraflores, Lima, Peru. Who winds his wooden music-box up, while the monkey dances, pulls out a slip with your fortune on it, from its drawer, and hands it to you; he is seventy-four years old, small framed and I confess, whenever I go to Lima, about once or twice a year, I look forward in visiting him; which he is normally in the park seven days a week, from about 2:30 to 9:00 PM. He vacations about three times a year for about two weeks each time.

I used him as a character in one of my previous books, “The Mumbler,” and gave him a copy, as one of the artists did a water color painting for the cover of the book, of him, and his monkey, and his music-box. His son read the book to him, since it was in English, and not Spanish. He thought it quite the item.

I know he is getting up in age, and his back will not hold out forever, carrying that big wooden box on his back ((a belt tied around him and the box))this man of five-foot three, 110-pounds) with his monkey in it—which he has carried for 60-years—but until it does, until he retires, he is worth seeing, if one takes a trip that way, that is. Permit me to echo an almost lost tradition in the poem that follows, one I saw when I was a kid for a short time in Minnesota, and one that lives on in Lima, Peru, today, but may not tomorrow. #661; 5/14/05.

—I get a-thinking!
Thinking of the ‘ol Monkey Man
In Miraflores Park—;
As he carries his heavy load:
A music-box and Monkey—
Down the road
On his aging, solid back;
Looking for his special spot!
Once found—he cares and feeds
His long-tailed monkey…
Then settles down.

—I get thinking!
Thinking how he waits for the curious
To entertain them;
For a solid-metal coin!…
Once given, he winds the music box
As the monkey dances about
And gives a slip out;
Always of good fortune.
A music-box and a Monkey—
Down the road he goes
Goes home at 9:00 PM
With his monkey, and friend.

Dennis Siluk, Poet and Author, his website is: http://dennissiluk.tripod.com

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Two Poems: Overbearing and A Few Hours More
By Dennis Siluk

Dec. 12, 2004

Overbearing

[Dedicated to Islam]

Many come by me walking
I shan’t remember but a few,
For those who came overbearingly
I have forgotten you…
…
…

It is like the bobbing of a tree
Bowing in a storm
I remember not the wind at all
Once the storm has gone.

#407 [12/10/04]

A Few Hours More
[Dedicated to the Chinese Poets]

New eyes An old man
Cow bells ringing on cows in Garmisch
The Valley of the Mesa Verde

The fish-fry in Beijing

On my plate of life

Appear many things…

A war that never goes away
Music and poetry that helps me
Live each day…

My bookcase is filled
My lamp is warm
I see night approaching

As I read on…

The birds are now gone;
So much I notice now—
Things, things I never did before.

Along the road of life I’ve learned

There are many, so many doors.

Tomorrow, I know:
I’ll still hear those cowbells ringing
In the Garmisch winds;
How marvelous to have been part
Of all of this, I’ve lived—;
To have been…
One of so many…that might
Have been, and was.

I am what I am, just a
Breathe on earthy shores—
Content as a fish, I might say
With a few hours more.

#406 [12/11/04]

See Dennis’ web site: http://dennissiluk.tripod.com

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How to increase Poetic Inspiration
By Richard Pettinger

“Inside each human being there is a poet. This poet can bring dawn the loftiest heights of truth and, at the same time, can powerfully eclipse the darkest falsehood if and when necessity demands. ”

- Sri Chinmoy

1. Immerse ourselves in the poetry of great Seer Poets. There is nothing wrong in gaining inspiration from others. Nearly all poets acknowledge that some other person had a big influence on their early writing style. What we should avoid is the temptation to mimic others. This will not work, what we need is to develop our own unique style, however we can definitely gain insights and guidance from other poets.

2. Appreciating the good qualities of others. When we appreciate others good qualities we make these part of ourselves. To read great poets is good, but when we can explain to others and ourselves why they are successful it helps us to highlight their beneficial qualities to our mind.

3. Clear the mind. If we are thinking all the time of mundane things, worries about the future, and concerns about the past; how can we expect to have revelations about lofty experiences? When writing we should try to ignore such thoughts. We need to keep our mind clear to enable inspiration to enter.

4. Meditation can help clear our mind and receive inner inspiration. Meditation enables us to silence the relentless flow of useless thoughts. Through meditation we learn to go deep within where there is a source of creativity and spontaneity.

5. Using the power of nature. If we find meditation difficult, we can get inspiration and clear the mind, by spending time with nature. The beauty, immensity and silence of the natural world can help lift us out of the mundane and into a consciousness where creativity flows more easily. Many of the great poets and thinkers have spent time in nature, deriving much benefit from it. William Wordsworth is a good example, for Wordsworth walking in nature was his meditation and definitely inspired some of his immortal poetry.

A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.

From: A Slumber did my spirit steal - Wordsworth

However at the same time we shouldn’t feel nature is indispensable for getting artistic inspiration. There is the case of Rabindranath Tagore who went to great efforts to find a remote spot in the Himalayas where he hoped he would be inspired. When he finally got there he couldn’t think of anything. When he returned home to the city, his writing began to flow again.

6. Using the inspiration of Music. Music can be illumining and elevating, definitely some music by Beethoven and others feels like it comes from a higher world. Listening to the right music may well help us to gain more inspiration.

7. Do not Give Up. It was the great inventor Thomas Edison who presciently said that Genius was 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. It is the same with writing poetry; the more we write the more fluent we become. Some say poets are born and not made but Sri Chinmoy writes:

“It is said that poets are born and not made. Unfortunately I do not and cannot subscribe to this view. There are many, many poets I have seen in my lifetime who were not born as poets but, by virtue of their hearts’ climbing cries and one-pointed dedicated lives, have become excellent poets.”

Our Poetic inspiration will become more powerful if we give more time and practise to writing. Unfortunately unless we have a very rare gift, we cannot expect a poem or writing to suddenly present itself. There is little substitute for hard work.

Richard is a freelance writer and teacher in Oxford. He has a great interest in poetry. He edits a site on the poetry of his spiritual teacher Sri Chinmoy http://www.srichinmoypoetry.com

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Poetry is Written for a Universal Audience
By Dennis Siluk

I’ve been writing, reading, and singing poetry for 46-years, and I’ve never heard anything so silly as poetry cannot be enjoyed universally, or it is strictly made for the poet. It is, if given a good translator: translatable, I’d say perhaps 50% of poetry. And most poets do not write for themselves, they wrote for the world, the last of the truth givers. One half the Old Testament is written in a form of poetic prose, if not, epic, ode, elegy, or dramatic. Most of your songs today are poetry in motion, a form of personification, a figure of speech that gives human qualities to inanimate objects or ideas, or can. Homer’s Trojan War is poetic; without it we’d have never known there was a war in 1250 BC in Asia Minor.

I do agree with the fact, perhaps a large hunk of poetry is not translatable from one language to another, but most epic poems are, like the Epic of Gilgamish; it frees the spirit, it is like music. In most of Faulkner’s early writings you will see a pattern, a form of poetry, he had a hell of a time trying to avoid mixing genres of poetic prose fiction into his historical novels and short stories.

In poetry virtually every line of any poem contains all levels of meaning, condensed: poems are short stories, if stretched out. Thus, you do not have to run around town and buy 20-novels to get to the end of the story.

I’ve read poetry from many ages, from the Old English, representing works in oral tradition, the old bard who had to memorize to make sure it got to its right place, with its accented syllables per line. To Anglo-Norman or Middle English poetry, where we get the French lyric forms.

And I can go on to the Renaissance which their poetry gave rebirth to humanistic culture, focused on mankind rather than on God; to the 17th century of Neoclassicism, all the way to what we have now Postmodernism.

In poetry we have what we call verse, meter, both words for poetry itself, meter is the pattern created in a line though. So if anything, you have in poetry the best of that language in a poem.

Like anything else you write, the poet and reader needs to know the audience, who is the audience he is writing for or to. Some folks say they can’t understand Faulkner, to me he is an easy read, I’ve read all his stuff; and Hemingway, is like he is writing to me. But there are some authors I get lost with after a few sentences. The poet doesn’t necessarily write to the whole world at large, no one does, but some can. And like any story, you got to know what the main subject of the poem is (or in a story: the theme, plot and insight), and if the poet can’t give it, he perhaps is not as good as he’d like to be, or you’re not as good as you think you are in reading a condensed story, in poetic form.

You also have to figure out: does the poem belong to a genre, again like reading fiction or nonfiction; these are normal questions we ask ourselves, usually when we read anything. And like many writers, such as William Burroughs, and his friends of the 50s, you have to take into consideration what figure of speech is being used in the poem, just like the story. Nowadays people do not want to take any work in reading, but it requires this to have a good read. And you may want to know what the poet’s life and times were. If I read Fitzgerald now, he is like plain music, but in his day he was a flash of lightening.

See Dennis’ web site: http://dennissiluk.tripod.com

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Top 20 Poetry Quotations
By Danielle Hollister

Explore the meaning of poetry and the motivation of poets with this special collection of evocative quotations…

1. “A poet is someone who is astonished by everything.”
   – Anonymous
2. “Reality only reveals itself when it is illuminated by a ray of poetry.”
   – Georges Brague
3. “The poet doesn’t invent. He listens. ”
   –Jean Cocteau
4. ” In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it’s the exact opposite.”
   – Paul Dirac
5. ” Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.”
   – T. S. Eliot
6. “The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight with a verse given in a happy quotation than in the poem.”
   – Ralph Waldo Emerson
7. ” There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it.”
   – Gustave Flaubert
8. “A poem begins with a lump in the throat. ”
   –Robert Frost
9. ” Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement.”
   – Christopher Fry
10. ” There’s no money in poetry, but there’s no poetry in money, either.”
    – Robert Ranke Graves
11. ” Poetry is to hold judgment on your soul.”
    – Henrik Ibsen
12. ” When power narrows the areas of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.”
    – John F. Kennedy
13. “Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.”
    –Thomas Babington Macaulay
14. “The poem is the point at which our strength gave out. ”
    –Richard Rosen
15. ” Science is for those who learn; poetry, for those who know.”
    – Joseph Roux
16. “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. ”
    –Percy Byshe Shelley
17. “Wanted: a needle swift enough to sew this poem into a blanket. ”
    –Charles Simic
18. “A poem is never finished, only abandoned. ”
    –Paul Valéry
19. ” Poetry is the music of the soul, and, above all, of great and feeling souls.”
    – Voltaire
20. “Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge.”
    – William Wordsworth

Resource Box - © Danielle Hollister (2004) is the Publisher of BellaOnline Quotations Zine - A free newsletter for quote lovers featuring more than 10,000 quotations in dozens of categories like - love, friendship, children, inspiration, success, wisdom, family, life, and many more. Read it online at - http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art8364.asp

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