This week: I Enjambed the Quatrain! It Lost a Foot! Edited by: jayne
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Ah, poetry. The crazy, unknowable writing form that exists just beyond the grasp of ordinary mortals. At some point in your life, the understanding came to you, or it didn’t. And, of course, we all know if you missed the one 11th-grade English class where they talked about converting poetry meters to inches, you’ll never be able to write a thing.
You either understand poetry, or you don’t, or so goes the story we tell ourselves. This makes as much sense as saying today’s master carpenters didn’t practice to get where they are. Nope, they were born, immediately took the clamp off their umbilical cord, and used it to secure two tongue-depressors together before being swaddled in a warm blanket. You can’t compete with that kind of talent.
This is not to say some people aren’t born with a knack for certain things. But if you’re reading this on a writing site, presumably, you’ve written something at some point. Were you born with the vocabulary to write such things? Or did you learn it? Some of you may have taken it a step further and dug into the nuts and bolts of grammar. Just like prose, poetry’s technical jargon is words; words have definitions, and you can use those definitions to learn how to write poetry.
Ease Into the Terminology
There are plenty of resources right here on WdC to get you started on your poetry journey. The great thing about them is they introduce new concepts naturally and organically, and the feedback is corrective but not disheartening.
Learning different poetry concepts can begin as a linear process—syllable, line, stanza. It can also be linear and tangential, such as syllable, line, stanza, and sound. Instead of taking every piece of poetic information out there, allow yourself to grab one core concept and play with it. For example, try onomatopoeia: words that sound like the noises or actions they describe. There are plenty of examples online to practice with. Don’t write one poem using onomatopoeia; write a series of poems using as many examples as you can, challenging yourself not to repeat one you’ve already used.
The same is true for poetry form. There is no shortage of form and style for you to practice. Choose one that speaks to you, read examples, mimic other writers, and stick with it until your voice begins to shine through. Mimicry is a very effective learning tool, provided you allow your natural style to be the bigger influence on your work as you move through different concepts and gain more confidence.
Poetry does have a lot of definitions and devices that come with it. You don’t need to learn it all at once to get a poem on the page, and the more you learn, the stronger your writing will be.
I Don’t Need No Technical Stuff to Write Poetry!
Indeed, many writers sit down with little more than a strong desire to write. Perhaps there is a basic understanding of rhyme, unless they take a free verse route and forgo rhyme altogether. However, like story writing techniques help you become a stronger writer, so do poetry techniques assist you in becoming a better poet.
Even free verse isn’t a free-for-all. The strongest free verse poetry is full of poetic devices. You may be liberated from meter and fixed form, but working with other devices is what elevates such poems to a different level.
And that is to say nothing of blank verse, which, yes, is still used today.
I encourage you to play with poetic devices and forms, even if you’re a free-verse poet. The more you learn about fitting words together, the stronger all of your writing will become.
Jargon I Used in This Newsletter Even Though I Said to Chill Out About Jargon
Syllable: a unit of pronunciation having one vowel sound, with or without surrounding consonants, forming the whole or a part of a word. Poetry = Po-e-try
Foot: A regular combination of stressed and unstressed syllables.
Line: In poetry, a line is sort of like a sentence. It may or may not follow a particular meter, depending on what type of poetry you’re writing.
Stanza: A group of lines in a poem. Think of it like the paragraph of poetry.
Quatrain: A stanza of four lines, especially one with alternating rhymes.
Meter: The number, pattern, and stress of syllables in a poem.
Pentameter: A line of ten syllables, where the first syllable is stressed, the second unstressed, the third stressed, and so on until ten syllables are reached.
Enjambment: When your thought continues from one line to another, instead of ending cleanly.
Onomatopoeia: Words that sound like the noises or actions they describe. Think: tick-tock, crash, thud, whoop, squish, chime, sizzle, chatter, drip. This is a really fun device to start with!
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Nothing is new – it's just rearranged! A Grumpy's Short-Lived Poetry Entry (Quatrains)
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Poetry: March 06, 2024 Issue [#12451]
