how would you teach someone to write poetry?

[cacian]

this someone has never written poetry before.
how does one begin? what advice tips would you give?

[MorpheusSandman]

There are tons of creative writing textbooks out there for poetry, eg:

Writing Poems (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0205176054/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=R94PX7QY2XJD&coliid=I1DKSR47T5J4EQ)
Open Roads (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0321127609/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=R94PX7QY2XJD&coliid=I2J0Z8DJLYC0ZR)
A Poet's Craft (http://www.amazon.com/Poets-Craft-Comprehensive-Making-Sharing/dp/0472033646/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1382800287&sr=1-1&keywords=a+poet%27s+finch)
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Poem (http://www.amazon.com/Thirteen-Ways-Looking-Poem-Writing/dp/0321011309/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1382800297&sr=1-1&keywords=13+ways+poem)
Writing Poetry (http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Poetry-Barbara-Drake/dp/015500154X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1382800305&sr=1-1&keywords=drake+poetry)

Not being a teacher I really don't know how one "begins." I think writing exercises like, eg, telling someone to write a poem based on a few interesting words, or based on a form, subject matter, diction, image, symbol, metaphor, etc. is as good a way as any to start. Give them different methods to spark the creative process and see what works for them. When I first began writing poetry I was most interested in experimenting with form, so learning new forms is what inspired me most; but every poet is different. One thing I'd be sure to stress, though, is that what makes poetry unique as an art-form is form itself, how a poet utilizes every aspect of language as well as that language's arrangement on a page to enhance whatever is being said. If a poet isn't going to pay attention to form then they might as well write in prose.

Perhaps more than anything, though, I'd tell any new, aspiring poet to read a lot of poetry; to imitate what they like, and ignore what they don't like (and, perhaps most importantly, try to understand why they like what they like and dislike what they dislike). Eventually, after they've read and imitated so much they'll be able to seamlessly blend so many influences that the outcome will probably be poetry and resonates with the past and present.

[JBI]

Get a good anthology, like the Norton and spend a year reading the back essays, and every single poem at least 3 times. Memorize as much as you can.

Also, try to memorize as much of the KJV and Ovid as possible. A good primer on Greek mythology would also help, as well as general readings in the classics.

The trick to writing good poetry is to understand poetry. It's amazing how many would be poets have never read any contemporary verse, let alone much classical verse.

The reason why the tradition prevails is that the fundamentals of the language have remained relatively constant from Chaucer to our time, some would even say from Beowulf to now. Our metrics and the sound of the language has not changed much, still insisting on specific meters and flow.

Once that is out of the way then the would be poet can begin experimenting. So for instance, if one is interested in bringing other traditions into one's work, one better understand those works (I cannot tell you how many people have made sloppy use of Chinese and Japanese sources that just looks bad). Once we have that out of the way, we can begin to work toward a sort of individual style, by experimentation and practice.

I am yet to meet a good poet who is not interested in other poetry. No poet really stands alone, and generally the best poets have a lasting commentary on the history of poetry as a whole. Wordsworth, for instance, began emulating typical 18th century verse, until he decided it didn't work for him. Coleridge was very much a classicist in his education. We must realize that they were revolutionary only in their ability to shift understandings forward, not in making a clean break.

Now, we live in a chaotic poetic world, with more good poetry written every day than ever, and a real necessity of selection. We cannot read everything, and generally readers group based on one specific genre or periodical. In that sense, one's collected poems seems to require not just dabbling in everything, but a focused sort of Ars Poetica that identifies somebody as not just following genre conventions.

[cacian]

There are tons of creative writing textbooks out there for poetry, eg:

Writing Poems (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0205176054/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=R94PX7QY2XJD&coliid=I1DKSR47T5J4EQ)
Open Roads (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0321127609/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=R94PX7QY2XJD&coliid=I2J0Z8DJLYC0ZR)
A Poet's Craft (http://www.amazon.com/Poets-Craft-Comprehensive-Making-Sharing/dp/0472033646/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1382800287&sr=1-1&keywords=a+poet%27s+finch)
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Poem (http://www.amazon.com/Thirteen-Ways-Looking-Poem-Writing/dp/0321011309/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1382800297&sr=1-1&keywords=13+ways+poem)
Writing Poetry (http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Poetry-Barbara-Drake/dp/015500154X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1382800305&sr=1-1&keywords=drake+poetry)

Not being a teacher I really don't know how one "begins." I think writing exercises like, eg, telling someone to write a poem based on a few interesting words, or based on a form, subject matter, diction, image, symbol, metaphor, etc. is as good a way as any to start. Give them different methods to spark the creative process and see what works for them. When I first began writing poetry I was most interested in experimenting with form, so learning new forms is what inspired me most; but every poet is different. One thing I'd be sure to stress, though, is that what makes poetry unique as an art-form is form itself, how a poet utilizes every aspect of language as well as that language's arrangement on a page to enhance whatever is being said. If a poet isn't going to pay attention to form then they might as well write in prose.

Perhaps more than anything, though, I'd tell any new, aspiring poet to read a lot of poetry; to imitate what they like, and ignore what they don't like (and, perhaps most importantly, try to understand why they like what they like and dislike what they dislike). Eventually, after they've read and imitated so much they'll be able to seamlessly blend so many influences that the outcome will probably be poetry and resonates with the past and present.

great post Morpheus. but why imitate?

[cacian]

Get a good anthology, like the Norton and spend a year reading the back essays, and every single poem at least 3 times. Memorize as much as you can.

Also, try to memorize as much of the KJV and Ovid as possible. A good primer on Greek mythology would also help, as well as general readings in the classics.

The trick to writing good poetry is to understand poetry. It's amazing how many would be poets have never read any contemporary verse, let alone much classical verse.

The reason why the tradition prevails is that the fundamentals of the language have remained relatively constant from Chaucer to our time, some would even say from Beowulf to now. Our metrics and the sound of the language has not changed much, still insisting on specific meters and flow.

Once that is out of the way then the would be poet can begin experimenting. So for instance, if one is interested in bringing other traditions into one's work, one better understand those works (I cannot tell you how many people have made sloppy use of Chinese and Japanese sources that just looks bad). Once we have that out of the way, we can begin to work toward a sort of individual style, by experimentation and practice.

I am yet to meet a good poet who is not interested in other poetry. No poet really stands alone, and generally the best poets have a lasting commentary on the history of poetry as a whole. Wordsworth, for instance, began emulating typical 18th century verse, until he decided it didn't work for him. Coleridge was very much a classicist in his education. We must realize that they were revolutionary only in their ability to shift understandings forward, not in making a clean break.

Now, we live in a chaotic poetic world, with more good poetry written every day than ever, and a real necessity of selection. We cannot read everything, and generally readers group based on one specific genre or periodical. In that sense, one's collected poems seems to require not just dabbling in everything, but a focused sort of Ars Poetica that identifies somebody as not just following genre conventions.

the trick to poetry I agree is understanding but with so many written pieces remaining misunderstood how is one to follow in the same footstep?
it is difficult to teach Beowulf and not feel somehow cheated because one cannot clearly understand it.
would not that put a damper on it I suspect the learner may not keen. I have had similar experiences at university with poetry. I could not make it. i was disappointed because what I had come read did not inspire me. the English language came across as dainted dated.

[JBI]

the trick to poetry I agree is understanding but with so many written pieces remaining misunderstood how is one to follow in the same footstep?
it is difficult to teach Beowulf and not feel somehow cheated because one cannot clearly understand it.
would not that put a damper on it I suspect the learner may not keen. I have had similar experiences at university with poetry. I could not make it. i was disappointed because what I had come read did not inspire me. the English language came across as dainted dated.

You should be familiar. Not master it. But the 4 stress line is so English that anybody can benefit from understanding it properly.

[mortalterror]

Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That the dear she might take some pleasure of my pain,
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe:
Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain,
Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburned brain.
But words came halting forth, wanting Invention's stay;
Invention, Nature's child, fled stepdame Study's blows;
And others' feet still seemed but strangers in my way.
Thus, great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes,
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite:
"Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart, and write."
-Philip Sidney

[MorpheusSandman]

but why imitate?Imitating teaches you several things. First it helps you get into the mind of other great poets. Second it helps you understand why/how certain devices and techniques work. Third it helps you discern what devices and techniques are still useful and which belong to bygone eras. Through imitating you ultimately become selective, and through being selective you eventually form a style out of what imitations are kept and which are dropped. I especially think of, eg, Byron, who began by imitating Pope and Dryden, but by the time he got around to writing his masterpiece, Don Juan, while he had kept Pope and Dryden's mock-heroic satire element, he had developed his own unique way of utilizing it, supplemented by his experiments in other modes, forms, and styles: from the lyric to the supernatural to the philosophical digression etc. So, ultimately, it was his imitations that lead to the label "Byronic."

[MorpheusSandman]

JBI, your whole post is assuming that every poet desires to ultimately be a great poet and canonized. There are many people who just desire a personal, creative outlet and have no interest in understanding other poetry or even being great. My post was thinking more along the lines of ways to help everyone/anyone be creative, though I do agree that your way is preferable for those poets genuinely desiring to be great. It's much the same path I've followed (I've read both the Norton and Wadsworth Anthology each a couple of time, memorizing several of my favorite poems).

That said, I'm not terribly convinced that the trick to writing great poetry is understanding poetry. When I think of people who truly understand poetry I think of the great living and past critics: Helen Vendler, Christopher Ricks, William Empson, IA Richards, Cleanth Brooks, etc. from this century alone, and none of them poets (well, Empson wrote poetry, but it wasn't great). To me, understanding poetry and understanding how to write poetry are two uniquely different skills. Most great poets, while they tend to be great readers, also tend to be idiosyncratic readers whose understanding and preferences are outgrowths from their own style and experimentation. A good example that immediately comes to mind is John Ashbery, whose lone book on poetry is about poets rather outside the tradition: Other Traditions (http://www.amazon.com/Other-Traditions-Charles-Norton-Lectures/dp/067400664X/ref=sr_1_18?ie=UTF8&qid=1382887507&sr=8-18&keywords=john+ashbery)


The reason why the tradition prevails is that the fundamentals of the language have remained relatively constant from Chaucer to our time, some would even say from Beowulf to now.Or because essentially the same group of people have been deciding what that tradition is.

[Mohammad Ahmad]

How would you teach someone to write poetry?
This someone never has written poetry..
Sorry to say no one can teach him. because writing poetry is a personal hobby and many teachers of English in my country cannot write one verse even if they have experienced in language more than twenty years and even they had directorate in English...
Someone you didn't mention his name if he has the truth desire in writing must read literature and must focus on this career more than five years and must have background of knowledge, this is at least for those the English language to them is a second language

[JBI]

JBI, your whole post is assuming that every poet desires to ultimately be a great poet and canonized. There are many people who just desire a personal, creative outlet and have no interest in understanding other poetry or even being great. My post was thinking more along the lines of ways to help everyone/anyone be creative, though I do agree that your way is preferable for those poets genuinely desiring to be great. It's much the same path I've followed (I've read both the Norton and Wadsworth Anthology each a couple of time, memorizing several of my favorite poems).

That said, I'm not terribly convinced that the trick to writing great poetry is understanding poetry. When I think of people who truly understand poetry I think of the great living and past critics: Helen Vendler, Christopher Ricks, William Empson, IA Richards, Cleanth Brooks, etc. from this century alone, and none of them poets (well, Empson wrote poetry, but it wasn't great). To me, understanding poetry and understanding how to write poetry are two uniquely different skills. Most great poets, while they tend to be great readers, also tend to be idiosyncratic readers whose understanding and preferences are outgrowths from their own style and experimentation. A good example that immediately comes to mind is John Ashbery, whose lone book on poetry is about poets rather outside the tradition: Other Traditions (http://www.amazon.com/Other-Traditions-Charles-Norton-Lectures/dp/067400664X/ref=sr_1_18?ie=UTF8&qid=1382887507&sr=8-18&keywords=john+ashbery)

Or because essentially the same group of people have been deciding what that tradition is.

The familiarity is necessary, if not the thorough analysis of the scholar. Wordsworth would have read much of the canon of his time, though perhaps not as thoroughly as his friend Coleridge, who was undoubtedly the better critical mind.

What we mean by reading is being familiar - Vendler for example would be the kind of critic who becomes on with the poet - meaning she memorizes their works and sees how they interact properly. Still, generally poetry is 90% mixing and playing with other people's work, and 10% innovation. The 10% is where people shine, so it is important to really have a strong 90%.

As for poets who want to be causal poets, well, nobody will ever read their mediocre verses anyway. But on these boards just look how many people post poems to "meter" that don't have proper line lengths or cannot rhyme properly (take the Backstreet boys' famous Fire, Desire rhyme as a common screw up). with that in mind, sure, any book can teach them how to write like that, but nobody but maybe their wife or mother will ever want to read it. Poetry only really works relative to a tradition.

[MorpheusSandman]

JBI, I think we're in basic agreement about the importance of being familiar with the tradition. In fact, when you say that poetry is "90% mixing... other people's work and 10% innovation," I'd be inclined to argue that most of that innovation is really in HOW you mix other people's work! It's hard to think of any poet or artist whose "innovations" were much more than unique combinations of past elements. Even Whitman's revolutionary free verse had its origins (in terms of Whitman's influence) in Biblical verse.


But on these boards just look how many people post poems to "meter" that don't have proper line lengths or cannot rhyme properly (take the Backstreet boys' famous Fire, Desire rhyme as a common screw up). with that in mind, sure, any book can teach them how to write like that, but nobody but maybe their wife or mother will ever want to read it. Poetry only really works relative to a tradition.I used to frequent the Personal Poetry board a lot, but I never noticed a lot of metrical writing. As for "rhyming properly," keep in mind that Yeats really kicked off the trend in modern metrical verse of slant rhymes and off-rhymes, something that poets like Auden and Merrill pushed even further (rhyming, eg, on unstressed feminine endings. or adding feminine endings to the rhymed stress syllable). Anyway, we just read the thread title/question differently. What you say about the, let's call them, "hobbyist poets," having no audience is probably true, but it's true that the vast majority of writers, singers, songwriters, painters, filmmakers, etc. will never have an audience. I still wouldn't claim that what they're doing is worthless because different people create for different reasons. If what they're doing is worth it for them, then that's enough, yet even hobbyists are often interested in learning more about their craft. Maybe they don't care to learn/work enough to be widely read (much less canonized), but so what?

[JBI]

JBI, I think we're in basic agreement about the importance of being familiar with the tradition. In fact, when you say that poetry is "90% mixing... other people's work and 10% innovation," I'd be inclined to argue that most of that innovation is really in HOW you mix other people's work! It's hard to think of any poet or artist whose "innovations" were much more than unique combinations of past elements. Even Whitman's revolutionary free verse had its origins (in terms of Whitman's influence) in Biblical verse.

I used to frequent the Personal Poetry board a lot, but I never noticed a lot of metrical writing. As for "rhyming properly," keep in mind that Yeats really kicked off the trend in modern metrical verse of slant rhymes and off-rhymes, something that poets like Auden and Merrill pushed even further (rhyming, eg, on unstressed feminine endings. or adding feminine endings to the rhymed stress syllable). Anyway, we just read the thread title/question differently. What you say about the, let's call them, "hobbyist poets," having no audience is probably true, but it's true that the vast majority of writers, singers, songwriters, painters, filmmakers, etc. will never have an audience. I still wouldn't claim that what they're doing is worthless because different people create for different reasons. If what they're doing is worth it for them, then that's enough, yet even hobbyists are often interested in learning more about their craft. Maybe they don't care to learn/work enough to be widely read (much less canonized), but so what?

Ok, it's not worthless, however I will say that it is worthless to anybody who isn't their friend or mother or wife, and even friends don't want to read their friend's bad poetry. There is so much rubbish mixed into the Personal Poetry boards, anybody can see it. Generally we get a lot of posters who come on here and drop 10 poems at a time just for the sake of having any audience. The fact of the matter is none of those ten poems have any technical merit, let alone any interpretive merit. They are merely junk.

Now, you can say junk is not completely worthless, but to an uninvolved audience it is. If I want to research an historical Chinese figure, for instance, I may consult their extant poems, regardless of how bad, but still from an artistic perspective they are worthless. We must always keep in mind that one should not limit their audience if one wants to have worth. The extent that people can enjoy or want to read certain poems, over space and time is a testament to the strength and appeal of the work. If only one's wife cares, then quite frankly the poem is worth quite little.

[Jassy Melson]

You cannot teach writing poetry to anyone; the writing of poetry cannot be taught.

[MorpheusSandman]

You cannot teach writing poetry to anyone; the writing of poetry cannot be taught.50,000,000 Creative Writing Classes Can't Be Wrong.

[MorpheusSandman]

We must always keep in mind that one should not limit their audience if one wants to have worth. Be careful with the idea that "worth" is bound up in an audience. I'd say Joyce has a pretty limited audience, but because that audience happens to be comprised of lit professors and other writers, he gets hailed as great. Meanwhile, there are probably hundreds of spoken word poets that are like little rock stars in the cafes and clubs they frequent but are unknown outside of that. If they aren't hailed as great it's only because they aren't appealing to the kind of people that gets to thrust their "talents" on other people as part of an academic course. As I suggested earlier, much of what we call "worth" is really just appealing to the kind of people that put together anthologies and teach classes and get to pick what they introduce future generations to.

[JBI]

Be careful with the idea that "worth" is bound up in an audience. I'd say Joyce has a pretty limited audience, but because that audience happens to be comprised of lit professors and other writers, he gets hailed as great. Meanwhile, there are probably hundreds of spoken word poets that are like little rock stars in the cafes and clubs they frequent but are unknown outside of that. If they aren't hailed as great it's only because they aren't appealing to the kind of people that gets to thrust their "talents" on other people as part of an academic course. As I suggested earlier, much of what we call "worth" is really just appealing to the kind of people that put together anthologies and teach classes and get to pick what they introduce future generations to.
You are measuring space here, not time. If Joyce was only read by one generation of authors and critics and didn't have a lasting influence, then he too would have little "worth."

The fact is you can see his influence, and his work has been read quite widely, which shows a clear worth.

There are certain artists who consistently, era after era get criticized and beaten on, yet somehow always seem to pop up unexpectedly in other artist's work. And have demonstrated lasting influence. Those sort of authors are guaranteed worth, regardless of "critical consensus" against them. To those who listen to spoken word artists and such, they would realize the audience is never that big. Generally poet's worth is measured by how much influence they have around them, and then how long after the work is written it continues to be read with any sort of esteem. Something like Moby Dick had little worth until it was re-evaluated by modernist critics, and then became incredibly valuable and influential. Other works, like Dumas' Count of Monte Cristo have always been popular fiction, and rather fluffy and light, yet seem to draw in generation of generation of readers. Those works too also have a particular worth.

People think that academics hold the canon in chains, when the truth is generally academics need to read and write based on what sells. So if students are not interested in Chaucer, and will not study Chaucer, then the number of financed Chaucer specialists, and Chaucer's value decrease. If more people are interested, then the worth of a work in the immediate market increases, and evidenced by J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, which was the most valuable book series of its time (in terms of how many people read it, and how much money it made). Now, the question comes down to age, and influence which are the other two elements of the equation.

Now, back to poetry. Poetry has always been an unpopular field. Yet those who like it seem to like it a lot - and much of that comes with understanding poetry. I have not met anybody who understands poetry to any level who doesn't like poetry - in order to understand what is on the page, you need a sort of education, and those willing to undergo the education first must have some sort of reason, be it interest or requirement.

In that sense, the audience of poetry is particular to the fact that everyone there is relatively educated in the tradition they are dealing with. If you are talking about Chinese or Japanese poetry, readers across the board will have several hundred poems memorized in entirety (not so hard when they average a couple syllables a piece). In English, there is a certain gate keeping required as well.

Now, if somebody wants to write some doggerel to put on their holiday card, I don't really care, but if somebody wants to write anything that a significant community of people they do not know and will not really come in contact with will like, then they better know what they are doing. For the former, it doesn't matter what they write, and it is amongst the nobody cares endless line of verse anyway, for the latter, if you want to write something that I will like, you better first know what you are doing, and then afterward know what you are doing different than what has been done.

It's the same in any field, except that poetry readers are generally familiar with a certain list of works that everyone knows and comes back to, and will pick up certain references and forms instinctively.

There is a Japanese saying that says to write a Haiku about a place or thing you must consider every Haiku ever written about that place or thing while writing. To an extent I think at least a certain familiarity is necessary. Now categorical Japanese poetry is far more abundant than English verse, yet I don't think you can write a sonnet without at least some knowledge of sonnets in general. The same way nobody should write free verse until they understand meter. Simply put, free verse is not free, it is plagued with choices, and it is within the range of choices that poetry is graded.

To be honest, I think many people don't really understand what goes on in the academy. For the most part teachers are not picking, but are sticking to the canon. The only time people really stray from canonical lines is when they are teaching specific courses, or when they are dealing with current works. Even so, the canon is always in the background, and it is not the teachers who came up with it, but rather the poets and readers. Most poetry readers historically did not do a degree in English. Most novel readers did not go to school to learn to read novels.

[AuntShecky]

If someone has ever said, "You're a poet and don't know it" or if you've ever described yourself as such, you are probably NOT a poet, but


You may be a poet if --

--you crave words the way other people crave food, and --

--you have an unquenchable thirst for the truth, yet--

--language is a plaything, not a sacred cow. Still--

--you have a respect for tradition and formality, yet

--a fierce impatience with the familiar and the status quo.

--cadence and rhythm get a hold on you and never let go.

--you have a tendency to see, hear, and otherwise notice things others may ignore.

Who knows if any of the above can be taught, but having these traits may point you in the poetic direction. Even so, few people "choose" to become poets; poetry chooses them.

[JCamilo]

Now, if somebody wants to write some doggerel to put on their holiday card, I don't really care, but if somebody wants to write anything that a significant community of people they do not know and will not really come in contact with will like, then they better know what they are doing. For the former, it doesn't matter what they write, and it is amongst the nobody cares endless line of verse anyway, for the latter, if you want to write something that I will like, you better first know what you are doing, and then afterward know what you are doing different than what has been done.

But there is a change on how literature is produced and registered. Back in the past, it was very rare that someone would preserve their first steps, the mistakes, the repetitions. We get to know Dante and he is already a language master. We do not have Dante rhyming mio with Dio every 4 verses. With Shakespeare, we have early plays, but even so it was a guy already with a complete notion of time x space, versification. We do not have little bill sketch books. It was necessary a lot of luck to find some letter an early draft, if any. With Coleridge we know a lot of useless, incoplete poems, but we certainly do not see what he and wordsworth worked together, showing to each other.

With internet, so easy to save a work, this changes. There is no reason to delete anything unless you do like Borges did when he prepared his complete works and declared some of his early works werent written at all. But that is a self-criticism of a very mature poet. People want to show up, yes, but they are mostly unsure of where to going and all those 10,100 poems may be a process for a good poem or 3,4 good verses. Today we just see the poet before he was a poet and it is probally a good way to teach poetry, keep working while you keep reading. The selection belongs to time anyways...

[tailor STATELY]

If someone has ever said, "You're a poet and don't know it" or if you've ever described yourself as such, you are probably NOT a poet, but


You may be a poet if --

--you crave words the way other people crave food, and --

--you have an unquenchable thirst for the truth, yet--

--language is a plaything, not a sacred cow. Still--

--you have a respect for tradition and formality, yet

--a fierce impatience with the familiar and the status quo.

--cadence and rhythm get a hold on you and never let go.

--you have a tendency to see, hear, and otherwise notice things others may ignore.

Who knows if any of the above can be taught, but having these traits may point you in the poetic direction. Even so, few people "choose" to become poets; poetry chooses them.

Quite profound Aunty.

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor STATELY

[Jassy Melson]

Regardless of all the creative writing courses offered, I repeat, you cannot teach someone to write poetry.

[Delta40]

I would have to say my motivation and the satisfaction I get upon composing a poem is the worth. Appreciation from an audience is just a bonus. Family? Pah! They've never even read my work...I post on Lit-Net as a reliable outlet. If I never take the subject to its highest level, so what? High horsey academics can be so narrow minded in their definitions of the English language some times - are they really an audience I would wish to impress?

[MorpheusSandman]

Regardless of all the creative writing courses offered, I repeat, you cannot teach someone to write poetry.I repeat, yes you can. Writing poetry is not some magical, mystical event; it's a series of choices regarding language and the various forms that language takes, and all of those choices can be taught so that writers are aware of them. Yes, there are certain things that can't be taught, but this is true of most anything that is taught. You can teach physics, but you can't teach someone to think and imagine like Einstein; you can teach math, but you can't teach a mathematician to come up with a theorem as important as Godel's; similarly, you can teach someone poetry, but you can't teach them to write something like Paradise Lost.


High horsey academics can be so narrow minded in their definitions of the English language some times - are they really an audience I would wish to impress?I tend to think average people are far more narrow minded in their definitions of the English language; most think any writer that uses a word they have to look up in a dictionary, or dares to mess with the subject-verb-predicate syntactic order, is pretentious. It's those "high horsey" academics that embraced linguistic experimenters like Joyce, Faulkner, Stevens, Ashbery, and other 20th century writers who pushed the boundaries of what the language was capable of.

[Ecurb]

The aspiring poet could take Archibald MacLiesh's advice:


A poem should palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.

Of course the problem with trying to write poetry using MacLiesh's advice is that it's hard to get started writing a poem "as wordless as the flight of birds." I can do plenty of things "as wordless as the flight of birds", but writing poetry isn't one of them. Nonetheless, I do wish my poetry (composed though it is of words) could SEEM as wordless as the flight of birds, particularly those birds that flit this way and that catching insects.

Speaking of insects, I like Don Maquis poem about bees:


the honey bee is sad and cross
and wicked as a weasel
and when she perches on you boss
she leaves a little measle

So simple, but so good. How do good poets come up with this stuff? The aliteration is nice, but the word "boss", so out of place and irrelevant, makes the poem take flight.

[Nick Capozzoli]

Regardless of all the creative writing courses offered, I repeat, you cannot teach someone to write poetry.

I think I understand your statement...i.e., that you mean you can't teach someone to write "great" or even "good" poetry because that requires some sort of essential "talent."

However, you certainly can teach students to read and write. This has been done regularly throughout history and is being done in our schools to this day. In fact all humans have learned to understand and speak language even without the benefit of specific schooling. Reading and writing of course require specific training. Absent certain neurological deficits, most average folk who have acquired verbal language can learn to read and write.

So you can teach folks to read and to write sentences, paragraphs, essays, stories of various length, and "poetry." You can teach them to write grammatically, logically (or illogically), to write accentually, syllabically, accentual-syllabically, "freely," with or without rhyme, and basically in any imaginable way that words may be arranged in language. In a similar way you can teach folks to appreciate any form of artistic expression (e.g., music, sculpture, & painting) and to express themselves in those "media." Music and Art academies do this all the time. There are plenty of children who learn to read music and play the piano quite competently. Just because very few of them ever become Mozarts is no reason to dismiss the efforts of the academies to teach music.

Perhaps the "best" way to teach poetry, after teaching the basic "rules" of language, is providing students with examples of "great poetry." The selection of "great poetry" is obviously very important, because it will be the model they use to judge their own work.

The initial experiences of students reading "study poems" are likely to be somewhat tedious and boring, just as piano students are likely to find their early fingering scale exercises tedious and boring. Ideally at some point some of these rank-and-file students will have an "Ah-Ha" moment when reading a study poem, when they suddenly experience something wonderful and mysterious in the language of the poem. This is the experience of poetic "truth" (you could also call it "beauty"). This is the ideal goal of any literature course, to get students to experience literature in this way. And this is the one thing that, as you say, cannot be "taught." It is something that the student must eventually come to himself. As the saying goes, "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." Just because this is so is no reason to give up on efforts to lead horses to places where they could drink...

[JBI]

Historically poetry writing has been taught, and there are countless examples of poets who had specific literary educations. Even then, the Western European tradition of literature post medieval times seems obsessed with poets over poems, and as such we don't realize that in a fixed genre there quite easily are many great poems by terrible poets. We are not a culture of the anthology anymore, but of the personal collected works. And as such, we ignore these works. This creates a fascination with poetic personality and only really historicizes what we think of as radical poets, rather than topical poets, or artists working within standard forms.

Quite simply though, this Limits poetic understanding to a creation and development art rather than a manipulation and perfection artwork. It's probably this reason that our idea of a poet seems more like Byron than Sidney.

[MorpheusSandman]

I think I understand your statement...i.e., that you mean you can't teach someone to write "great" or even "good" poetry because that requires some sort of essential "talent." I'm skeptical that there's really such a thing a talent, or, if there is, that it's all that important in the grand scheme of things. When you look at the great poets you find people that worked extremely hard at their craft and were often infuriated by their efforts. Yeats spoke of how weary the work of poetry made him, fussing over every detail, searching for the perfect form to put his thoughts in, searching for the perfect words, the perfect rhymes or slant-rhymes, etc. Can you really divorce talent from that great effort? However, I should point out that Jassy said nothing about teaching someone to write "great/good" poetry, merely that you couldn't teach someone to write poetry at all, and that notion is absurd.


We are not a culture of the anthology anymore, but of the personal collected works.Really? I see tons of Poetry anthologies out there today. There used to just be the Norton and Oxford, now you have pretty much every major publisher with a poetry anthology, and some publishers with multiple anthologies, and then you have anthologies limited to certain eras or types.


It's probably this reason that our idea of a poet seems more like Byron than Sidney.Byron is more popular than Sidney, yes, but Keats is more popular than both, and he certainly embodied your "manipulation and perfection" paradigm. Funnily enough, I tend to think more lyric poets could learn something from Byron's discursiveness, his whimsical play of mind. Take a "manipulation and perfectionist" poet like James Merrill and you have his work up through Nights and Days; introduce him to Byron and you get Divine Comedies and The Changing Light at Sandover, two of the 20th Century's greatest masterpieces.

[JBI]

I meant the assorted miscellany anthology as our standard. We now read personal collections, not these assorted, often disorganized books. We also do not get our poetry from magazines much. And what we do publish in selected anthologies rarely is unpublished work, it is usually a mix of already established works by established artists.

[JBI]

I'm skeptical that there's really such a thing a talent, or, if there is, that it's all that important in the grand scheme of things. When you look at the great poets you find people that worked extremely hard at their craft and were often infuriated by their efforts. Yeats spoke of how weary the work of poetry made him, fussing over every detail, searching for the perfect form to put his thoughts in, searching for the perfect words, the perfect rhymes or slant-rhymes, etc. Can you really divorce talent from that great effort? However, I should point out that Jassy said nothing about teaching someone to write "great/good" poetry, merely that you couldn't teach someone to write poetry at all, and that notion is absurd.

Really? I see tons of Poetry anthologies out there today. There used to just be the Norton and Oxford, now you have pretty much every major publisher with a poetry anthology, and some publishers with multiple anthologies, and then you have anthologies limited to certain eras or types.

Byron is more popular than Sidney, yes, but Keats is more popular than both, and he certainly embodied your "manipulation and perfection" paradigm. Funnily enough, I tend to think more lyric poets could learn something from Byron's discursiveness, his whimsical play of mind. Take a "manipulation and perfectionist" poet like James Merrill and you have his work up through Nights and Days; introduce him to Byron and you get Divine Comedies and The Changing Light at Sandover, two of the 20th Century's greatest masterpieces.

I did not mean which is more popular, I meant which is what we consider the poetic personality. Troubled, overly emotional, somehow with deeper feeling than the average person, misunderstood, somewhat tragic - these are all romantic notions of poetry.

We do not think of our poets as rich aristocrats deciding to play games with language, or as children messing around, or as casual writers of verse.

If we compare this to other traditions, we see huge differences - for instance, in ancient China, everyone with an education would be writing poetry, and many people would have poetry memorized. Popular songs were also often written down, as they were in the west. So we would have any educated person necessarily leaving a large corpus of poetry, written mostly on occasion, whether it is to attach to a personal letter, or at a specific night of drinking.

The idea then, that we have the set topic, and then can have the set form, and work within these confines dominates the idea of poetry.

Sonnets in the English Renaissance seem similar - the range of tropes is relatively set, the form is rather constrictive, and rhymes often appear over and over again - we have, in a sense, a tradition that does not look for the poem within the artist's ability to make new forms, but rather thrives on how old forms are played with.

The couplet is an even more extreme example, in that it's a technical form, with very rigid guidelines. I bet you there are numerous awful poets that have the odd perfect couplet within their works.

In that sense, I hold to my original argument - the progression of English literature, and Western literature in general has been to centralize the individual poet, and therefore overemphasis innovation and dramatic development, at the expense of perfection and form, and the centrality of the individual work.

[AuntShecky]

We do not think of our poets as rich aristocrats deciding to play games with language, or as children messing around, or as casual writers of verse.


This is a "romantic" notion, indeed, but not every poet can be described this way. That some poets were famously "troubled" (Delmore Schwartz), deemed clinically insane (Pound), or suicidal (Berryman, Plath) can be countered by the number of poets who led or are leading, long, less luridly dramatic lives: (Richard Wilbur,Robert Graves.) "Overly emotional"? -- One can name scores of poets who valued the intellect over feelings. It is a matter of cause and effect, not the cart pulling the horse. Even Wordsworth, the father of Romantic poetry, decreed that poetry involves "emotions recollected in tranquility." According to T.S. Eliot, both thought and feelings were inseparable before the rise of Metaphysical Poetry and the "dissociation of sensibility." In his essay "Tradition and the Individual Poet," the clear-headed, cerebral Eliot, far from the wild-eyed mad poet, likened the writing of poetry to a chemical conversion, a process
with more similarities to science than ad hoc feelings.


We do not think of our poets as rich aristocrats deciding to play games with language, or as children messing around, or as casual writers of verse.
Well, James Merrill was a rich kid (of a principal in the once-lucrative Merrill Lynch Pierce Fenner & Smith financial gang), and some of his poems are wonderful, delightful language games, similar to the fun one might have with a Ouija board. Many of our beloved poets may seem like "children messing around"--Ogden Nash, the underated Don Marquis (See Reply #74 , above),James Whitcomb Riley, and other masters of light verse. And "casual"? Quick--name the greatest American poets of the twentieth century (besides Frost?)Did you say Wallace Stevens? While his "day job" was as an executive at a Hartford insurance company the majestic poetry which influences American poets to this day began was as a hobby.

I think I agree with much of what you say, though, JBI. Writing poetry does require a commitment, if nothing else than a commitment to make the work good. Lines dashed off by a diletante, no matter how elitely he has been educated, probably won't change the world. And a youth who enjoys putting on melancholic airs and fancies himself a poet is most likely a poseur. So-called "tempermental artists"are rarely artists. They're just ornery.

[Diar624]

I would answer that although you can’t really “teach” them per se, you can give them advice on how to observe their own thought process, their writing process, and how they recognize and make sense of their thoughts and feelings as found in the words they write. I would say that to write poetry you must start at the beginning, with the experience, specifically, with how you respond to the experience, noticing your sensations, your thought responses to those sensations, how those thoughts and sensations make you feel, and then how the language you are using to register these reactions does or does not sufficiently express the intensity of your reactions to this experience. Poetry is about expressing the mental, physical, and emotional reactions to an experience.

[JCamilo]

More or less I would say. We are romantics, hence the tale of Coleridge dream talks strongly than his attempts at intellectualism, the emotions recollected of Wordsworth also seems to be louder in his preface, Keat's taled of the singing nightingale that caused him to write a perfect ode at the emotion of the momment are there also, the angels of Blake, the defence of poetry of Shelley, Byron's promoted image shows something a bit different from a writer that had all the work with Don Juan.

It is like Poe - the madness, rambling, drug use over his writtings that are strong - even if fake - attempts to justify poetry from the intellectual point of view. Baudelaire, in a sense, a bore and conservating, imortalized as dark hero, a rebel. Elizabeth Barrett life story over he, rather, clacissical trainning. Lorca's gnome. Reading Dante and Beatriz as a love story and not as a intellectual symbolism. Rimbaud's infant terrible image placing him shoulders to shoulders to Verlaine. The Bronte sisters tale (the one about them blooming in the middle of nowhere with no connection anywhere). The most famous poem of Kipling is If, a sentimental poem that does not exactly represents the bulk of his poetry.

All this and more, lead us to keep the image of the poet as a emotional and sensible creator and not the intellectual and this while we had Virgil, Dante, Milton, Chaucer and in modern times Borges, Emerson and a few others who are quite intellectual in their poetry.

[MorpheusSandman]

I did not mean which is more popular, I meant which is what we consider the poetic personality. Troubled, overly emotional, somehow with deeper feeling than the average person, misunderstood, somewhat tragic - these are all romantic notions of poetry.Well, this strikes me as the TV Tropes stereotype of the poet. The moment anyone actually becomes familiar with poetry and poets this notion is exploded because the bewilderingly different personalities that have taken to the art. Certainly nobody can look at the pre-eminent 20th century poets--Eliot, Pound, Stevens, Merrill, Yeats, Ashbery, Hill, Auden--and claim that they were of that "troubled, overly emotional, misunderstood, tragic" romantic mold. All of these poets, in terms of their affinities for language, philosophical, formal games, their displacement and fracturing of the lyrical "I," their depersonalization, etc. bear more resemblances to the poets of the Renaissance and Enlightenment.

If that romantic stereotype dominates the ignorant public perception it's because that Romanticism was really the last poetic movement that was "for the people," and this was by design from the beginning. Pope and the Enlightenment had very much made poetry a more aristocratic venture. The whole point of Lyrical Ballads, and the reason Wordsworth and Coleridge felt their efforts needed a defensive preface was because it was verse about common people in everyday situations. This was also at a time when literacy was exploding, so you had more and more lower-middle class families reading poetry. The modernists, more or less, took poetry back to being an, if not aristocratic, at least an intellectual, educated art-form. Everyday people may have read The Waste Land once and realized this was not poetry for them, and so they went back to Wordsworth, Keats, Byron, et al., and the "popular" conception of the poet remained with the Romantics, the poets of the people.


In that sense, I hold to my original argument - the progression of English literature, and Western literature in general has been to centralize the individual poet, and therefore overemphasis innovation and dramatic development, at the expense of perfection and form, and the centrality of the individual work.Perhaps, but I don't think this means that, say, the collected works of individual poets are really more popular than anthologies. The explosion of anthologies in existence seems to me to indicate a demand and readership, which further indicates that people ARE interested in exploring poetry outside of individual poets. Heck, there are even anthologies FOR forms, like the sonnet.

Are poets as individual creators centralized? Perhaps to an extent, but I think this concept, especially in America, goes back to Whitman and the distrust of "old forms" representing the "old world," and the notion that America needed to forge its own tradition and heritage separate from Britain. That lead to the "make it new," paradigm of the modernists. It was, perhaps, as much nationally motivated as anything.

When you factor in Postmodernism's further fracturing of perspective, the notion that every new voice from a unique nationality/race/gender/sexuality/etc. needs to find new forms to represent THEIR perspective, the case for form becomes even more tenuous. Now it's become almost a cliche that Western poets can't write in old forms (never mind how old free verse really is) without being cute, precocious, frivolous, playful, and utterly divorced from real concerns in the real world, without being slaves to white, misogynistic, racist, aristocratic, straight privilege that blinds them to the ills of society, ills that can't be represented by forms forged within societies that were part of the problem. It's a bad case of condemnation by association.

So there's a lot of, I guess you might say, "politics" behind the emphasis of poets over the form of poetry. I also think all of these factors have put even more emphasis and scrutiny on anthologies and how they help form the canon and the tradition, so you have even more anthologies trying to carve out their place, legitimize their poetics amongst more readers. This leads to things like the Vendler/Dove spat, where Dove's anthology included more poets/poems than Vendler thought was deserving.

So while you may say this is about emphasizing poets over the poetry, I think there's more to it than that.

[MorpheusSandman]

James Merrill was a rich kid (of a principal in the once-lucrative Merrill Lynch Pierce Fenner & Smith financial gang), and some of his poems are wonderful, delightful language games, similar to the fun one might have with a Ouija board.Merrill was a "rich kid," but a miserable one from a broken home with an absentee father and a mother whom mostly fostered him off on nannies and maids to the point that Merrill fantasized about being kidnapped like the Lindberg baby (and wrote a wonderful poem about it!). He also declined his inheritance, donating the money from his father's death to charity.

He was, though, very much one of the 20th century's most acute language gamesters; though I also think he, especially towards his middle and late works, found ways to integrate these linguistic games into his thematics so they weren't JUST games. Stephen Yenser in his wonderful study on Merrill called The Consuming Myth (http://www.amazon.com/Consuming-Myth-Work-James-Merrill/dp/0674166159) interprets Merrill's fascination with, eg, puns as being representative of his interest in finding dichotomies and conflicts synthesized to a single point. So the way that language can roll up two even opposing meanings in one word is similar to how, eg, both yes and no, Good and Evil, are combined within the possibilities of Sandover's atoms.


Quick--name the greatest American poets of the twentieth century (besides Frost?)Did you say Wallace Stevens? The more I read from him and on him, the more I'm actually inclined to say Merrill, though I've gone through phases of thinking Auden (if one considers him American), Stevens, and Ashbery. Though I like Frost, I tend to view him as a somewhat limited, frequently slight poet. He perfected three things: a colloquial blank verse style, the short narrative drama, and what David Kalstone called the "emblematic lyric," in which the poet presents an object or incident in which something deeper is implied (but without the rigid symbolism of allegory). Of these, it's really only the latter that seemed to have much influence on future generations, with Elizabeth Bishop being one obvious example.

So, I think of Frost's mastery as somewhat limited, his influence perhaps more so. I'm not even sure if he would be in the top 5 American poets of the century. Certainly the likes of Stevens, Eliot, and Ashbery were far more influential, and surely the likes of Auden, Merrill, and Bishop were more technically virtuosic and versatile. If Merrill's reputation isn't that of Frost's it's mostly because of timing and poetic politics. Merrill came along when formalism and pretty much everything he was good at was out of style. What's more, his more "visionary" moments recalling Blake, Dante, Yeats, etc. seem even more alien to his contemporaries and to our postmodern sensibilities. Merrill was one of those poets just completely out of step with the times (not unlike Blake, actually), and perhaps because of that I feel he'll ultimately have far more staying power than the poets that seemed to exemplify the ever shifting shadings of this chameleon century.

[JBI]

Let me ask you a question. From the Romantic era, how many one poem poets can you name? how many multiple author anthologies can you name from the period,that weren't compiled in our own time that you have read? How many periodicals from the Romantic era have you read?

I don't care about how much you look down on the current population's reading ability, the fact remains that culturally we have become incredibly poet-centric, in that we like to organize everything under specific poets, and then look for their specifics.

In the creation sense, something that is closed form allows for others to play with the elements that make the piece - so a Petrarchan sonnet in the 16th century had a set list of conceits and tropes, and the sonnet's success rested on the manipulation of the familiar. Later on, the move has been to not look at the poem as a unit, at least from a reader stand point, but as the individual opus as a summary. This greatly changes the way poetry is both written and received.

How many anonymous poets have their works recorded nowadays? How many 1 poet modernists do we know? It's hard to think in these terms, but basically our understanding of poetry as a creation has shifted toward focusing on authors more, rather than on works. IF we removed all the names before every poet, how would that effect our judgment of poetry as a whole?

How would we, lets say, reevaluate Wordsworth on a poem by poem basis if we thought his entire work an anonymous collection by different hands.

[MorpheusSandman]

Let me ask you a question. From the Romantic era, how many one poem poets can you name? how many multiple author anthologies can you name from the period,that weren't compiled in our own time that you have read? How many periodicals from the Romantic era have you read?Julia Ward Howe is the only one that comes to mind. Can't think of any anthologies from that time that are still in print! As for periodicals, I've only read what's been reprinted in books like the Nortons and Broadviews.

Anyway, you're framing the discussion differently now. I thought your issue was between Anthologies VS Collected works of individual poets. I'd still say Anthologies are more popular amongst the public, even if poet-centric thought dominates over poem-centric thought. Most of my last post was an attempt to account for that thought. I'd also suggest that you find quite a few "one-poem poets" pre-Romanticism, and significantly more post-Romanticism.

I get what you're saying about closed form, but such a thing requires a singular, coherent culture that shares an understanding of those forms so that when they encounter, say, a sonnet, they read it with a knowledge of the tropes set by previous examples without any knowledge of who wrote it. We get something like that now with pop music, where "one-hit wonders" are a frequent occurrence. I think most of my last post accounted for much of why we don't have that in poetry much anymore. We can indeed trace that back to Romanticism, since Romanticism itself was defined by its breaking way from the previous era in a way that wanted to present new perspectives. These new perspectives created unfamiliarity, so for readers to "anchor" themselves they couldn't rely on their familiarity with the forms used, so they latched on to the poets instead.

It's possible that Romanticism was the first movement in English poetry that defined itself by how much it broke from the previous tradition since Chaucer, when Chaucer's rhymed stanzas took over the more dominant Alliterative verse. Most English poetry since Chaucer and until the Romantics seem like variations on the same essential model, eventually paring down Chaucer's complex stanzas to Dryden and Pope's heroic couplets. Modernism pushed this break further, post-modernism even further. However, in M and PM I think the increased fracturing has, perhaps ironically, produced way more works from more perspectives than people can take in, so you do end up back with more "single poem poets" simply because people can't take in much more than that if they want to read broadly at all. I think most anthologies reflect this.

One more thing to consider is that M and PM, somewhat paradoxically, did do a lot to decentralize the author. Eliot's maxim that the proper study of poetry was poems and not poets lead to New Criticism, which felt that poems could be understood/appreciated without recourse to caring about who wrote them. Many of IA Richards experiments in reading were done with either anonymous poets or poems for which he didn't reveal the name of the poets to his classes. PM came up with maxim's like "death of the author" where author's became nothing more than re-organizers of past material rather than as divinely inspired individual creators ala romanticism.

So, again, if poet-centric thought still persists it is mostly amongst a public ignorant of most poetry. Step away from that and the views become multiplied and blurrier.


How would we, lets say, reevaluate Wordsworth on a poem by poem basis if we thought his entire work an anonymous collection by different hands. Well, one could critique Wordsworth's use of blank verse against, say, Milton, in which case I think he holds up well if not quite as masterful. One could critique his use of the Pindaric and Horatian ode models, where I think he holds up even better.

[JBI]

I would think his status would be incredibly devalued for the vast majority of his poems, and for, lets say, with the Prelude aside, maybe 10 poems in the amazing category (with the Ode being in the front), then another 15 or so in the worthy but not front running category, and then the rest, virtually everything written after Elegiac stanzas in the rubbish heap. The general idea we get from his poetry is that he "created" a new sort of poetic persona and way of reading poetry - the author as text, and the personal experience as subject - and then he sort of ran out of steam and rehashed similar stuff without much success until his death.

Coleridge in contrast seems to be made of half a dozen or so poems, with Dejection, Kubla Khan, Christabel, and the Ancient Mariner in the front (though why he needed to footnote his own work for publication is still a debated topic).

In a sense a more limited poet in terms of form, John Clare, to me seems to be these poets' equal outside of their signature half a dozen poems. Yet the Norton will never be able to have these poets' work properly compared. John Clare remains on the fringe, in that his poetic personality is rather limited, in the sense that he did not create the cult following that someone like Byron did, and that his poetic range of topics does not include foreign places, or exotic artwork.

Now, back to your notion of the single work - the post-romantic single work poet is only a single work poet because the market is too large. We cannot represent an entire opus, and we are not judging them on their one poem, but rather, we are restricting them to one poem. Now, generally the trend seems to be that specific poets will form a "community" and publish within shared publication space - such as poems devoted to "new formalism" or any other ism pack of poets. Such a marketing style
Such a trend of publication has a long history, and I can trace it in China all the way back to the 12th century, but really in prominence by the 15th century, when basically everyone seems to be identified with a group of half a dozen or so friends.

When we think of poets as groups then, we create a new standard of criteria by which to judge them, as the way of making sense of far too many poets. Eventually however, the trend works to weed out the "weaker" poets of the group based on their personalities - so the circle of friends around, lets say, The Beat poets - and then their subsequent fallout movements - until we are left with a small sliver of the original group's opus.

Now, we could say that the so called Cavalier Poets of the 17th century, Herrick, Lovelace, etc. would constitute the same logic, and I would applaud such a connection. In that, those poets actually established a specific aesthetic criteria restrictively limited to their group, which managed to sort out its own standard of evaluation. What's left, ultimately, is a collaborative anthology of their works - the best of each member - and not a complete works of sorts. We should hold that as an example of poetry moving at its best.

Post-modernism rather than produce more good poets allowed more mediocre ones to publish their work. The number of good poets has necessarily increased, but the range of poetry is always a funny thing. How many poets post Confessional poetry have had such a defined movement, or friendship. In Canada at least, it seems every woman for herself in the sea of publication. Ethnicity also has come to play with it, where the only way we can actually understand works is to anthologize them as "Lesbian poetry." or "Transgendered East Indian verse" or any other category one can think of, despite the authors rarely having much in common with each other.

Take, for instance, Chinese Canadian verse. In terms of "blood", that basically includes anybody with a Chinese grandparent. Some of the anthologized poets would be god awful poets, some quite good. Some would actually deal with Chinese themes, or Chinese content (meaning Chinese tradition in literature) while many, quite simply are descendants from immigrants who came to the country 100 years ago, and are no more Chinese than I am from Rawanda - their verse would be completely based on other traditions, and their source of poetic inspiration quite likely would be in line with the tastes of the US, or of the English tradition in general. Their knowledge of Chinese, both linguistically and culturally would be zero.

Now compare that to me, who is more Chinese? And yet, they go into the anthologies, because the people who critique this stuff pretty much have lost touch with how poetry works.

Decidedly, verse in the modern era is supposed to be limited. There is no such thing as contemporary world poetry, in that poetry is far too wide and means too many different things. There is also not really a such thing as national poetry in most cases, and poetry is too diverse. We generally need these sorts of small group readings, with selected small communities to ever get anywhere with verse.

How many poets of the modern era have actually popped out a Walt Whitman. The radical genius feels in context more a product of the national identity of the US coupled with the seeds of American religious life that was developing, and not so much a random freak occurrence. We can contextualize all these voices, in the dynamics of shifting cultural forces outside of poetry, and the association of people around the poet with similar cultural ideas. That's the general secret of poetry.

Without the stage there is no Shakespeare, and therefore we can naturally say that if you want to write poetry successfully, you generally need to have a community around you, if not to write with you then to buy from you. Poetry is very much a collaborative effort, rather than a single act - and our showcasing of specific poets detracts from our understanding of the lack of personal success, and greater communal success of poetry.

Now, that being said, how would this effect our would be poet from the middle of nowhere? well, the first problem is simply that you would need to connect yourself to a group in order to get anywhere. Collaborative effort online doesn't seem to carry much weight yet, and this board will not provide the proper feedback or communication to "correct" a person's poetic development. Generally, despite the protests that poets are born or whatnot, the fact remains that poets are made, though not necessarily by a university.

However, let me pose a question, who here reads contemporary verse, and of those poets who people do read, who here knows how those poets came out in the first place.

In Canada (as that is my natural frame of reference), it is clear that most poets are associated with universities, and most pursued education in English or humanities related fields. Many are full time teachers. A good example is Margaret Atwood, who is very much a creation of an academic mindset, that has gone on to pursue its natural conclusion.

[Nick Capozzoli]

---deemed clinically insane (Pound)

Well, yes, EP was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic by psychiatrists at St. Elizabeth's Hospital, where he was confined after being arrested by US forces in Italy at the end of WWII. He was awaiting trial for treason for having given aid and comfort to the enemy and subverting US military efforts, mainly by his radio broadcasts during the war... (similar to Tokyo Rose). Whether or not EP was seriously mentally ill (i.e. psychotic) is questionable. He was facing either long-term imprisonment or execution, and many of his literary supporters lobbied for his exoneration (on the grounds that he was merely expressing his literary opinions protected by First Ammendment and ideas about "academic freedom of expression"). Since the FBI had transcripts and some recordings of his actual broadcasts along with written articles (some quite obviously treasonous), he got out of having to stand trial by being declared "insane." Was he? I'm not sure, but I would say probably not. His behavior could just as well be explained by Narcissistic Personality Disorder with a bit of Antisocial Personality Disorder and quite a bit of racial/religious bigotry thrown into the mix. He was still a great poet...

-- Quick--name the greatest American poets of the twentieth century (besides Frost?)Did you say Wallace Stevens?

I did name Stevens in quickly writing down the first 10 names that came to mind: In order, these were: Stevens, Williams, Pound, Winters, Merrill, Lowell, Bishop, Gunn, McMichael, and Roethke. The order is how they came out in writing, not necessarily in order of excellence. Hugo, Levine, Pinsky, and Momaday were the other names that popped out in my quickly scribbled list. I gave myself 60 seconds for this exercise...more names would have come up if given a longer time to think on it. I'm not sure if Bishop should be considered American or Canadian, and Gunn American or English.

[MorpheusSandman]

I did name Stevens in quickly writing down the first 10 names that came to mind: In order, these were: Stevens, Williams, Pound, Winters, Merrill, Lowell, Bishop, Gunn, McMichael, and Roethke... I'm not sure if Bishop should be considered American or Canadian, and Gunn American or English. Auden is another case whose nationality is debatable. Moved to the US in his early 30s, became a citizen in his early 40s. Most of his writing career took place in the US, but many think he wrote his best work before that move. I'm of the mind that his best work is the four long poems from his middle period, where he had moved to the US, but just before he became a citizen.

Anyway, I'm surprised to not see Ashbery or Merwin on your list. Surely they should be in the Top 10, at least. Some other good names to throw into the mix: Crane, Plath, Rich, Cummings, Berryman, Ammons, Warren, L. Hughes, Gluck, Ginsberg, Jeffers, Sandburg, Wilbur.

[Vota]

I wouldn't purposely try to analyze or learn it per se. I've written a few poems and started out just making things rhyme. Then a few sonnets. Reading poetry and trying to understand what the poems are saying without over-analyzing seems to work for me. I want my poems to reflect my thoughts, to be structured the way I want them to be.

Nobody taught me how to write poetry,
Frost and Whitman my verse forebearers,
Forms from within, inspired by those before me,
Reception of this mayhap attended by pallbearers

[JBI]

Vota，you verse is non-metrical, and doesn't actually rhyme, even if we stretch poetry into three syllables. Likewise the line lengths are uneven. As much as this might hurt, it's fine that you want your poems to suck, but honestly, please don't share. Your poem really sucks and it looks like the rhymes were clipped from a bad rhyming dictionary.

[cacian]

You cannot teach writing poetry to anyone; the writing of poetry cannot be taught.

extensive reading classics education is teaching. literature is never in isolation it is cumbersome in that some work is more highlighted then others like the Iliads/mythology/historical documents/opera/theatre these are all centered around specifics of works which then help shape your way of writing. it is heavily prepared and documented as oppose to instantaneous and made up to suit the occasion.

[Delta40]

Vota，you verse is non-metrical, and doesn't actually rhyme, even if we stretch poetry into three syllables. Likewise the line lengths are uneven. As much as this might hurt, it's fine that you want your poems to suck, but honestly, please don't share. Your poem really sucks and it looks like the rhymes were clipped from a bad rhyming dictionary.

Now now. Are you denying a poet the right to express their self-defined worth on a public forum? I'm sure you'll endure. I manage quite well alongside you...x

[cacian]

I wouldn't purposely try to analyze or learn it per se. I've written a few poems and started out just making things rhyme. Then a few sonnets. Reading poetry and trying to understand what the poems are saying without over-analyzing seems to work for me. I want my poems to reflect my thoughts, to be structured the way I want them to be.

Nobody taught me how to write poetry,
Frost and Whitman my verse forebearers,
Forms from within, inspired by those before me,
Reception of this mayhap attended by pallbearers

I say this is a fine piece. write as you wish fit is the best policy. it is a liberation to piece together a poem without anyone's help likewise it is a liberation to be able to expose it as it is without being told it is not as it should be. with all our faults we must be able to come across it in writing too.:)

[cacian]

Vota，you verse is non-metrical, and doesn't actually rhyme, even if we stretch poetry into three syllables. Likewise the line lengths are uneven. As much as this might hurt, it's fine that you want your poems to suck, but honestly, please don't share. Your poem really sucks and it looks like the rhymes were clipped from a bad rhyming dictionary.

a bit harsh. JBI how about writing a four line piece yourself and showing us how it should be? ;)

[JBI]

Just fiddling for a minute.

Iced wind - window - autumn.
Petals fall on mute lake like
Bloody tears in a tepid basin.
My pen flaccid, my soul numb.


Now now. Are you denying a poet the right to express their self-defined worth on a public forum? I'm sure you'll endure. I manage quite well alongside you...x

I'm commenting on the poster's insistence on demonstrating their " I've written a few poems and started out just making things rhyme." The point is that they don't rhyme. and that the above poster's insistence on their individuality and not needing to analyse so much is perhaps deterring from their poetic development - certainly a good read of a prosody manual would help.

[cacian]

Just fiddling for a minute.

Iced wind - window - autumn.
Petals fall on mute lake like
Bloody tears in a tepid basin.
My pen flaccid, my soul numb.

hi JBI.
I am intrigued by the first line.
three separate words an no verb.is that a style?
are you fully content with this piece?
I see no title.

[MorpheusSandman]

JBI how about writing a four line piece yourself and showing us how it should be? ;)I won't comment too deeply on either effort--I'll just say they're both amateurish, JBI's much less so--but I will say it's a mistake to judge a critic or any criticism by whether or not they can better what they criticize. Criticism and the art it criticizes are very different arts. Criticism should itself be critiqued as criticism, not whether or not a critic can do better.

Just to join in the effort for fun:

Outside the sun is yawning to a song.
Inside a son is waking to a hush's
Wide open eyes, seared scarlet, blood on bush.
Outside, no one ever cares for long.

[cacian]

I won't comment too deeply on either effort--I'll just say they're both amateurish, JBI's much less so--but I will say it's a mistake to judge a critic or any criticism by whether or not they can better what they criticize. Criticism and the art it criticizes are very different arts. Criticism should itself be critiqued as criticism, not whether or not a critic can do better.

Just to join in the effort for fun:

Outside the sun is yawning to a song.
Inside a son is waking to a hush's
Wide open eyes, seared scarlet, blood on bush.
Outside, no one ever cares for long.

Hi Morpheus your four line offers such a contrast on what natural does.
a sun usually blasts and so for it to yawn is metaphorically speaking goes against its own effect.
a song is usually loud ish energetic and so is the sun.
again a son that wakes up at hush is unusual or rare.

what is seared scarlet?

[MorpheusSandman]

Hi Morpheus your four line offers such a contrast on what natural does.
a sun usually blasts and so for it to yawn is metaphorically speaking goes against its own effect.
a song is usually loud ish energetic and so is the sun.
again a son that wakes up at hush is unusual or rare.

what is seared scarlet?Good observations cacian; you may be on to my intent with the contrasts. Perhaps read the sun as a symbol, the yawn and song as metonyms, and the hush as synecdoche. Seared scarlet is an adjective phrase describing the "wide open eyes." Seared means burned, scarlet is a shade of red. Consider various situations where eyes might be that color.

[Vota]

It was meant to be amateurish as I spent about 30 seconds composing it. I'm not here to impress you. Personally, I feel your piece is try-hard and rather formulaic. That said, it's interesting to see someone pounce on another's piece, skewer it, and not realize how pretentious they are in doing so. I never said my piece was serious or composed in deep thought and your comments are heavy handed.

[MorpheusSandman]

Volta, are you talking to me or JBI? We both criticized your piece. Why are either of us being pretentious? What about our comments are "heavy handed?" It seems to me that you're just going into self-defense mode. If you meant for your piece to be silly and amateurish then why are you taking criticisms that call it amateurish so harshly?

[JBI]

I won't comment too deeply on either effort--I'll just say they're both amateurish, JBI's much less so--but I will say it's a mistake to judge a critic or any criticism by whether or not they can better what they criticize. Criticism and the art it criticizes are very different arts. Criticism should itself be critiqued as criticism, not whether or not a critic can do better.

Just to join in the effort for fun:

Outside the sun is yawning to a song.
Inside a son is waking to a hush's
Wide open eyes, seared scarlet, blood on bush.
Outside, no one ever cares for long.

To be honest the first and last lines were added after - the middle lines are the general meat of it, but either way, it was never intended to be serious, as I generally do not write poetry. Nor would I want to in English right now, as I do not feel personally fit for it (being out of context already for over a year).

I was actually more intrigued by an interesting line by Li He which translates peach blossoms scattering like red rain. I am interested in those sort of rhetorical structures in poetics, which I cannot really do with English as it is currently practiced. Let alone the harder job of suggesting rather than saying, which is also limited to me in English.

Classical Chinese has the advantage I guess of being shorter in syllabic length, so that you can coherently do more, with less words, and therefore build a stronger quatrain (with every single syllable having a more rigid tonal grid). English works in other ways, but having not read any English verse for about a year now, I am unable to come up with it.

AS for this poem though, I wouldn't publish it, I bet I could do better with more time, and certainly I would not post that anywhere where people would take it seriously, or where I would want them to. I am more interested, however, in shorter poems:

A frozen forest pine.
The hissing wind.

Or these sorts of works that can properly attach image to feeling. From there I am interested in how to manipulate image into poetry, which of course, is easier for me to discuss in Chinese verse, rather than English, as I do not have any of my usual resources at my disposal right now.

Still, as for the writing of good poetry, I doubt I have the ability right now. Ultimately I have always considered myself to be a writer working in the genre of poetic discussion. Discussion, is in itself a form of expression and art form.

[cacian]

Good observations cacian; you may be on to my intent with the contrasts. Perhaps read the sun as a symbol, the yawn and song as metonyms, and the hush as synecdoche. Seared scarlet is an adjective phrase describing the "wide open eyes." Seared means burned, scarlet is a shade of red. Consider various situations where eyes might be that color.

I am not familiar with metonyms and synecdoche.
interesting about scarlet. I thought it was a name of a person never a colour.
seared is a term I hear a lot in cooking a seared scallop pops into mind. :)
do you ever write outside these meters? in fact any poetic meters?

[cacian]

I am more interested, however, in shorter poems:

A frozen forest pine.
The hissing wind.
hi JBI.
I personally see this as two very short titles of something. in reality a forest is huge and the wind is more so and to reduce them to three to four words in each line is almost putting nature to a less meaningful setting.
the style comes across as frozen almost cut off.
maybe it is because it is in a different language.
I am not sure. I feel the language is reduced to a few words. I would not converse in this way in real life. why do it to poetry?
naturally we are speaker of long sentences and a feeling only enters into it when more words and longer utterances of sound and meaning are spoken and shared.

[JBI]

hi JBI.
I personally would not call this a poem.
the style comes across as frozen almost cut off.
maybe it is because it is in a different language.
I am not sure. I feel the language is reduced to a few words. I would not converse in this way in real life. why do it to poetry?
naturally we are speaker of long sentences and a feeling only enters into it when more words and longer utterances of sound and meaning are spoken and shared.

These aren't sentences, they are fragments, and there is much written in English in this shape or form. Though you are correct in suggesting that traditionally English likes a 4 stress line(psalm) as a standard, and a 5 stress line (pentameter) for more meditative works. Still, to say simply this is not a poem or has no poetic value is not exactly true. If I were to deconstruct it, I could easily compare it to readings of W C. Williams' work, like A Red Wheelbarrow. or the like, which ultimately are rooted in this same idea of the image as poetry, with subjective language as content (in W.C.W.'s case, participles). Still just because the work lacks an inherent definite meaning does not limit it.

So, if we were to take this poem for instance, we could cut it into language.

frozen (season) forest(location) pine (one, and an evergreen, also has symbolic value in various countries).
hissing (subjective word, implies a menacing, almost threatening atmosphere - lined back to the frozen nature of the setting, and the isolation of the tree) wind (tons of symbolic value, can be cut up in many different ways, depending on how you interpreted the former lines).

Once you've done that, you can reinsert such a poem into a functional tradition of your understanding. Winter in itself is a rich symbol, which could be interpreted in many ways.

In a sense such a poem lacks a concrete meaning, yet invites the reading to create and share in the meaning creation process, which is a value in and of itself, in that a tradition can be engaged directly through such a work.

[MorpheusSandman]

To be honest the first and last lines were added after - the middle lines are the general meat of it...Funnily enough, I remember thinking that the middle lines wouldn't make a bad Haiku-like poem by themselves. It's really the outer lines that don't seem to fit.


I was actually more intrigued by an interesting line by Li He which translates peach blossoms scattering like red rain. I am interested in those sort of rhetorical structures in poetics, which I cannot really do with English as it is currently practiced. Let alone the harder job of suggesting rather than saying, which is also limited to me in English.Personally, I don't worry about English "as it is currently practiced." In my own work, there are very few contemporary poets I draw inspiration from. This is not out of my ignorance of contemporary poetry (I regularly read new poets in both book-length forms and through my 6 different subscriptions for periodical poetry magazines), just out of my relative distaste for the vast majority of it. Probably the most recent poet I feel I could use as a model was James Merrill, and he's been dead for almost 20 years and came to prominence over 40 years ago. Though I have quite liked what little I've read from Steve Gehrke (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/steve-gehrke#about) and AE Stallings. (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/ae-stallings)

Anyway, I think I vaguely understand what you mean by those "rhetorical structures" in poetry (though feel free to elaborate) and "suggesting VS saying." I, too, am interested (though not exclusively) in what you might call the suggestive relations created through the connotations of words and images as opposed to the denotations of what's said. This is what I appreciate most about Haiku, but I have generally found that neither the form nor the Japanese conceptions really work in English. What you say about Chinese having shorter syllabic length, its ability to do more with less, is generally true of Japanese. This is why I started experimenting with Cinquains instead of Haiku. It's a longer form, but I feel it's better suited to English. The extra syllables and lines (2-4-6-8-2 rather than 5-7-5) I think offer an English poet more tools that are needed to replicate the compression and suggestiveness of Haiku. You can read some of my earlier attempts (and thoughts on the form) here. (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?68951-Five-Cinquains) I've refined both (I think) since then.


Ultimately I have always considered myself to be a writer working in the genre of poetic discussion. Discussion, is in itself a form of expression and art form.I know what you mean. I always considered myself a critic, teacher, and interlocutor more than a poet, but I'm working towards changing that, seeing as how I feel poetry is the only art-form I have any affinity towards actually doing.

[MorpheusSandman]

I am not familiar with metonyms and synecdoche.
interesting about scarlet. I thought it was a name of a person never a colour.
seared is a term I hear a lot in cooking a seared scallop pops into mind. :)
do you ever write outside these meters? in fact any poetic meters?Metonyms and synecdoche are forms of metaphor. Metonym substitutes a thing something is associated with for the thing itself (eg, "Hollywood" for "American film industry") while synecdoche substitutes a part for the whole (eg, "suits" for "businessmen"). I laughed at Scarlet just being a name! The most famous is, of course, Scarlet O'Hara in Gone with the Wind; but scarlet is, indeed, a shade of red. Seared is often used in cooking, but can be used to describe any type of intense burning. Yes, I do write free-verse and experiment both with other meters and even accentual verse. I just tend to prefer some kind of rhythmic base because I have learned how to use it as an expressive tool. In my above poem, eg, you might note that one line has an extra syllable and one is missing one; this was not unintentional.

[Delta40]

Lol. Can poets critique the tedious, long (yawn) drawn out posts of the critic/teacher/interlocutor by any chance....(bump! forehead hits keyboard)

[MorpheusSandman]

Lol. Can poets critique the tedious, long (yawn) drawn out posts of the critic/teacher/interlocutor by any chance....(bump! forehead hits keyboard)Certainly! I'd heartily welcome it! Sorry I seem to be boring you, though. :(

[Delta40]

Certainly! I'd heartily welcome it! Sorry I seem to be boring you, though. :(

Not necessarily you Morph but I sit here in a shroud of cobwebs when it comes to some other posters and I wondered whether there was some standard of engagement which academics strive to meet or are they just dull and long winded on purpose?

[Vota]

Volta, are you talking to me or JBI? We both criticized your piece. Why are either of us being pretentious? What about our comments are "heavy handed?" It seems to me that you're just going into self-defense mode. If you meant for your piece to be silly and amateurish then why are you taking criticisms that call it amateurish so harshly?

My comment was directed towards JBI. This is his response to my lil verse snippet:

"Vota，you verse is non-metrical, and doesn't actually rhyme, even if we stretch poetry into three syllables. Likewise the line lengths are uneven. As much as this might hurt, it's fine that you want your poems to suck, but honestly, please don't share. Your poem really sucks and it looks like the rhymes were clipped from a bad rhyming dictionary."

Heavy-handed? Assuming I want my poems to suck. Telling me I shouldn't share. Vota your poem really sucks. Your Rhymes appear clipped from a bad rhyme dictionary. That's more than a little heavy-handed. Hold on a second while I let the taste come back to my mouth.

Pretentious? I didn't ask for a serious critique, nor imply that I put any effort into that poem. I put that together as a joke in about 30 seconds. The last line implies that the poem is basically a joke "Reception of this mayhap attended by pallbearers". The fact that JBI, and it appears nobody else noticed this makes me wonder how much people here actually understand poetry. The fact that I pretty much foresaw harsh criticism with my poem makes it even funnier.

Look, I can see poetry here is serious business, and I respect that. But, if you are going to offer criticism, maybe think about whether the person asked for it, and make sure you actually get the poem before bashing something that was a joke.

I wasn't reacting harshly. I gave JBI my criticism of his poem. I actually find this rather hilarious:

Iced wind - window - autumn.
Petals fall on mute lake like
Bloody tears in a tepid basin.
My pen flaccid, my soul numb.

So we're looking out a window onto a cold autumn day, or night. Leaves metaphor and emo ending. There's a parapraxis in the last line as well imho. *****in poem.

[MorpheusSandman]

...I wondered whether there was some standard of engagement which academics strive to meet or are they just dull and long winded on purpose?Well, prepare yourself for some dull, long-windedness on the subject of dull, long-windedness! (reminds me of The Big Bang Theory and Penny noting Sheldon's ability to jibber-jabber about jibber-jabber (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOXkI92lDmw)! I'm sure you wouldn't believe I've been compared to Sheldon more than once.)

Anyway, dullness certainly isn't a one-way street. A reader might find an academic dull because they aren't interested in what they're writing about to begin with, in which case no amount of wit or humor or anything else will make the academic seem LESS dull to that reader. On the other hand, even when someone is interested, sometimes academics are, indeed, just dull writers. OK, but should academics strive to be entertaining? I think of an academic like Helen Vendler. I don't find her writing "exciting" in the least, yet I find her more informative, enlightening, and inspiring than just about anything I read on poetry. Yes, I can say that an academic like William Empson can be enlightening while also being witty and more entertaining, so the two aren't mutually exclusive, but it comes back to why one reads academic writing to begin with. I think being enlightening is more important than being entertaining in academia; if the latter happens, it's just a bonus.

As for being long-winded, there's no doubt that many academics have "space to fill," so to speak, when they're writing essays or (especially) books, so perhaps they often "pad" their writing with more than is necessary. Yet, I often know there is a concern that anything left out is an opportunity for a reader to "object" to the points you're making, so it often seems better to include them as a kind of "better safe than sorry" approach. An academic is also unsure of their readership's level of knowledge, so it's not always easy to find that balance between over-explaining so people can understand, and under-explaining so they can't. When I write, especially on academic subjects, even on message boards, I tend to err on the side of being inclusive and over-explaining, as I usually have no idea of the level of my interlocutors' knowledge on the subject and I'd generally prefer to have to put a lot in one post rather than little in several.


My comment was directed towards JBI. Ah, OK, I just wasn't sure. I do think JBI was too harsh given that your piece was quite apparently amateurish and non-serious (practically an example of light-verse). I'll let JBI speak for himself. I just wasn't sure if you also felt my comment was too harsh and that my piece was "try-hard" and "formulaic" (although I do think my piece was rather formulaic; in composing in a rush I, as all other poets I imagine, fall back on the formulas for composition they know and are comfortable using). Just FYI, for the future, you can quote the posters you're responding to by clicking the "quote" button at the bottom right of their post. This avoids the confusing of other posters not knowing whom you're responding to. Or you can just start your post with the posters' name.

[JBI]

He put it up here after discussing his method. It's fine to critique it, given how it was offered up for critique, on this forum - I don't comment on people's poetry on the personal poetry forum for this specific reason. That being said, your poem is god awful and it is choppy. You said right before that you are just sticking in some rhymes, and writing what you want, but you do realize poetry is a sharing art? You don't write the poems you want, ultimately you should write the poems other want if you want to share. My critique was rather light compared to what I could have said, and quite frankly, I judge all poetry with the same equal critical eye. IF you wish not to be critiqued as such, then perhaps you should not post your poem on a poetry discussion thread. You call me emo, but I'm not the one who is crying that nobody understands my work. The poem is rubbish, and you did not preface it, you merely posted it. Anybody reading your mediocre poem in that context would come to the same conclusion as me - it's mediocre, and since you want to share, it has a certain place in your oeuvre (probably an important one, since it was that one you decided to share).

Seriously, you get these random mediocre readers shoving all sorts of doggerel here, and then crying that people find it uninspired. The You don't get me, you don't understand, or the "it wasn't that serious" excuses are just that, excuses. If you want to be public with poetry, prepare for the obvious result. I don't know the context of your creation, nor do I care per say. To me, it is merely one of a billion bad poems out there.

[Vota]

JBI, everything I need to know about you as regards this forum was summed up in that response. Thanks.

[mortalterror]

It may sound harsh, but I agree with JBI 100%.

[cacian]

a poem is a question of perspective. a poem must reflect someone's feelings and ideas. to say a poem is bad is not what writing is about I do not think. we do not all like the same thing and therefore the same apply to literature. I find Lolita offensive it does not mean I will criticise someone else for liking it or reading it. it is a question of choice and taste. at the end of the day that is what writing should be about. a variety of styles. the more the merrier.

[JBI]

a poem is a question of perspective. a poem must reflect someone's feelings and ideas. to say a poem is bad is not what writing is about I do not think. we do not all like the same thing and therefore the same apply to literature. I find Lolita offensive it does not mean I will criticise someone else for liking it or reading it. it is a question of choice and taste. at the end of the day that is what writing should be about. a variety of styles. the more the merrier.

Honestly, it's this half *** attitude to poetry that gets poetry into trouble in the first place.

Firstly, anybody can write poetry, that is true, but not everybody can write readable poetry. Whether this is a question of experience, natural ability, or education is a debatable topic which is irrelevant to the simple discussion that based on a tradition, one can make judgments of what is good and what is bad, what is readable poetry, and what is rubbish poetry. the same way sdfl;jsdlfjsdlfj is in itself classifiable as a sort of poem, but it is not readable as something that anybody engaged with a criteria for viewing poetry would find worth reading. We have a standard, based on background and tradition, that though theoretically is subjective, is nevertheless a necessary thing for the sake of poetry's communication and universalism.

In that sense, what makes anybody think that their feelings matter? Well, for a simple point, if you put something out there, you are taking the risk that it will be criticized. Don't compete, if you will, if you don't want the judges to judge you. Quite simply if there is an audience, the artist must respect that relationship. The "you don't get me" is not a valid excuse. Sometimes poets are misunderstood, or not well received in their own time, but that does not discredit their immediate detractors opinion from being somehow valid. This forum is a public forum - one should not post unless one wishes to have their posts read, and as it is a discussion forum, of people with specific criteria when reading - some of us actually do it somewhat professionally - the argument that poetry is an expression of feeling and therefore should not be critiqued doesn't hold up.

Now, what doesn't reflect somebody's ideas? Does Hitler Mein Kampf not constitute an expression of feelings and ideas? We are allowed to criticize him. Now lets make it simpler, is anything not an expression of one's feelings? Where is this line, and unwritten rule that somebody in public is not allowed to criticize what is said in public? You post it on the wall, of course people are going to have a reaction to it. Now, is there a perspective necessary to appreciate certain work? Well, to think that that awful poem is good requires a specific perspective, which, ultimately probably is unique only to the poster who put that up there in the first place (it is my feelings bla bla bla). Quite simply, the whole idea that people should read something, or not criticize it because it is somebody else's feelings is a mere load of crap.

Now, for those of us who take writing, or art in general for that matter, as something with specific criteria that can measure things, and realize it is not just a game of stringing whatever nonsense we can think of together, but actually has a process and a tradition, and a lot of technical and education related things behind it. That poets often work very hard, like artists, to get things just the right way, for those of us who understand that the basic tradition behind poetry is to get things out the right way, and to express something that is of value to the tradition, and enjoyable to read, for those of us who realize that poetry is more than anything, a combination of experience and hard work, and not just a reflection of one's feelings (which by the way, are relatively universal and generally are not quite unique, for those people, I would say the insult that poetry is merely a context of someone's feelings, and therefore all critical judgment should be avoided, those thoughts, are an insult.

It's like if I put lettuce, ketchup, chickpeas, tea, soaked bread, preserved egg, and thick cream in a blender, and then tried to serve it to people. From a technical perspective, it counts as food, as it has its nutritional value, and can be eaten, but from a practical perspective, I doubt anybody would find it appetizing, despite the fact that all those items, in their right place, seem to have good tastes - lettuce is tasty, ketchup is great, chickpeas, delicious, tea etc... but together they are a mess.

Writing a poem is quite similar, as is doing anything that is playing toward a taste. Painting is not just colour on canvas, but has a specific element of "how" in it, which both engages with a tradition, as well as expresses. There are many millions of awful paintings out there - I have made some myself, me being worse than most kids at painting, yet we do realize, quite simply, that there are specific artists who do things with paint that require both a great set of technical skills, which must be learned, as well as time, effort, and expression. Poetry is the exact same.

Now, if you want to tell me the lines I sketched were mediocre, so be it, I put them there merely to lightheartedly answer the posters' call for my own example, and would not be shy from people telling me that those lines are meh, or full out bad. I would probably agree, and I most certainly would not wish to have them published next to my name. I do not post poems on these boards for a specific reason: I do not find myself an able poet, and have nothing I wish others to see (be it from lack of confidence, or a lack of the sharing desire). Yet others think that just because it is a personal expression, a poem has an intrinsic artistic value, and cannot merely be dismissed as bad. Well, a kid's splashes of paint on a canvas have the qualities of being a painting, but we should not take down the Rembrandts and put up the little jimmy's finger paintings.

Now, whether we can criticize people for liking something, don't we do that all the time? We criticize politicians for making bad choices, we hate rapists for committing crimes, we abhor murderers, we are disgusted by specific things, and we do not wish to eat the soup that I described above. We have a critical sense of judgment. That some people can refine their judgment to the aesthetic standards of a tradition is a matter of the art of criticism - convincing others that your judgment of a work is correct. So when I say I dislike Frankenstein, well many would disagree with me and say it is a terrific book. I am not about to, however, dismiss my critical judgment of Frankenstein because others don't agree - however, I perhaps will not wave my views in people's faces, and flaunt them for the world to see, without a sure knowledge that there will be a backlash. We are, after all, a trial by peers culture.

Still, at least two others agree that that poem was bad. I am not the only one who holds such views. Maybe a critic with greater ability will come by and say that such a poem is a true gem, and to them they will be right, but as it stands, I feel confident that that poem, by the standards of poetry readers in the English speaking world, is a bad poem. Whether or not it is sincere, or an expression of one's intentions and inner most feelings is completely irrelevant to me.


Now, to get back to discussion, the question is how to write poetry. Ironically I am currently writing on an obscure handwritten poetry writing manual that I (with the help of my professor) discovered buried in the archives here. In a sense, the manual is the exact same thing as we would find in English, only the tradition it engages in is completely foreign to the English poetry reader. It outlines form, and how to write to the form, it outlines rhyming and tonal patterns (prosody in the Chinese sense), it goes over content, and what to express, it lists critical works that have historical significance, and in a sense teaches one how to use the tradition of reading and writing a poem to both write poetry, and read poetry. So by analyzing what works, and how things work, one can make one's own things work.

This is generally the secret to poetry - your audience is ultimately going to be composed of a specific kind of reader, regardless of the size of the audience. This audience will like certain things, and dislike certain things, will appreciate certain things, and dislike others. In this sense, in order to write to them, you must know somewhat what they will want, and as their criteria is already established, you must ultimately meet it. This is the same in all traditions across the world. A poet has the freedom to explore and create, but ultimately a reader has the right to read and critique - if the poet does not write what the reader will like, then they must accept that the reader has the right to express their dislike. Now, for private poets who do not wish to share, this burden does not exist, so for those who do wish to share, you better learn what works and what doesn't.

I don't wish to reduce poetry to a technical skill, but I will say that all canonical poets possessed a set of technical skills and abilities, whether it be in specific forms (Keats in Spenserian stanzas, Yeats in Octaves, Shakespeare in Sonnets, Wordsworth in uneven lines of pentameter that he borrowed from Herbert), matched with their own take on things. These things, or at least some of them, can be taught, and must be learned. Now, certain forms offer strength to certain poets, and seem to not work for others. In this sense a poet probably needs to experiment long enough to figure out what works for them, and what will connect them to their audience. There is a specific reason why T. S. Eliot wrote Four Quartets in the same structure as The Waste Land - he saw what worked for him (with Pound's help), and then used to again.

As I said before on this thread, poetry is a sharing art, and one which is a somewhat communal activity. The art of one country is not necessarily the same as another, and it is more thank likely that what I find an absolutely amazing poem in Chinese may have a lukewarm reception in a Japanese context, or even in a Chinese context. This idea that all world literature somehow speaks to everyone is somewhat limited.

So if I am a new formalist poet, my audience will probably be expecting a formal poem (using a traditional form like the Sonnet or whatever), and I will probably be expressing sentiments in ways that relate to them. So when I say Chrysanthemum, they may think of Imperial Japan, or may think of death, as it is generally symbolic of death in certain countries (Italy for example). Others may think it is symbolic of longevity, as its association with Tao Yuanming (Tao Qian) the Chinese poet, who uses it extensively to symbolize longevity and nobility. When we see this then, we must understand what this means based on our own relation to the poem. Tao Qian knew that his readers would think of longevity, as the flower had been used in rituals to extend one's life during his time period, and had acquired a cultural significance long before him. In Europe, the flower has a funerary sort of vibe, so perhaps I would not use it to symbolize a wedding, or even longevity, without realizing that I do not say so explicitly, readers may not get that. In Japan its meaning is even more foreign to us, as the flower is in itself a symbol of the Imperial throne, and is the symbol on the Imperial Seal of Japan.

So when we know our audience, we can judge them. We can challenge them of course, or even surprise them, we can bend them, but only to the point that they won't snap. We cannot come out of nowhere and start throwing things that don't make sense to our audience, or go against their conception of good - they simply will judge us negatively.

Now, there are a few understandings of bad that seem rather general. Broken up bad unrhyming lines of choppy lengths that are meant to work as a metrical line generally seem to get negative feedback everywhere. If you are going to play by the rules, make sure you somehow get them enough to pull it off. If you are going to break or bend the rules, make sure you don't do it in a way that alienates an audience, or simply doesn't work.

In that sense, poetry classes, formally anyway, could help some poets - I can think of a few poets who learned from education to write - basically all Chinese poets had some education in poetry - Li Bai, Du Fu, Wang Wei all included, and their works didn't suffer from it. Likewise, critics of specific traditions or movements can benefit from being educated as well, at least so that they can enter into the conversation with something contextualized to answer to.

So what should one do to write a good poem? Well, for me, the most important thing is to realize what poetry really is - a shared experience between text and reader. I think every poet must learn, if they want a warm reception, what works and what doesn't. Sometimes their radical individualism may work to their benefit, but generally, bad poetry remains bad poetry.

[cacian]

I sure I agree with much of what you say JBI but I think at the end of the day one is allowed to use language in the way they feel.
if they wished to name it poetry then so be it.
I am not convinced tradition and literature go hand in hand. I am more of a move forward attitude about writing. the less we apply tradition the more we discover new other ways to express literature. I feel tradition does not allow for exploration to your potential and originality. to corner language into a traditional stance is many ways restrictive. imagination is important. every individual perceives language in a different way when it comes to writing. this should be allowed and encouraged. we have the notion of freedom of speech and yet we do not seem to apply it to the way we write.
I am yet to understand what makes a poem readable and another not? I fear I am not knowledgeable in this sense. what is a perfect poem according to you?

[JBI]

I sure I agree with much of what you say JBI but I think at the end of the day one is allowed to use language in the way they feel.
if they wished to name it poetry then so be it.
I am not convinced tradition and literature go hand in hand. I am more of a move forward attitude about writing. the less we apply tradition the more we discover new other ways to express literature. I feel tradition does not allow for exploration to your potential and originality. to corner language into a traditional stance is many ways restrictive. imagination is important. every individual perceives language in a different way when it comes to writing. this should be allowed and encouraged. we have the notion of freedom of speech and yet we do not seem to apply it to the way we write.
I am yet to understand what makes a poem readable and another not? I fear I am not knowledgeable in this sense. what is a perfect poem according to you?

Language is in itself a tradition. Word usage is merely a historical development of linking sound, or characters with meaning. Ultimately all literature must be written by definition, and therefore engage in language. It's like saying that painting doesn't need paint.

As for whether everyone can express themselves, well, my critique is merely an expression. Same argument, now see my posts for further notions of why freedom of expression does not make a bad poem good.

Freedom of speech means you can write everything, yet there is also the audience argument. For instance, I can write all sorts of racist material, yet for the current audience to receive it well, I probably will be better off doing it. Just because we can do things and are free to does not mean that others should listen, will want to listen, or enjoy listening. And telling you so is merely their free expression. You can call them rude, or a bully, or insensitive or whatever, but by the same logic, if you want the freedom to write for a public you must allow the freedom of the public to read.


As for what makes a poem readable it is simple - whether it conforms to an aesthetic criteria held by a given reader, and whether it adheres enough to the traditional framework to not be completely lost. We can call an author who is innovative a sort of literary superman, but only in so much as the audience will accept an author as one.

It's simple. English readers have a sort of standard, and mediocrity against the standard is sometimes quite apparent. Generally reading what people like will help a poet to know what people like, and therefore writing what they will want to read.

It's the same way if I were to film a movie that was mere distortion and shaking it would not be something film watchers would like. Me randomly banging the keys of a piano is technically music, but most music listeners would not like to listen to it. My concoction in the blender may be food, but most eaters would not choose to eat it unless they were starving. There is a criteria by which we judge things, some of it intrinsic to our senses, and other parts built from traditions or experience. So, for instance, a broken line with bad rhymes automatically seems to trigger something in our mind that sense something is not right. The reason rhyme is so universal to poetry is simply because it triggers something intrinsic in our sensory perception - a pattern, if you will, which is in itself a form of beauty.

[cacian]

It's simple. English readers have a sort of standard, and mediocrity against the standard is sometimes quite apparent. Generally reading what people like will help a poet to know what people like, and therefore writing what they will want to read.
that is a difficult thing to do. to try an please a crowd I know nothing about. my chances are I am better off tyring to entice them dice them.
in other words with reading we discover new likes and dislikes. and so by writing what we like we may encourage others to like what we like.
a poet is at the hands of words and the more he uses to his or her advantage the more freedom of expression grow and flourish. to keep to a standard is well and good but what about changes and new ventures and ideas. language is alive and kicking and the more we experience with it the more we benefit from it. I think it is the peot's way to lead the way to new likes. readers can only pick and chose but at least they are offered varieties to pick from. more of the same all the time can stagnate and detract on what language is capable of. that is m y humble opinion.
I am not after perfection I am after intention without imitation. we must be true to ourselves and write the way we truly feel otherwise we will never learn about us.

I think in a way if one is to have exact technique then one is to lose on context. it is not possible to have both.
I am more into context. I like new words and impressions to express. I care less for the form or the meters. I am not good at following them.

JBI here is a piece I composed earlier
do you say this is average poor or insignificant?
we are to learn and so let exchange views by posting what we thinks may or may not make for good poetry. I like examples at hand it is the best way to learn:

above a cloud
there sails a loud
it's happy it is
not about
it likes to have
its way allowed
so of it goes
to never lowers
sunshine may doze
but sky is froze
to such a rowd
nothing does bowed
then to send it
out
to where it's nought.

[Vota]

The level of presumption and assumption in this thread is ****ing atronomical.

[cacian]

The level of presumption and assumption in this thread is ****ing atronomical.

presumed innocent assumed guilty? haha.
the best thing in anything is to not take it personally. life does not.i think view points is what they are sone across as harsh and others well just platonic. anyhing goes.
let see which poem would say you have come across and did not like? you could perhaps give one reason to why you would not like a poem :)

[JBI]

presumed innocent assumed guilty? haha.
the best thing in anything is to not take it personally. life does not.i think view points is what they are sone across as harsh and others well just platonic. anyhing goes.
let see which poem would say you have come across and did not like? you could perhaps give one reason to why you would not like a poem :)
The major problem with your poem is a feel a lot of the rhyme is forced - the form seems to be riding the poem, so you put froze instead of frozen, despite the fact that it is clearly a grammatical choice for the rhyme. It's easy to cheat like that, but ultimately, it seems to detract from the overall enjoyment of the work.

If you want a more serious critique, I would generally say one of the problems is that the language is clunky and disjointed, another is you throw a lot in, but you develop very little - just my general sentiments.

[JBI]

The level of presumption and assumption in this thread is ****ing atronomical.

Likewise, there is no need to mock an audience for not liking your work, that just seems to be childish. Ebert to Rob Schneider - Your movie is bad. well, JBI to you, Your poem is bad. argue all you want, it won't get anybody anywhere. You very well could be a great person, but your poem is still bad. You can either improve it, or go on the defensive and say you are all a bunch of jerks, but at the end of the day, the jerks are the ones that make the judgments.

[Delta40]

If people like my poetry its a bonus. When they give me feedback, if I think it will enhance my work, I take it on board, if not, I leave it. I agree that one cannot walk through this world like an open wound.

[Scheherazade]

~

Please note that this section of the Forum is dedicated to general poetry discussions. To receive feedback for your own poems, use the Personal Poetry section.

As always, unless you are accept unfavourable comments along with the unfavourable ones,
Please avoid from posting your thoughts and work in a public arena.

~

[AuntShecky]

~

Please note that this section of the Forum is dedicated to general poetry discussions. To receive feedback for your own poems, use the Personal Poetry section.

As always, unless you are accept unfavourable comments along with the unfavourable ones,
Please avoid from posting your thoughts and work in a public arena.

~

Yours fooly takes the previous post as a cue to try to bring this thread back to its original question:
"How would you teach someone to write poetry?"

Thus, the following is an attempt to answer:

Can you teach someone to become a "poet" the way a master craftsman can teach an apprentice to become a carpenter or a plumber or an electrician? In a word, no. Every philosophical, fanciful, and mystical assumption about poetry notwithstanding, along with the adage of trying to make a purse out of a sow's ear, you can't pluck a random human off the street and suddenly transform him into the second coming of Shakespeare. Forget the trope ( now a dusty cliché)-- even if it were possible to coerce a barrel of monkeys to type out the Bard's works, it would take a hundred years.

On the other hand, if a starry-eyed, dewy-cheeked enthusiast has pre-selected you as his mentor, you might be so struck by the flattery that you'd be reluctant to dismiss him summarily. And when he earnestly begs for help in learning to write poems, what's a fella (or a gal) supposed to do? The first thing you should do is tell him to drop the earnestness.

Tell him to set aside everything he's learned about writing in school about sincerity,* straightforwardness, and yes, even accuracy. Those worthy attributes are the bywords of nonfiction prose, as it is taught in J-school. But literature, specifically poetry, is a whole nother model of vehicle. The primary engine that drives a poem is metaphor -- whose sole function is to point out parallels or kinships among unlikely things. What a poem does is to present a case that a thing can be considered as something that it is not, regardless of corroboration of "objective" reality. "The truest poetry is the most feigned," said the aforementioned Shakespeare.

In the attempt to create a poem, the writer's imagination has to work overtime; however, this does not in any way mean that thought is free to go on a coffee break. If there is no "meaning" in a poem, what good is it? A "good" poem has to make at least a modicum of sense, even if it is a metaphor for senselessness.
Even a so-called "nonsense" poem, i.e. "Jabberwocky," invents an integral "meaning" of its own. Meaning or thought --the "what"-- is only one partner in the marriage.

The other spouse is structure or form --the "how." You can't divorce Mr. What from Ms How with each party living separately, or the marriage-- the poem-- falls apart. Just as in a so-called "open marriage" the "vows" or "rules" in free verse aren't especially strict, but the rules in formal verse are more like a traditional marriage. Whether free verse or formal verse, the piece has to be constructed. Just as a contractor --as least one who hasn't been run out of town on a rail by the Better Business Bureau-- wouldn't slap a bunch of boards together and declare it a house, a writer can't (really) slam down a string of randomly arranged lines and proclaim them as "poetry." You need a plan to build a house, and you need tools. You need tools for poetry as well; the basic building blocks are words: words that conjure up specific images, sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touch (in a palpable sense.) You cannot endow a would-be poet with a ready-made imaginative vocabulary. But you can hand him a dictionary and point the way to the library.

There are thousands of pre-existing poems that can be read, digested, savored not only for their own sake, but also to let the would-be poet know what has already been done (and how.) Lest we forget, the rules of grammar which define prose also apply to poetry. That goes for free verse as well as formal verse. Just as a carpenter must know the basics of how to measure a two by four or hammer a nail, a poet manque must have a working knowledge of the conventions of the language. If he wants to mimic regionalisms or slang, say, he has to be familiar with the rules of standard English before he can break them. Good grammar and usage are prerequisites, for instance, a basic facility with noun/pronoun agreement, for instance the following examples posted in this very thread:


Im commenting on the poster's insistence on demonstrating their


interesting to see someone pounce on another's piece, skewer it, and not realize how pretentious they

And what about this one?-

it's a mistake to judge a critic or any criticism by whether or not they
a critic or any criticism: is "they" correct, or should it be "he or "it"?

When it comes to formal poetry, there is a sturdy Sears Craftsman toolbox full of useful gadgets: meter, rhyme, and figurative language, (including simile, personification, alliteration, and several other specialized poetic devices) to be employed at one's discretion. Centuries of poems, grammar and usage, poetic devices: these are the things that can be taught.

After that, the aspiring poet is on his own.




*
A line oft-quoted by old-time comedians: "The important quality of a performer is sincerity. If you can fake that, you've got it made."

[Delta40]

It's rather like giving everyone the same ingredients auntie. Some people will be an authority on the recipe and that is as far as their skill goes. Others will take the ingredients and turn out an endless variety of tasty meals. The rest? - blah!

[MorpheusSandman]

Can you teach someone to become a "poet" the way a master craftsman can teach an apprentice to become a carpenter or a plumber or an electrician? In a word, no... you can't pluck a random human off the street and suddenly transform him into the second coming of Shakespeare.You seem to make two very different points here. Obviously no amount of teaching (and no amount of learning) can make ANY writer into the second coming of Shakespeare, the same way no amount of teaching/learning/practice will make anyone the second coming of Michael Jordan. However, with enough teaching/learning/practice can you turn someone into a poet, or a basketball player? I think yes. I can't imagine someone putting in the time and effort that, say, Jordan or Shakespeare did and not at least becoming quite proficient at the art and craft.

However, one would have to define both poet and basketball player. Is this poet someone who is a hobbyist? Someone who finds a few local fans at readings? Someone who gets published occasionally in periodicals? Someone who publishes books? Someone who makes a living out of poetry? Someone who wins a Pulitzer? Really, there are very different levels of being a "poet" just like there are very different levels of being a basketball players (there are many of leagues other than the NBA). I do think that teaching/learning/practice could get most anyone to at least one of the first few levels, if not to the top.


The primary engine that drives a poem is metaphor...the basic building blocks are words:Meh, I'm loath to say that there is any primary "engine" or "building block" to poetry. One can easily point to many great poems that do not contain great metaphors, or even any metaphors at all (Red Wheelbarrow comes immediately to mind). One could also argue that sound is an even more basic building block than words. One could also argue that the very thing that separates poetry from prose is not metaphor or words, as prose has/can have both, but rather outer form.


If there is no "meaning" in a poem, what good is it? A "good" poem has to make at least a modicum of sense...What about surrealism? A great deal of John Ashbery makes no sense by intention, but is rather put forward to provoke the audience to make their own sense by what it provokes. I think there is as much a skill to that as there is in a poet trying to express their own meaning. There are also poets like Stevens who frequently, IMO, crosses his own line between making poems that resist meaning (he said "intelligence") "almost successfully" into removing the "almost" qualifier.


a critic or any criticism: is "they" correct, or should it be "he or "it"?Using "they" as a singular pronoun for unspecified gender is so common in the language by now that if it isn't part of standard grammar textbooks, it should be. The old ideal of using "he" has misogynistic connotations (assuming "he" is standard, and "she" is otherness). What's more, given the rest of that sentence, there's no question it should be "they" not "it" because I was referring to whether "they" (the critic) could do better. I included the "and criticism" because people are usually objecting to what was said, and then turning against who said it.

[JBI]

I agree. His/her in every sentence sounds clunky. They is much better, and their is much better. Some authors just standardize with Her, which is just as big an annoyance. Seriously, if feminists are so big on the no he thing, they need to get over the their. We don't have a mainstream neutered word, so we just use the plural, I find it much more sensible, and it is so widely done both in publishing and in formal writing that it ceases to be a question. Call it a "gender non specific" pronoun, as a new usage in the 20th century.

[cacian]

I agree. His/her in every sentence sounds clunky. They is much better, and their is much better. Some authors just standardize with Her, which is just as big an annoyance. Seriously, if feminists are so big on the no he thing, they need to get over the their. We don't have a mainstream neutered word, so we just use the plural, I find it much more sensible, and it is so widely done both in publishing and in formal writing that it ceases to be a question. Call it a "gender non specific" pronoun, as a new usage in the 20th century.

ah we do not have the neutered word you say.
what are we waiting for?
one has to love grammar for its extensive limitations.

[MorpheusSandman]

I guess I should be thankful(?) my poem escaped all the criticism. I didn't think it was bad for something written in 5-10 minutes. Formulaic, yes, but I wonder how many know what the formula is?

[cacian]

I guess I should be thankful(?) my poem escaped all the criticism. I didn't think it was bad for something written in 5-10 minutes. Formulaic, yes, but I wonder how many know what the formula is?

pray do tell Morpheus what is the formula?

[MorpheusSandman]

pray do tell Morpheus what is the formula?I really should've said "formulas" rather than "formula." It's a lot of basic things, like the conflict of outside/inside being mirrored in the ABBA form (where "A" is outside, "B" is inside); the repetition of the "A" section that's "transformed" (in meaning) by the content of the B sections; the "violent" B section utilizing devices like enjambment, metrical substitutions, stop/starts in the punctuation, and extra syllables to deviate from the iambic pentameter; the "(not) for long" comment in the final line echoed by the subtraction of a syllable; the symbolism, synecdoche, and metonymy I mentioned to you earlier, and the intentional ambiguities (is the sun "yawning" because waking to the "song" of birds, or because it's tired and is luxuriating in art like a hedonist?); the movement from abstract image, to specific image, to abstract statement; the movement from "common" words to the "uncommon" ones of "seared scarlet;" the repetition of the "un" sound (sun, son, (no) one) and the "S" and "B" sounds (sun/son/song/seared/scarlet, blood/bush).

These are all very basic techniques that any one can learn to use and use quite consciously. I certainly wouldn't claim profundity or originality, but I think such devices (and similar ones) are what gives all great poetry their power. It's really about using them (and even more) in more complex structures and in more innovative ways. The good thing is is that if you're tasked with writing a poem extemporaneously, you can use these ideas to quickly structure and even inspire you. My thought process went something like (abbreviated): "ABBA form, outside/inside, outside are the indifferent people/nature, inside is where the violence is happening, but some on the outside care, so I need to include that, or maybe mix both caring and uncaring together ambiguously." etc. Yeats was a master of this kind of movement between indifference and sympathy, and using form to mirror that. Easter 1916 (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172061) being a great example. Obviously, I have a ways to go to be a Yeats, but I take comfort in knowing he was over 40 when he wrote Easter 1916; I have a good 12 years to go of practicing such formal devices before I reach Yeats' age and, hopefully, his effortless mastery.

[JBI]

I don't agree such a technical approach is necessary, but I do agree poetry is more a craft than something divinely inspired. It's like carpentry or sculpting, but you have rawer material - words. Anybody can study technique, and it always helps. I'm yet to see a great artist that wasn't based in a mix of learned technique and hard work. Sure, there is a personal element, but the personal element ultimately is slaved to the vehicle of craft - the poem is not some truth about the author, but some craft or artifice.

[cacian]

I really should've said "formulas" rather than "formula." It's a lot of basic things, like the conflict of outside/inside being mirrored in the ABBA form (where "A" is outside, "B" is inside); the repetition of the "A" section that's "transformed" (in meaning) by the content of the B sections; the "violent" B section utilizing devices like enjambment, metrical substitutions, stop/starts in the punctuation, and extra syllables to deviate from the iambic pentameter; the "(not) for long" comment in the final line echoed by the subtraction of a syllable; the symbolism, synecdoche, and metonymy I mentioned to you earlier, and the intentional ambiguities (is the sun "yawning" because waking to the "song" of birds, or because it's tired and is luxuriating in art like a hedonist?); the movement from abstract image, to specific image, to abstract statement; the movement from "common" words to the "uncommon" ones of "seared scarlet;" the repetition of the "un" sound (sun, son, (no) one) and the "S" and "B" sounds (sun/son/song/seared/scarlet, blood/bush).

These are all very basic techniques that any one can learn to use and use quite consciously. I certainly wouldn't claim profundity or originality, but I think such devices (and similar ones) are what gives all great poetry their power. It's really about using them (and even more) in more complex structures and in more innovative ways. The good thing is is that if you're tasked with writing a poem extemporaneously, you can use these ideas to quickly structure and even inspire you. My thought process went something like (abbreviated): "ABBA form, outside/inside, outside are the indifferent people/nature, inside is where the violence is happening, but some on the outside care, so I need to include that, or maybe mix both caring and uncaring together ambiguously." etc. Yeats was a master of this kind of movement between indifference and sympathy, and using form to mirror that. Easter 1916 (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172061) being a great example. Obviously, I have a ways to go to be a Yeats, but I take comfort in knowing he was over 40 when he wrote Easter 1916; I have a good 12 years to go of practicing such formal devices before I reach Yeats' age and, hopefully, his effortless mastery.

I am not sure I understand fully Easter 1916. I find too long and I am not sure what is meant by ''a terrible beauty is born''. do you?
i am not into formal devices. i write unconscious of any restraints form formalities. i guess i mean nothing too serious when it comes to poetry.
leisurely does it when i write it because it suits my temperament :D


I don't agree such a technical approach is necessary, but I do agree poetry is more a craft than something divinely inspired. It's like carpentry or sculpting, but you have rawer material - words. Anybody can study technique, and it always helps. I'm yet to see a great artist that wasn't based in a mix of learned technique and hard work. Sure, there is a personal element, but the personal element ultimately is slaved to the vehicle of craft - the poem is not some truth about the author, but some craft or artifice.
so what you are saying is that a true poet would showcase artistry as well as technique? in other words personal and technical.
it is not possible to perfect both i do not think. it is either technique or personal.
i feel sometimes that technique limits the language and poetry comes across as detached cold.

[MorpheusSandman]

I don't agree such a technical approach is necessary, but I do agree poetry is more a craft than something divinely inspired.I'll say this: I don't think such a conscious technical approach is necessary. I think many poets through a combination of practice, study, and critical reading (of their own and others' poetry) create a mental "list" of certain devices that work and those that don't. When they go to writing they inevitably draw upon that list whether consciously or unconsciously. Yeats, eg, would often write his "inspiration" out in prose, and then work very hard at deciding what forms and technique would best fit what he was trying to express. His was very much a technical approach, as his prose-to-poetry method was not haphazard or without its inherent meanings and significances, as Vendler convincingly argues throughout Our Secret Discipline. (http://www.amazon.com/Our-Secret-Discipline-Yeats-Lyric/dp/0674026950)


...the poem is not some truth about the author, but some craft or artifice. Or, if it is some truth about the author that truth is mediated by craft and artifice. James Merrill's masterpiece, Lost in Translation (http://jeremygregg.com/quotes/lost-in-translation-by-james-merrill-poem/), is very much about his life: his parents' divorce, his being raised by a multi-cultural, multi-lingual nanny, his search for a translation he remembered reading. Of course, all of these autobiographical "truths" are brought together in a work that shows an extraordinary level of craft and artifice. The work is very Proust-like in its (attempted) recovery of time and one's life through one's art.


I am not sure I understand fully Easter 1916. I find too long and I am not sure what is meant by ''a terrible beauty is born''. do you?You're probably unaware of the historical context. Yeats is writing about the Irish uprising that happened on that date and his reactions to it. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter,_1916

Really, "a terrible beauty is born" embodies Yeats' paradoxical, ambiguous attitude towards the revolutionary effort. On the one hand, he abhorred the violence and the loss of life, especially of his friends and his friends' family; yet he sympathized with the reasons and ideologies behind the revolution. So he sees the revolution as a "beauty" in terms of the righteous ideology that gave rise to it, but "terrible" in what that revolution meant in terms of death and violence.

[JBI]

so what you are saying is that a true poet would showcase artistry as well as technique? in other words personal and technical.
it is not possible to perfect both i do not think. it is either technique or personal.
i feel sometimes that technique limits the language and poetry comes across as detached cold.

We all generally have the same experiences in life - very few are as outrageous as Byron, more or less we live the same lives (Chinese poets even reduced the possible range of emotions to 7). However, it's how the poet puts this commonality into a form for the public that determines how good the poet is. It is a game of manipulation that comes from practice more than anything. The spark or inspiration of a poem is not so much from the poetic experience, but from the artistic approach - such a spark is more or less a learned or imagined thing, like Aeschylus deciding to have a third person speak on stage. It is not so brilliant in perspective, but in context it is radical.

[AuntShecky]

Meh, I'm loath to say that there is any primary "engine" or "building block" to poetry. One can easily point to many great poems that do not contain great metaphors, or even any metaphors at all (Red Wheelbarrow comes immediately to mind). One could also argue that sound is an even more basic building block than words. One could also argue that the very thing that separates poetry from prose is not metaphor or words, as prose has/can have both, but rather outer form.



Words are building blocks to poetry. We could consider the concept of "metaphor" in a broad sense rather than merely a simile without "like" or "as." A poem attempts to present a concept, an enhanced description, or an illumination expressed in concrete terms--creating something new out of pre-existing language. In that sense we could call the entire poem a "metaphor."


What about surrealism? A great deal of John Ashbery makes no sense by intention, but is rather put forward to provoke the audience to make their own sense by what it provokes. I think there is as much a skill to that as there is in a poet trying to express their own meaning. There are also poets like Stevens who frequently, IMO, crosses his own line between making poems that resist meaning (he said "intelligence") "almost successfully" into removing the "almost" qualifier.

Well, hosts of critics such as Northrop Frye believe that the poet's intention is irrelevant. All we have is what is on the page (or on the computer screen.) Even surrealism has some sort of underlying "meaning;" otherwise, why bother writing it?



Using "they" as a singular pronoun for unspecified gender is so common in the language by now that if it isn't part of standard grammar textbooks, it should be. The old ideal of using "he" has misogynistic connotations (assuming "he" is standard, and "she" is otherness). What's more, given the rest of that sentence, there's no question it should be "they" not "it" because I was referring to whether "they" (the critic) could do better. I included the "and criticism" because people are usually objecting to what was said, and then turning against who said it.

As of this writing, one of the rules of standard English maintains that pronouns and their antecedents must agree in number. If any work of copy submitted to The New York Times or The New Yorker contained such an error, it would be summarily blue-penciled. As far as political correctness goes, most readers have enough common sense to discern the difference between the literal, gender-specific "he" and the grammatical "he." (Just as the word "mankind" applies to both genders.) Yours fooly would rather write "him" or "her" than link a plural pronoun with a singular antecedent. (God knows I make enough inadvertent errors as it is,so I try to avoid them when I can.) Just change the antecedents to plural: "critics" and "criticisms." Or-- you can rewrite the sentence with a different construction,or use neuter pronouns (one, one's) or demonstrative pronouns ("this critic," "that criticism.")

[MorpheusSandman]

As of this writing, one of the rules of standard English maintains that pronouns and their antecedents must agree in number. If any work of copy submitted to The New York Times or The New Yorker contained such an error, it would be summarily blue-penciled. As for the former, Strict prescriptivists are morons. Almost any prescriptive language will leave voids that require filling by something. In English, one of those voids is the lack of a proper, gender-neutral, singular pronoun. To fill that void, most people have chosen "they" because, despite its prescriptive plurality, its intended, descriptive singularity is immediately apparent in context. To me, the fact that it violates its prescriptive usage is far less problematic than the alternative solutions of always using he, always using she, switching between he and she, using s/he or she/he, or determining to make the referent plural to begin with. The ultimate goal of non-artistic language should be lucidity of communication. When there is a void, and that void is filled in a matter that doesn't obscure the intended meaning, then prescriptivists should go kick rocks if they don't like it. Equally absurd is that "you" can be both singular and plural and it often needs distinguishing! (in that case, I may be biased having grown up in the south, but, I'd nominate "you all" or the contraction "y'all" as being a valid void filler).

As for the latter, do you have any actual evidence of this? Not that it would change my opinion if true, but I'm curious as to how many prestigious publications would take the prescriptivist stance. I'd bet a lot of money you could find examples of the singular they in the writing of any number of prestigious publications and authors. Speaking of the latter, I found this (http://articles.latimes.com/2007/feb/19/opinion/oe-yagoda19) via a quick Google search. Looks like that even in prestigious/formal publications, the singular "they" is being used more, albeit with less than a 3% margin, than "he."

[AuntShecky]

I'm not sure it's politically correct to call anyone, least of all a grammarian, a "moron."

[MorpheusSandman]

I'm not sure it's politically correct to call anyone, least of all a grammarian, a "moron."
You're absolutely right. I apologize. They're poopy heads.

[AuntShecky]

You're absolutely right. I apologize. They're poopy heads.


"Snoots" is the specific term.
Please -- if there is any way you can obtain a copy -- please read the David Foster Wallace essay "Authority and American Usage," which can be found in his non-fiction book Consider the Lobster. DFW expresses some really sound points about some of the language arguments we've been having.

Now, maybe we'd better get back to the original topic, poetry writing.

[Ecurb]

You're absolutely right. I apologize. They're poopy heads.

"This was the most unkindest cut of all..." Marc Antony

By the way, here's a link to Wallace's essay (as seen in Harper's -- it may have changed in the book).

http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-04-0070913.pdf

[sandy14]

Start by reading something contemporary, but not too experimental - you want the students to come back. Sharon Olds Stag's Leap might be a good place to start. In addition, John Burnside, Owen Sheers, Patience Agbagi, Ted Hughes or Seamus Heaney wouldn't do any harm.

The purpose of starting with contemporary poetry is because starting with the Romantics or Shakespeare can cause problems. You end up imitating what you read, and people do not write like Wordsworth or Eliot anymore - it's been done before. I'm not saying they are not worthy of study, but it's best to start with in the present and gradually work backwards.

Take a pen and a notebook and go for a walk. write a poem about what you see, feel, taste or hear. it could be autumn leaves, a dog or squirrel you saw or a piece of chewing gum on the pavement.

Since you're in London take a trip to Foyles and pick up a copy of Poetry London. It has poems and listings of readings and writers' groups. Apples & Snakes might be worthwhile visiting. Also take a listen to The Verb on Radio 3 on Fridays around 10pm and Poetry Please.

Ted Hughes wrote a good book for children called Poetry in the Making which can be bought 2nd hand for pennies as does Writing Poetry by Matthew Sweeny. The Poetry School also sells a downloadable poetry course which is a good place to start.

Writing poetry is as important as reading it. You'll get your "voice" by writing - reading will guide you, but reading alone won't work. Some poems will work, some won't and others will need reworked and reworked, and you won't necessarily know which is which. But poems that don't work may contain a line or an image that you might use in another piece.

A poem will find it's own form - so it's worth learning them as they'll expand your range - but there's no rush, and no use forcing it. You don't need to write a sonnet in order to call yourself a poet - and not all sonnets are good poems. (There are great sonnets out there too). Poetry is a very broad church and there's nothing wrong with trying sound poems, Sonnets, or Bob Cobbings extreme concrete poems. It's only paper and ink.

The important thing is to enjoy it and don't worry too much about what others say.

Hope this helps

[cacian]

Start by reading something contemporary, but not too experimental - you want the students to come back. Sharon Olds Stag's Leap might be a good place to start. In addition, John Burnside, Owen Sheers, Patience Agbagi, Ted Hughes or Seamus Heaney wouldn't do any harm.
great names with great titles. i am not aware of Sharon Olds Stag but have just found this

''Then the drawing on the label of our favourite red wine
looks like my husband, casting himself off a
cliff in his fervour to get free of me.
His fur is rough and cosy, his face
placid, tranced, ruminant,
the bough of each furculum reaches back
to his haunches, each tine of it grows straight up
and branches, like a model of his brain, archaic,
unwieldy. He bears its bony tray
level as he soars from the precipice edge,
dreamy. When anyone escapes, my heart
leaps up. Even when it’s I who am escaped from,
I am half on the side of the leaver. It’s so quiet,
and empty, when he’s left. I feel like a landscape,
a ground without a figure. . . .

. . . Oh my mate, I was vain of his
faithfulness, as if it was
a compliment, rather than a state
of partial sleep. And when I wrote about him, did he
feel he had to walk around
carrying my books on his head like a stack of
posture volumes, or the rack of horns
hung where a hunter washes the venison
down with the sauvignon? . . . ''
a great read.
and here is the rest of the piece/explanation
here (http://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/4072616-tuesday-poem-sharon-olds---stag-s-leap)


The purpose of starting with contemporary poetry is because starting with the Romantics or Shakespeare can cause problems. You end up imitating what you read, and people do not write like Wordsworth or Eliot anymore - it's been done before. I'm not saying they are not worthy of study, but it's best to start with in the present and gradually work backwards.
i agree they can be more of a stigma then a help. that is when you take into account the language barrier. what is now is different from what it used to be. that alone is a task.


Take a pen and a notebook and go for a walk. write a poem about what you see, feel, taste or hear. it could be autumn leaves, a dog or squirrel you saw or a piece of chewing gum on the pavement.
i like that although i tend to memorise then write but yes a notebook can be handy.


Since you're in London take a trip to Foyles and pick up a copy of Poetry London. It has poems and listings of readings and writers' groups. Apples & Snakes might be worthwhile visiting. Also take a listen to The Verb on Radio 3 on Fridays around 10pm and Poetry Please.

Ted Hughes wrote a good book for children called Poetry in the Making which can be bought 2nd hand for pennies as does Writing Poetry by Matthew Sweeny. The Poetry School also sells a downloadable poetry course which is a good place to start.
they sound great!!

Writing poetry is as important as reading it. You'll get your "voice" by writing - reading will guide you, but reading alone won't work. Some poems will work, some won't and others will need reworked and reworked, and you won't necessarily know which is which. But poems that don't work may contain a line or an image that you might use in another piece.

i often recycle lines here and there. it is a good way to write i think too.

A poem will find it's own form - so it's worth learning them as they'll expand your range - but there's no rush, and no use forcing it. You don't need to write a sonnet in order to call yourself a poet - and not all sonnets are good poems. (There are great sonnets out there too). Poetry is a very broad church and there's nothing wrong with trying sound poems, Sonnets, or Bob Cobbings extreme concrete poems. It's only paper and ink.

The important thing is to enjoy it and don't worry too much about what others say.

Hope this helps
this helps immensely and i agree not to worry is key. :)

[MorpheusSandman]

"Snoots" is the specific term.
Please -- if there is any way you can obtain a copy -- please read the David Foster Wallace essay "Authority and American Usage," which can be found in his non-fiction book Consider the Lobster. DFW expresses some really sound points about some of the language arguments we've been having.
By the way, here's a link to Wallace's essay (as seen in Harper's -- it may have changed in the book).

http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-04-0070913.pdfThanks for the suggestion, AuntShecky, and thanks for the link, Ecurb. I did read it, though it seems to be from a bad OCR scan. It contains a lot of information I knew, a lot I didn't, many arguments I agree with and just as many I disagree with. Responding to such an article would practically require writing one of my own of near-equal length, so I'll say this: if either of you care to discuss this in depth, you can start a new thread on the appropriate forum and link me to it. There's a lot I could say, but we've strayed far enough off topic as it is.

[MorpheusSandman]

Start by reading something contemporary, but not too experimental - you want the students to come back. Sharon Olds Stag's Leap might be a good place to start. In addition, John Burnside, Owen Sheers, Patience Agbagi, Ted Hughes or Seamus Heaney wouldn't do any harm.

The purpose of starting with contemporary poetry is because starting with the Romantics or Shakespeare can cause problems. You end up imitating what you read, and people do not write like Wordsworth or Eliot anymore - it's been done before. I'm not saying they are not worthy of study, but it's best to start with in the present and gradually work backwards. I somewhat disagree with this. What I'd really recommend is mixing the contemporary, with recent tradition, with the more distant tradition. While you're correct that reading only older poets will lead a young poet to imitate styles of writing that aren't in usage anymore, most young poets do not start out writing good poetry anyway. Most poets' juvenilia is, at best, average. With that in mind, I almost feel it's better to start out imitating the more distant tradition as it's good to get a sense early on of what CAN be salvaged from those periods. I started writing poetry after being inspired by Milton, so, as you can imagine, my early work is nothing but God-awful imitations of a poet whom was archaic in his own time! Yet through that imitation I came to realize what could be salvaged from the parts of Milton I admired. I think it would've been harder to try and work those things into my work later as I got a better sense of how poetry is written today. I also think there's another argument against just starting with contemporary poetry, and that's that, however much you don't want to sound like a Victorian or a Romantic or Elizabethan, you equally don't want to sound like every or any other poet out there today. One way of manufacturing originality is by picking and choosing influences from the past to work into your contemporary verse. It would be impossible to find any notable contemporary poet that contains nothing of the distant tradition in their work, and the best out there tend to contain more than others.

PS, I'd strongly recommend Louise Gluck over Sharon Olds; Olds is, IMO, a pale imitation.

[Nick Capozzoli]

The discussion about pronoun/verb number agreement is interesting, but seems to be getting far away from the OP's question about the best way to teach poetry writing. Maybe these recent grammar discussions should be assigned a new thread?

The current use of 3rd person plural genderless pronouns (they, their, them) instead of 3rd person singulars (he, she, it, his, her, its, him, her, it) is clearly driven by a modern "political correctness." There is nothing inherently wrong with using the 3rd person plural pronouns (except perhaps that it often seems awkward, waffling, and imprecise), provided we do not then go on to make grammatical mistakes in things like agreement in number. An example of this error would be: "A doctor must always place their patients interests above their own interests." Political correctness seems to have made folks very reluctant to use 3rd person singular pronouns, even when a singular sense would be stylistically better. Early attempts to get around this led to such awkward constructions as "he or she," "his or her," and "him or her." Soon, folks began substituting "they," "their," or "them" for those awkward constructions, but frequently they got sloppy and referred them back to singular antecedents..., which is simply ungrammatical.

[sandy14]

[QUOTE=Nick Capozzoli;1245290]The discussion about pronoun/verb number agreement is interesting, but seems to be getting far away from the OP's question about the best way to teach poetry writing. Maybe these recent grammar discussions should be assigned a new thread?

The current use of 3rd person plural genderless pronouns (they, their, them) instead of 3rd person singulars (he, she, it, his, her, its, him, her, it) is clearly driven by a modern "political correctness." There is nothing inherently wrong with using the 3rd person plural pronouns (except perhaps that it often seems awkward, waffling, and imprecise), provided we do not then go on to make grammatical mistakes in things like agreement in number.

This is not a modern form, the use of they/their/them as an indeterminate gender pronoun is not new. In fact, it predates the use of the masculine pronoun as the indeterminate pronoun which originated in Kirby's A New English Grammar (1746).


An example of this error would be: "A doctor must always place their patients interests above their own interests."

This is not an error. The sentence is entirely logical. The "a" at the beginning makes it clear that the sentence refers to a singular subject, which means we can read the subsequent "their" as the singular indeterminate pronoun, rather than the plural usage. Of course, it would be more elegant if we had "thon" or a new pronoun which expressed indeterminate gender. They/their as an indeterminate pronoun was used by Shakespeare and it has grown in popularity since 1945 as the use the male pronoun for both genders has become more politically unacceptable.

[Nick Capozzoli]

[QUOTE=Nick Capozzoli;1245290]An example of this error would be: "A doctor must always place their patients interests above their own interests."

This is not an error. The sentence is entirely logical. The "a" at the beginning makes it clear that the sentence refers to a singular subject, which means we can read the subsequent "their" as the singular indeterminate pronoun, rather than the plural usage. Of course, it would be more elegant if we had "thon" or a new pronoun which expressed indeterminate gender. They/their as an indeterminate pronoun was used by Shakespeare and it has grown in popularity since 1945 as the use the male pronoun for both genders has become more politically unacceptable.

Well, yes, this is a serious grammatical error.... Despite the grammatical error, the meaning, as you say, is clear, in this specific case. The antecedent is clearly 3rd person singular. but it is linked to the 3rd person plural pronoun. Just because the meaning of this ungrammatical construction is "clear" doesn't justify its usage, at least not for folks who want to use language as precisely as possible. Language is the means we use to communicate ideas. In this case you are saying that it's OK to accept the two sentences: 1) "A doctor must always place their patients' interests above their own interests," and 2) "A doctor must always place his [or "his or her"] patients' interests above his [or his or her] own interests" are entirely equivalent. I disagree.

I'd be interested in your citing some examples of where Shakespeare used the 3rd person plural pronoun with a 3rd person singular antecedent, so we could discuss these further. Shakespeare may or may not have done so...I don't know for sure. I can say for sure that such usage was not very frequent in English writing before the 1960's, and I think it is pretty clear that its acceptance has been due to "gender politics" and "political correctness," neither of which I find to be a compelling reason to eschew more grammatical correct and precise language usage.

I do understand that language is constantly "evolving." Latin evolved into Italian, French, and Spanish, and in so doing lost some complexity in grammatical inflection, conjugation, tenses, and mood. The Germanic languages and English have evolved as well. English is somewhat unique in that it evolved from a fusion of Latin-based and Germanic language. But the kind of "evolution" of English to accept number agreement between 3rd person singular antecedents and 3rd person plural pronouns is, IMHO, different. It is not at all as "natural" an evolution in usage as the changes that came before. It is a conscious politically based change that has occurred within a rather brief period of time (the past 40 years or so).

[sandy14]

but it is linked to the 3rd person plural pronoun - that's only if you accept that they/their is exclusively the third person plural pronoun. Not all English Grammars agree on this point, and there is evidence to suggest that their/them are not just for third person plurals.


Shakespeare God send every one their heart's desire!
[Much Ado About Nothing, Act III Scene 4] There's not a man I meet but doth salute me,
As if I were their well-acquainted friend.
[Comedy of Errors, Act IV Scene 3]

King James Version (Authorized Version) translation of the Bible, Philippians 2:3 Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves.

Take a look at crossmyt.com's website (as a new member I can't post url's here).

It contains an explanation and references to the they/their being used as a singular pronoun. It includes the King James Bible It has precedent before the 1960's - it has come more into common use as the use of the masculine pronoun for indeterminate gender has become more unacceptable. It isn't a new grammatical construction, far from it, and it appears older than the use of the male one. It is worth looking at Bodine's essay ((1975) (referenced on the site) if you have access to an Athens account - it gives a good historical account as well.

I don't like translating everything into plurals as it does not always make sense, and his/her is just clumsy and wastes lots of ink. Personally, I'm more in favour of a new indeterminate pronoun being introduced as it would solve more problems.

[Nick Capozzoli]

Thanks for the citations:

Shakespeare God send every one their heart's desire!
[Much Ado About Nothing, Act III Scene 4] There's not a man I meet but doth salute me,
As if I were their well-acquainted friend.
[Comedy of Errors, Act IV Scene 3]

King James Version (Authorized Version) translation of the Bible, Philippians 2:3 Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves.

These examples involve "generalized" antecedents that are singular in grammatical form but "collective" in meaning, so that there is not the same kind of grammatical dissonance in coupling these antecedents with the 3rd person plural as there is in the sentence I offered to illustrate the problem, i.e.: "A doctor must always place their patients interests above their own interests." My sentence refers to a clearly specific 3rd person singular antecedent, a doctor, that is coupled with a plural 3rd person plural pronoun. It jars and grates and just doesn't seem right. The examples you cited seem OK, I think for the reason I suggest.

[MorpheusSandman]

One point of clarity that might help RE the singular "they." There are generally two different versions, the epicene they, used when the referent is singular but the gender is indeterminate, and the general they, used when there is an ambiguity as to the singularity or plurality of the referent.

A better example of the epicene they in Shakespeare is Romeo & Juliet:

"Arise; one knocks... Hark, how they knock!" III.ii

However, it's a trivial point that both the general and epicene they have a long history usage. It wasn't until certain prescriptivists got to setting down the "rules" of English in stone that both became no-nos, which is all the more reason to dismiss them.

[sandy14]

My sentence refers to a clearly specific 3rd person singular antecedent, a doctor, that is coupled with a plural 3rd person plural pronoun.

Like I said, that's only if you accept that their is exclusively a 3rd person plural pronoun. There are English Grammars that say that it is, and others that say that it isn't. Certainly there's evidence of it being used as a singular pronoun from circa 1540 to the present day, and its exclusion started around the c18th century. In the current day, it is a non-sexist option which means we don't have his/her cluttering the page. Take a look at http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/sgtheirl.html where you will find more examples.

You pays your money and you take your choice.

[educationalfun]

There are lots of resources online that you can use to learn poetry. You might want to check out this site that has all the learning resources for various subjects. I found it when I was looking for material to teach my young one the basics of reading. It has great resources that I think might be useful for you to learn how to link and rhyme words in poetry. Pass by there; see if you find what you are looking for.

Regards
Daniele Wren
easylearnreading.com

[Eiseabhal]

Read and recite it. Sing it. Quote it. If you do that then they"ll like it and may hap write it.

[ennison]

Sensible advice Eiseabhal. It was like that I myself began. I am pleased that Mr Dunn's contribution to verse has been noted by his recent award.