There are plenty of young aspiring writers trolling the forums here, choosing to focus mainly on their fiction.
This is spectacular and I love lurking about watching the ideas blossom.

However, one thing I have noticed is that poetry discussion seems to be fairly limited. A lot of poets have their own style and tend to stick to you.
I encourage all poets of Menewsha to come and discuss why they write the style they do and to offer help and critique for those trying to expand their own poetic voice.

A world without poetry
is like
a garden without color.
Let's spread our palette wide.

---------- Post added 05-01-2013 at 03:49 PM ----------

pack it up pack it in,
let me begin:

I really only started to take my writing seriously once I started college. I enrolled in a writing class just for fun and found myself drawn into the poetic aspects of it. I signed up for a focused poetry class and I've really found my niche.

As for my preferred styles, I tend to stray more into a narrative or a confessional style when given the chance. I like blending the two and find that it creates a very therapeutic form to discuss things that may be a concern for me.

(For example, I recently wrote a poem called "meaningless" which focuses on a repetition of "sorry" until the narrator realizes that the word has lost it's function. the form tells the story while also exploring the imagery and depth of a conrfessional.)


So please feel free to ask questions, post your opinions and generally enjoy poetry and poetic forms. It's a big scary world out there. Let's explore together.

I started writing poetry and short bits when I was around 7.
I initially wanted to be an Author as my career when I was young.
I started with cheesy poems that rhymed. As I grew, my poems grew to be more in-depth and meaningful, not necessarily containing rhyming schemes. I have also written some haiku.
I have not written any poems in several years though.

Hi dragoness!
Did you shift to more fiction writing or have you just not written much since then?

Haiku was never a form I really got the hang of (especially more traditional haiku with the natural focus). I'm always impressed when people can pull it off. :)

Fiction is my primary tract, but I don't mind writing poetry and I used to do it a lot more before I started taking writing seriously. I had to take a poetry class last year and I realized I'm a very seriously abnormal in my poetic tastes for my generation. I'm the only poet I've met in high school or college that prefers rhyme and meter to free verse. Rhyme is pretty much the thing everyone hates most (I mean this in current writing for the most part). The idea that you're not allowed to write in the way of the past.

The favorite of my poems I've written all have narrative or are poems I've written from the pov of a poet character of mine. I also write poems like a conversation some times.

I've written poetry since I was about 14 or so. Of course, most of what I wrote back then was rubbish, but I enjoyed it. I wrote fiction then, too. Around 17 or so I got this huge, massive writer's block and stopped writing all together, and that lasted for years. I'd have the urge to write, but I never found the right words or the right story. Last December I just suddenly wrote a poem and was really pleased with how it turned out, and I've written a few a month since then. Not all of them come out exactly how I wanted them to, but practice makes perfect and I'm severely out of practice.

I used to AABB or ABAB rhyming structures, but now I go completely free style. Nothing rhymes and I prefer it that way. It's really challenging to make something rhyme and also make it sound sincere. Too often it sounds like something was chosen just for the rhyme and it'll end up sounding trite. I applaud anyone who can do rhyming poetry with sincerity, it's really great when done well.

I post most of my poetry over on my deviantART page. The featured poem is that first one I wrote back in December. It's also the most... I don't want to say metaphorical, but maybe indirect? With most of the other things I've written since then my intent and meaning is very clear, but with that one it was much more about conveying a feeling than telling what has happened.

I just remembered that I wrote one the other day that I haven't posted there yet... I should do that now!

Kat Dekuu: A good friend of mine wrote exclusively sonnets until he started working more seriously on his novel, so rhyme and meter grew on me before I ever delved into writing my own work. Did you have a preferred structure back in the day? I'm always interested in discussing various structures. :D

Cherry: I read through your work on dA. I really loved your featured piece, "the aurora." There is a beauty to the starkness of the lines. It's got a very crisp feel, especially considering the length. ps: I love the length of your works (like all of them because I devoured them all.) You never draw things out too long, especially in "Your Name." The length helps make the poem that much more intimate; long enough to tell the whole story but not so long we, as readers, have answers.

I really really dig it, yo. [snaps]

Aww, that's so sweet, thank you! It really means a lot to me. Brevity is something I tend to struggle with - I either go on too long or not long enough - so it's nice to hear that the balance I struck works!

And there, I finally remembered to upload my latest poem! I have mixed feelings about it. Some of the words stand out to me as not being ideal choices, but I can't think of a good solution. Could just be that I've never liked the word "lover." The word was just stuck in my head that night due the the poem epigraph in The Great Gatsby, "Then Wear the Gold Hat"

Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;
If you can bounce high, bounce for her too,
Till she cry “Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,
I must have you!”

I have to say that I enjoy the repetition of "love/lover" but the style feels a little more classic than your other works. Almost like a section from Shelly more than Edelman (who I must recommend you check out. he's brilliant and really really nice c: )

I feel like some of the other word choices help stiffen up the language a little, like "grant" and the structure of lines 12 &13.

It's a solid poem overall but it does have a slightly different feel than some of your other works.

also: D: Great Gatsby no please anything but that. I have an entire list of rude Great Gatsby jokes lined up because I am so sick of that novel. (but I love Baz Luhrmann and Jay-Z and Tobey Maguire and Leo DiCaprio and everything about the upcoming film sooooooo muuu-uuuu-uuuuuuch)

Originally Posted by alonegirl-rocks-the-world

Kat Dekuu: A good friend of mine wrote exclusively sonnets until he started working more seriously on his novel, so rhyme and meter grew on me before I ever delved into writing my own work. Did you have a preferred structure back in the day? I'm always interested in discussing various structures. :D

I don't know very many structures because it wasn't taught much in the beginning poetry class, but I like haikus and I think I've written a few sonnets. I have an obsession with trochees especially. The Tyger is one of my favorite poems (can't remember who wrote it) along with The Raven.

I've never really been one to have a mindset in the proper time period, so my writing will often stick to olden days when poetry was still popular.

I guess in a way I write what is called a "Bardic Piece", often times it will rhyme as to make it easier to recite as well as being very specific in it's purpose.
I go outside of the rhyming though, but if I do I will ensure every line has a pattern of some sort to it, be it 7,7,7,7 - 7,8,7,8 or something like that.

Otherwise my focus is primarily on "flow"

Originally Posted by alonegirl-rocks-the-world

I have to say that I enjoy the repetition of "love/lover" but the style feels a little more classic than your other works. Almost like a section from Shelly more than Edelman (who I must recommend you check out. he's brilliant and really really nice c: )

I feel like some of the other word choices help stiffen up the language a little, like "grant" and the structure of lines 12 &13.

It's a solid poem overall but it does have a slightly different feel than some of your other works.

also: D: Great Gatsby no please anything but that. I have an entire list of rude Great Gatsby jokes lined up because I am so sick of that novel. (but I love Baz Luhrmann and Jay-Z and Tobey Maguire and Leo DiCaprio and everything about the upcoming film sooooooo muuu-uuuu-uuuuuuch)

Have you studied poetry much? I have to say you have excellent insight!

That poem was really good, thanks for sharing it! I'll have to look into his other work. I'm always on the lookout for good poets since I know of so few.

Seems a lot of people are sick of Gatsby lately. I actually haven't even read it yet, though I've been meaning to for years. There are just so many books to read. @_@

@ Kat: The Tyger is from Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience. It's a poem I haven't read in a long long time. Have you read the companion poem, The Lamb. (The Tyger is from Songs of Experience while The Lamb is from Innocence. It shows the great versatility of Blake's social critiques of the time.)

Trochheeeeeeeeeeesssssssaaahhhhhh. Trochaic lines are so much fun to work with but so few people ever choose to go that route anymore! It's iambs or go home :C I think trochees have a much more drum-like quality than iambs and that makes it way more fun for me to read. :D It's good to see someone appreciating them


@ Poet: There's nothing wrong with going a more classical route! Sometimes modern poetry can border on super pretentious (which sucks because poetry already has that stigma).
Your patterns seem really intriguing; do you have any work you'd be willing to share to show off? I personally can't rhyme to save my wretched soul, so watching other people succeed at it is really a treat for me to learn from. :)

@ Cherry: :P I'm an English Education major with a Creative Writing Minor. I've studied a lot of poetry critically but I have very little experience actually discussing the writing on a purely "writing" level. Thank you!~ I try to be mildly helpful occasionally <3

I got a chance to talk to Mr. Edelman a few weeks ago, so I have to pimp him out to everyone :P Sometimes it takes a bit of digging to find some good modern poets. I really didn't know of any until I made friends in college who occasionally got literary magazines and publications like that. It's worth digging though. :D

what's gatsby's least favorite superhero?
deadpool

Haha google "rhyming" and you get websites that help you... but sometimes even they get rhyming wrong D:

I do have some writing I share. It's on DA though. Both pieces I wrote are dedicated to a game designer and his new game. Was actually him that referred to my writing as a "bardic piece" and it was a very wonderful compliment to come from him >w<

I went more for flow on those though. As I wrote them in the "This is a tale of..." type format.
http://thewanderingandroid.deviantar...orld-366918892

I did shift a bit more into fiction, but even still, I just have not written much of anything for a few years.
This past February I started working on a new fictional world with a large amount of creatures, places, and inhabitants of it. The idea is it to be a RPG game, like D&D. And my husband and I, and maybe some of our friends (if they are interested in helping us) would RP it, then we record it as stories, like The Forgotten Realms (and many others) have done.

My poetry when I was younger was rather short, rhyming with the AABB or ABAB style, though it did progress into freestyle later. I entered a few in some online poetry contests and got some of them published in collection books of poems. ^_^
I need to dig through my papers I have stored to find my poems before I can share any though.

Originally Posted by alonegirl-rocks-the-world

@ Kat: The Tyger is from Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience. It's a poem I haven't read in a long long time. Have you read the companion poem, The Lamb. (The Tyger is from Songs of Experience while The Lamb is from Innocence. It shows the great versatility of Blake's social critiques of the time.)

Trochheeeeeeeeeeesssssssaaahhhhhh. Trochaic lines are so much fun to work with but so few people ever choose to go that route anymore! It's iambs or go home :C I think trochees have a much more drum-like quality than iambs and that makes it way more fun for me to read. :D It's good to see someone appreciating them
[/strike]

Yes, I've read The Lamb as well. They're very different and fit their subject matter very well, but I prefer The Tyger because of the trochees.
I actually don't like iambs that much. I have difficulty in writing in them since trochees comes so naturally to me. I was writing in them before I knew there was such a thing as meter.

Originally Posted by alonegirl-rocks-the-world

@ Cherry: :P I'm an English Education major with a Creative Writing Minor. I've studied a lot of poetry critically but I have very little experience actually discussing the writing on a purely "writing" level. Thank you!~ I try to be mildly helpful occasionally <3

I got a chance to talk to Mr. Edelman a few weeks ago, so I have to pimp him out to everyone :P Sometimes it takes a bit of digging to find some good modern poets. I really didn't know of any until I made friends in college who occasionally got literary magazines and publications like that. It's worth digging though. :D

what's gatsby's least favorite superhero?
deadpool

I haven't studied poetry at all yet, unfortunately. The English class I'm taking currently is literature-oriented, but I guess my professor feels poetry is fairly useless as he only mentioned that chapter to give us the terms that would be on the exam. He didn't have us read a single poem. :/

Sadly I don't know of many poets, modern or not. I like Sylvia Plath quite a lot, though I haven't read terribly much of her work.

I started out having little interest in poetry beyond the odd thing here and there. However, my fiction has always had the feel of verse, as though I had been trying all along to dip my toe into the 'poetic waters' without having to jump in and risk losing myself entirely, or something to that effect...or perhaps I simply did not expect to have a lick of talent for the stuff and I'm just sitting here making excuses. Either way, it's rather difficult to get through a BA in English without happening upon at least one poetry class worth taking and, come my senior year, I found my one.

Now, it might have been the poetry, and it might have simply been the professor, a man whose brain was more scattered than my own, and who believed in expressing not only the mundane, but the truly spectacular, as though they were one in the same (it turns out that they are). That being said, I now find myself with a good deal love for poetry and poetic form in general, rather than an off-handed respect for it's writers and an explainable desire to read anything else.

I find modern poetry to be fascinating in so far as a good deal of it seems to seek to break past conventions and push or blur the line, be it the line between poetry and prose, thought and feeling, etc.

I'm not to sure what my style of poetry would be called.

I guess you could say it has a musical quality to it? I tend to keep it to myself because when i write poetry (which is a rare ocassion, and when it was required in school) I'm usually in a sad, or sour mood. And its a bit of a release to make me calmer and feel better.

I don't do any kind of counting to match the lines in syllables like haiku. i don't have a rhyming scheme really... It's usually something that's AABBCCDD maybe repeating one of the previous ones. But nothing to fancy. And sometimes it short lines only a 4-6 words, or its almost a full sentence per line.

The only consistent thing is the almost musical melody to it. I feel the need for my poems to flow smoothly. And that the ends have to rhyme or be close to rhyming if it fits the smooth flow.

I've found that rhyming is pointless without rhythm and flow, so it's good that you focus on that.

So true... when I see poets who don't know about rhythm it makes for some very hard to read material. I once wrote a poem though that was actually intentionally off rhythm the entire time... XD but I threw it away because it annoyed me so much

I can't stand when it doesn't have nice flow. So actually those club things where someone reads poetry in the black hat and snaps alot. Those poems make me tweak.

Originally Posted by Shadami

I can't stand when it doesn't have nice flow. So actually those club things where someone reads poetry in the black hat and snaps alot. Those poems make me tweak.

but those kinds of poems can have flow and music to them as well. It's just a different kind of music. Like going from a classical to a baroque style of orchestral composition.

I've never been to a poetry reading. I've managed to break too many rules that were set in stone in school.
I don't think I would ever let my poems get read in a poetry room...

I should remake that poem though... "Disharmony" would be a great title for it.

disharmony is a good name for it.

but seriously... the word *snap* sentence *snap snap* dude *snap* irritates the crap out of me. Just the rhythm/non rhythm/ interupted rythm drives me insane of that kind. i've never been able to wrap my head around it being a good thing.

i think the goofy movie? had it and was my first experience with it than it started to pop up everywhere and i basically ran from the room screaming. I just don't understand it. I was watching Rent with a friend for the first time. and there was something similar in that, and i almost got up and left during that scene.

Oh like when they cut a sentence in half at a weird spot? D:

Like
when they
write a poem
Like this.

I've always wanted to be able to control the emotions of the reader... yknow now that I think of it I wrote another one once that slowly "deteriorated' over time. Every few lines spelling got worse, grammar got worse, lines broke up weird, and the poem was in total chaos of unreadability by the end XD
It would trigger grammar nazi rage, OCD, and irritability through poor flow XD