Poetry has become something of an enigma in our culture. While it feels like a dying art, it simultaneously lives on. While many people have lost interest in reading or writing it, poetry still seems to hold a sacred space in our hearts. From those who defend the practice of poetry, I hear a lot of blame placed on an overcrowding of the market with bland or outright bad poetry. I hear a lot about poor teachers who exhort their students that there is no wrong way to do poetry, a fact that is true, but often abused. I think a lot of people feel like they want to try their hand at poetry at least once in their life. Those that like the experience often want to continue writing, but the task feels daunting when confronted with the complex forms and structures outside of free verse poetry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many people see the plethora of poetic forms as a roadblock, a ball and chain on creativity and free expression.\u00a0 But nothing could be further from the truth.\u00a0 The fact is, we are drawn to a good beat, a flowing rhythm, or a clever rhyme scheme.\u00a0 Just look at the modern music market, with lyrics to many songs that sound like poems when read instead of sung.\u00a0 A lot of them follow the same pattern, based on style, and people love it.\u00a0 Working with fixed forms is challenging, but the benefits are worth the effort.\u00a0 It can make a poem come alive, make the emotions you try to express jump off the page.\u00a0 In this post, I will walk through some basic examples of how to begin playing with structure and form, and show some examples of easy(er) to use fixed forms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Try the Ghazal style on for size: Stanzas made of two lines each, and the end of every second line is the same word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Okay, so it\u2019s not my best work.\u00a0 I just slapped it down as an example, sue me.\u00a0 But you get the idea.\u00a0 You can add as many two-line stanzas as you want, so it works well for almost any size.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you want to try something a little more ambitious, a Sestina is an interesting workout to craft.\u00a0 They\u2019re made up of six stanzas with six lines each and an end stanza of three lines, so poems written in this form are big.\u00a0 The most interesting part is that the word at the end of every line gets reused throughout the poem in this pattern:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Notice that the word at the end of every last line in a stanza is used at the end of the first line in the next stanza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you feel like your rhyming is okay but you\u2019re still unsure about meter, I would recommend one of my favorite forms, the Villanelle, which uses rhymes and repetition.\u00a0 It\u2019s made up of five three-line stanzas and one four-line stanza at the end.\u00a0 All the first and last lines rhyme with each other throughout the whole poem, and the second lines all rhyme with each other too, like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, here\u2019s where the repetition comes in, all the A1 lines are exactly the same, they get repeated.\u00a0 Same with all the A2 lines.\u00a0 The effect is rather impressive when you put the work in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you want a bigger challenge with rhyme and repetition, try a pantoum.\u00a0 This can get tricky, but there\u2019s no harm in trying and coming up with something ridiculous, as evidenced by my poem about how to write a pantoum in the form of a pantoum<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are many other styles and forms to play with.\u00a0 Look up a list and try a few.\u00a0 Try to stick to the form as closely as possible, because an unspoken truth of poetry is the more challenging it is to write, the more impressive the results can be.\u00a0 Push yourself, but find the style that works best for you<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Andrew Winslow Poetry has become something of an enigma in our culture. While it feels like a dying art, it simultaneously lives on. While many people have lost interest in reading or writing it, poetry still seems to hold a sacred space in our hearts. From those who defend the practice of poetry, I hear […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[6,15],"class_list":["post-178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-poetry","tag-writing-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/dazed-starling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/dazed-starling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/dazed-starling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/dazed-starling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/dazed-starling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/dazed-starling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":180,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/dazed-starling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178\/revisions\/180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/dazed-starling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/dazed-starling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/dazed-starling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Reasons to Experiment with Fixed Forms<\/h4>\n\n\n
\n
A Few Forms to Try<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Next time don\u2019t bother\r\n\rNothing gets past me, dear\r\n\r\n\rI know what happens in my own house\r\n\rOr did you think otherwise, dear\r\n\r\r\nI don\u2019t want to deal with this again\r\n\rBut I will if I have to, dear<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
ABCDEF\r\n\rFAEBDC\r\nCFDABE\r\n\rECBFAD\r\n\rDEACFB\r\n\rBDFECA\nThen, in the last half-stanza, the pattern can either take the form of ACE or ECA.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
A1 b A2\r\n\ra b A1\r\n\ra b A2\r\n\ra b A1\r\n\ra b A2\r\n\rA b A1 A2<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
How to Write a Pantoum\n<\/strong>\n1A It starts and ends with an opening rhyme\n2B Then you move onto the next part\n3A Lines 2 & 4 will be lines 1 & 3 next time\n4B The Pantoum makes repetition an art\n\n2B Then you move onto the next part\n5C By doing the same thing again\n4B The Pantoum makes repetition an art\n6C The structure is really quite plain\n\n5C By doing the same thing again\n7D The Pantoum maintains a beat\n6C The structure is really quite plain\n8D The rhythm is easy and neat\n\n7D The Pantoum maintains a beat\n9A It goes as long as the author has time\n8D The rhythm is easy and neat\nA1 It starts and ends with an opening rhyme<\/pre>\n\n\n\n