Yeah was a massive Douglas nerd, for the IDEAS the IDEAS man, and the smooth talk, very relatable.
Hence, give me poetry advice.
Yeah but main thing writers intend when they say that is to avoid lowering to Earth anything you’ve got in your head. They want to keep your grand ideas, your personal indescribable feelings about that work to you. And they should for reasons of career, art, and your enjoyment. Because sometimes they mean more than they say and sometimes they say more than they meant and the truth would be a bathetic letdown.
Thanks for sharing this. I’m going to comb through it.
Ha! Sorry missed this, example of pure poetry.
I found this book illuminating for discussion of form in poetry:
For nonwhite female poetry that speaks to me, try First Writing Since, by Suheir Hammad
Heartfelt, searing, brilliant.
I recommend John Ciardi’s How Does a Poem Mean?, a technically serious analysis of the craft but still very readable, and Stephen Fry’s The Ode Less Traveled, which is more playful and informal but still full of valuable technical detail.
It is too easy to buzz over poetry with its complex structure. For me, the best way to enjoy it is to memorize it. I have to read the same thing over and over again to understand the details and structure.
Yup. When my math students get frustrated at not understanding some mathematical exposition because they expect it to be some kind of narrative that they can read at narrative speed, I try to get them to read it like a poem. Copy it out with irregular line lengths if necessary and just chew over each phrase slowly till it makes sense.
Also, read it aloud. Most poetry should be spoken, if at all possible. You can read it in your head, but if you have the ability to speak or to listen to a reading of a poem, it helps, not in just grokking the meaning, but in enjoying the sounds and rhythms of poetic language.
I’ve got some of the beat poets on cassette tape – they sold it to school students. Much, much more satisfying than trying to read some of that stuff.
Right: you definiely have to pay attention to the way the poem sounds, whether you’re just hearing it in your head, or reading it out loud. But poetry read aloud is only as good as the reader.
I still remember coming across Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Bells” in a high school English textbook. When I read it, I heard it in my head and loved it. Then the teacher had students read it aloud, and what I had heard in my head was way, way more effective and satisfying than what those high school sophomores could actually do with their voices.
And I’ve heard even professional readers whose poetry reading falls flat for me because they read it as if it were prose, emphasizing the grammar and meaning but de-emphasizing the rhythm and meter (for example, pausing at the ends of sentences that come in the middle of lines but not at the ends of poetic lines). I suppose they feel that emphasizing the meter and rhymes and etc. makes it sound too sing-songy, but I think that’s kind of the point.
I second the recommendation for Stephen Fry’s The Ode Less Traveled. In addition to explaining the basic forms of poetry and meter, he presents several examples. The audiobook is particularly delightful.
I think some poetry you can just read silently too though even maybe if you just move your lips where needed as I do.
I found this amazing poem where I say “amazing” where you should show instead of describe so hence I show:
See, I tend to like a reading like that – where it is read naturally and pauses fall where they may by the sentence, not by the poetic line. If tthe poetic line is “end-stopped,” that is having punctuation indicating a pause or otherwise completing a thought then, yes, you briefly pause there. If the line is “enjambed” and the sentence/complete thought runs through to the next line, you generally do not pause.
In general, I do like it sounding natural, and I don’t like when rhythm or rhyme come across as exaggerated or over-emphasized in a reading.
My suggestion as well, there is nothing subtitle at all, like swimming in a sewer. Reading his stuff makes you smell the urine, cigarettes and whisky.
Mike Doughty’s Slanky: Poems was also…visceral.