Crap-tastic Poetry...does it exist?

I have always found poetry to be very personal and in that same vein subjective. In essance meaning that what I enjoy, someone else may not and vice versa. Poetry is about making a connection with the words on the page. Someone's connection is established through who they are as a person, or rather their life experience. A life experience is created through interaction with family, friends, society; how some one is raised from childhood to now; the crazy obstacles that someone has had to overcome; personal attitude; and life philosophy. Based on those factors, it is impossible for two people to have the exact same life experience! I don't care if you're twins, there will be differences between the two of you! At any rate, it is because of one's life experience that a connection can be established with a poem or not. If no connection is made, does that make the poem bad poetry? I don't think so, it just means that one reader out of many, has no connection with the poem. Similarly, the same can be said about bad poetry. What I find to be unacceptable, someone else could think is the cat's meow.

It is impossible for me to come up with specific crieteria for bad poetry because I an having trouble formulating coherent thoughts this week and since my opinion is no better than someone else's. But at any rate, here is what I feels makes good poetry, and the opposite would be what I consider bad poetry:

In terms of metre and rhyme scheme, those are secondary when considering poetry good or bad. To me, it is all about the words on the page! Are they fresh? Bring new meaning to old cliches? Is there some sort of pattern established, like metre but nothing concrete? Some poetry that I have read in previous classes had good metre and rhyme scheme but I found to be unenjoyable because the language used was lame.

Literary devices are important, but not necessarily in the stringent sense of there must be metaphors, similies and the like. Rather, I like poetry to take me on a ride through a vividly painted world. This world would be fashioned from text and the expressions used to convey the virtual picture to me! If it is done with similies...cool. Metaphors, paradoxes, and hyperboles, sign me up! Allusion, anaphor, alliteration and assonance...sure why not! I'm not picky on what is used but it must captivate my imagination and hold it hostage.

To support my few opinions/views I have posted some works of poetry that are less than stellar. I will be honest and say that these are mine, from a very very very long time ago! We're talking like more than 8 YEARS AGO! Enjoy the cheese factor and be a little on the gentle side when commenting on the poems please. They may be crap but they're my crap =)

The Truth

I love him with all my heart
Even though we are so far apart
When I look at a picture, all I can see
Are his happy blue eyes looking at me
With that grin on his face
In my heart I keep his place
For I know there can never be
Anything between him and me.

* I had to fight temptation to edit that one as I typed it out. Grrrr being young and silly*

Untitled

He pledges his undying love to the wild

The unknow. The scary. The dark.
"I love to live on the edge" his sould bellows
Loud enough for all to hear because he craves the attention
No thoughts of fear enter his mind as he enter the woods
There is no light save for the sparkle of light from his curious pupils
They dialate in anticipation of what could be lurking
The unknonw. The scary. The dark.

* That poem was unnamed because as soon as I was done writing it, I put in bright pink gel pen: "This poem has problems!" I guess I knew that it was crap and therefore undeserving of a title. *

sv

Like? Poetry?! Are you Nuts?!

Anyone of my friends that knows I am taking a poetry class believes me to be insane. Some comments that I have gotten include: "A full year of reading fluffy bunny stuff that you can't understand?", "Good luck with that! Let me know how it turns out for you" and "Was that the only class left with space in it?" My personal favourite would have to be: "You're going to be writing poetry of your own, right? Please don't use me and our relationship as inspiration." Thanks guys...I love you too =p

In lieu of being called nuts twice in the same month by my friends, I didn't actually ask if they liked poetry. I'm thinking that the above comments speak for themselves. The people most cherished to me are not fans of the poem. Not a problem most people aren't!

There are only a few key words and phrases that instill the fear of god into the hearts people. Some would be: hell, I Love You, death, Will you Marry Me, cancer, or You're pregnant. Unfortunately none of those are the topic for the class but another words that makes people quake in their boots is: POETRY! To me this is an incomprehensible fear. What is there to fear of carefully selected words, that have been deliberately arranged on a page to invoke buried emotions?! Apparently there is a lot to fear...this observation has been augmented by reading through other people's blogs about the same topic.

In my opinion, it's all in how poems are initially presented to people. Often in an academic setting people were kept in strict confines with their poetry choices. Made to write sonnets, or even worse hikuis(spelling?) at the whims of their teachers. That's no fun =( Conversely I must have ended up with the small handful of teachers that made poems fun to learn and enjoyable to write. We did some seriously cool shit with poems in my schools! Such as:

• in groups, each person would have their own piece of paper and write down one line of poetry. We would then pass the paper to the person beside us to write another line. This would continue until all group members had written down something.
• on 20 different small pieces of paper, each student was to write down words (verbs, nouns, adjectives) to be placed into a large bin. We would then reach our hand into the bin and pull out 10 words. From those words we were expected to write a specified type of poem
• from an assigned sonnet, we were to rearrange the words of the poem to create our own. We had to use ALL of the words, including the title to create another poem. (I may still have that saved somewhere if anyone is interested in seeing it)

Does anyone else have a similar experience with poetry that was positive? Like a fun filled activity that a teacher made you do? Please share...I'm an aspiring teacher and would love to learn different teaching techniques.

sv

Favourite Poetry of Old

* During this week's tutorial, the Prof asked who our favourite poet is. I don't actually have a favourite poet but quickly the title of a poem that meant so much to me only a decade ago came rushing back to me. I wanted soooo badly to share that poet's brilliance with the class, but sadly I was unable to remember the name of the poet who wrote the poem below.

I now know that the poet was Phyllis McGinely and the poem is Portrait of a Girl with Comic Book:

Thirteen's no age at all. Thirteen is nothing.
It is not wit, or powder on the face,
Or Wenesday matinee, or misses' clothing,
Or intellect, or grace.
Twelve has its tribal customs. But thirteen
Is neither boys in battered cars nor dolls.
Not Sara Crewe or movie magazine,
Or pennants on the walls.

Thirteen keeps diaries and tropical fish
(A month, at most); scorns jumpropes in the spring;
Could not, would fortune grant it, name its wish;
Wants nothing, everything;
Has secrets from itself, friends it despises;
Admits none or the terrors that it feels;
Own half a hundred masks but no disguises;
And walks upon its heels.

Thirteen's anomalous - not that, not this:
Not folded bud, or wave that laps a shore,
Or moth proverbial from the chrysalis.
Is the one age defeats the metaphor.
Is not a town, like childhood, strongly walled
But easily surrounded, in no city.
Nor, quitted once, can it be quite recalled -
Not even with pity.

* I was in grade 9, when I found this poem in our poetry book. I stumbled across it purely by accident while I was thumbing through the pages of the meager (compared to our text!) volume. I read the title and thought it cheesy at first, but as I began to read the poem I began to fall in love with it! Partly because the things said in it were true of the age but also because of the poem would not be covered in class.

* Not covering the poem in class was brilliant because that meant that the poem was mine alone to explore like an unchartered amazon rainforest. Making my way through the language like I would the dense tropical folliage. Never fearing the wild animals that came out at me in the shape of unfamiliar words for I could easily arm myself with the ultimate weapon to combat my naivity... the lexicon! As I blundered deeper into the rain forest, I became better acquinted with the wild life and the natives...rather native (ME!).

* The poem spoke to me in a way that helped me better understand the trouble that I was going through in trying to adjust to the ambigous pre-teen world. "Has secrets from itself, friends it dispises;/ Admits none of the terror that it feels." How true is that statement about being a teenager?! There have been moments that I have denied my feelings to myself because I didn't want to believe; hated the people that I called my friends but kept them close to me because I was petrified of being left alone in pre-teen land; told absolutely no one about all the self-doubt, and self-loathing that I was feeling.

* The poem also provided me with a sense of comfort similar to a mother's embrace, which I could have went home to ask for but hugs from mom just didn't seem as cool as they used to be. I felt comfort in knowing that someone else had been down the road I was approaching; McGinley travelled the bumby, winding, broken down path of adolescnece and was still around to tell the tale. Surely, I would be able to bumble my way down the road. Aiming for the next fork in the road (ie. turning fourteen as fast as possible!) and avoiding at all costs the pitfalls, snares and any bear traps that may pop out and snap off my leg.

* Ultimately, what the poem showed me what thirteen was not! "Thirteen's no age at all. Thirteen is nothing./ It is not wit, or powder on the face.../Or intellect of grace." McGinely demonstrated a narrow view, to use the word pesimistic would be an injustice, of the age. She showed that it was up to me to make my year of thirteen better. Did I accomplish that? No probably not! Was I better prepared for what happened during that year? Hell no! But that is what life and living are about. Accomplishing what one can, and making up the rest as you go along.

* It will be interesting to see which poem I pick for myself from the Norton. Will I chance upon it like I did McGinley's or will I need to search deeply for it. Will this new poem capture my frame of mind; feelings; and emotions like the above poem did for the next ten years to come? Only time will tell.

~ sv

What is Poetry?

Poetry is a mode of writing which has a number of different forms. It is often used to express overwhelming emotions such as: love, hate, sadness or happiness. However, poetry can also be used to tell stories, or rather epics.

Some stereotypical and unappreciative views of poetry would include:

1. That there must be a rhyming scheme, which by definition is lame and cheesy.
2. Poems are choc-full of symbolism, metaphors, similies and other literary devices, that though the poem is written in English, it wouldn't appear that way.
3. Due to the overwhelming number of literary devices, there is too much underlaying meaning within the poem for it to be readily understood.

Indeed, those views do hold some water to them because a vast number of poems do have rhyming schemes but if the poem is worthwhile reading, then the rhymes will have been carefully thought out. Also poems wouldn't be the beautiful piece of prose that they are without the use of some literary devices to make the language flow easily like a babbling brook. As well, every piece of literature has some underlaying meaning to it so why should poems be any different?

sv

Opening Comments

Salutations!

I just wanted to take an opportunity to greet my fellow poetry classmates and welcome them to my blog page =) Welcome to anyone that is not in my poetry class as well...though why you would want to read my infinate number of posts on poetry is beyond me but you are welcome to read what I have to say.

Hopefully this page will be full of insightful, enlightening and intriguing comments...Hey wait a second...Who am I kidding? Here's to me not saying anything too outrageous and preposterous! And to you actually posting comments on it.

Best of luck reading the Iliad...A long but nevertheless enjoyable read. Sadly absolutely nothing like the movie Troy but we'll comment more on that later.

Cheers
sv

Warning: in this blog spelling isn't a high priority 'cause I have problems with that sometimes!