the craft of poetry

[billy]

this thread has come about because of another thread

the question isn't 'is poetry a craft to be learned' that should be a given.
the question is why do would be poets think that they're automatically good poets? that they don't need to learn anything about what poetry is. for some reason they think because they write, it's poetry. they may be lucky and create a poem a good poem even but in general their poetry will suck.

the question is, 'how do you bring a newb to the craft of poetry. is it even possible to do so. is the stock answer; this is how i want to do it real or a cover for their inadequacy.

discuss anything to do with the question, newbs in general, the great i'm not doing that poets. etc. this discussion is pretty broad.

[Leanne]

What concerns me most is that many people who have this "I don't need to improve, I'm already wonderful" attitude are the same people who will admit to never having read anyone else's poems (other than those written by their friends on a website, that is). That's probably the poetry equivalent of auditions for Pop Idol, or drawing a smiley face in the dust of someone's car window.

A love of poetry begins with reading it. Reading poetry is difficult for a lot of people -- it doesn't always follow nice simple rules like prose, and sometimes it's hard to work out just what's being said. For the instant-feedback generation of Twitter and reality tv, this seems like a big problem. Learning to use your own brain instead of having things explained to you, or instead of the answers being so blatant it's like being bludgeoned... that's not easy. It seems that the world has gotten so fond of dumbing things down, we've forgotten that if you expect so little of people they're going to live down to your expectations. Set the bar a little higher, have a goal beyond the bleeding obvious and at least a few people will try to reach it, if they're given a bit of a hand up.

And never forget that we were all beginners once.

[billy]

though i haven't improved much i was really shitty as a poet when i first began. i always defend my my poems and got slung off numerous sites. eventually i joined a site similar to this one. anything was allowed (very little censorship or moderation)
it was there i learned that i wasn't the great i am i thought i was. i learned almost everything i know from that site, the owner is dead now but he was excellent and to the point with his feedback. newbs were welcome and given help. like anywhere else they often left after posting a few poems and getting not so glowing feedback as to how good their shit was.

i think many go the poetry route because they'd fall at the first hurdle if they took up art.

[Leanne]

Thinking that poetry is easier than any other art form is probably half the problem. Plenty of people think that because they know a bit about words, they should automatically be able to write poetry. I can use what I know of woodworking to build a pretty damn good fence, but I'm not ready to tackle a Louis VIX cabinet. Mind you, if I found someone who was prepared to show me how to do it (and some spare time) I'd do my best to learn.

One of the worst mistakes people make when commenting on other people's poems is to ridicule their lack of knowledge. Fortunately, it doesn't seem to happen here (or at least not much). If it's clear that a writer is just starting out, always pitch your comment to that level. If, of course, someone's been writing for years and they're still at the same level, maybe it's time to get a bit tougher But that rarely happens, when you're in an environment that is conducive to learning.

[billy]

if someone is ridiculed here something would be said, and hopefully if a mod sees it done they'd say something.
of course feelings can be hurt and some one including me can say something inadvertently that's unkind,

sometimes we assume those who've just started out know more than they do. i'd love twenty new poets to post here with the hope of improving. sadly few people are prepared to accept feedback at any cost. not that they should use it. but they shouldn't disniss it out of hand as many seem to do.

[Leanne]

Anyone can be taught to write poetry, or at least taught to write better than they do when they start.

I teach adult literacy, and I've started introducing more and more poetry into the classes because of the great response from students. These are people who range from 16 to 80, but who've never been taught to read and write properly -- many of them begin classes thinking that they'll never be able to learn anything. Poetry is a great tool for them, as it gives them a structured and disciplined way to express themselves (even if you're writing freeverse, there's still structure involved of a sort). I have never come across a student who has wanted to improve and been unable to.

If a new member joins and hasn't been exposed to much poetry in the past, it's always best for them to declare that. Pretending to knowledge you don't have just stops people from offering it to you.

[critical mass]

Poetry is changing. The audience is dwindling.
I'll bet the number of people at Noble's buying poetry is 1/3 what it was twenty years or even ten years ago.

"Serious" poetry is targeted at college graduates that majored in English (U.S.) and discuss Chinese philosopy and the Great Conversation in tiny coffee shops in upscale neighborhoods.

Too funny, couldn't resist.

[Leanne]

You don't have to write "serious" poetry to take writing poetry "seriously"

Phillip Larkin once said something to the effect that he wanted to write poems that were talked about in universities, but loved by people down at the pub. To me, that's definitely the thing to aim for -- poetry that's well written and above reproach by the scholars, that entertains the people who would never usually dream of reading a poem.

[billy]

one of the main reasons nobles doesn't sell as much poetry as it used to is the net, it's all here.
the buying of poetry books may be dwindling but the partaking and creating of it is growing, of that i'm sure.

i'm pretty sure "serious" poetry is on the rise throughout the world. thing is, ego poetry grows at a faster rate

[Leanne]

The rash of self-publishing hasn't helped poetry sales either. These days anyone with a computer and an ego can churn out thousands of copies of whatever they feel like, without ever passing it across the desk of an editor or indeed any critic harsher than their mother.

[billy]

plus the fact most poetry forums are
bottom licking machines that only teach fawning

[Leanne]

Quite

Here we already know how to fawn. We're up for a much tougher challenge now...

[abu nuwas]

Thinking that poetry is easier than any other art form is probably half the problem. Plenty of people think that because they know a bit about words, they should automatically be able to write poetry. I can use what I know of woodworking to build a pretty damn good fence, but I'm not ready to tackle a Louis VIX cabinet. Mind you, if I found someone who was prepared to show me how to do it (and some spare time) I'd do my best to learn.

One of the worst mistakes people make when commenting on other people's poems is to ridicule their lack of knowledge. Fortunately, it doesn't seem to happen here (or at least not much). If it's clear that a writer is just starting out, always pitch your comment to that level. If, of course, someone's been writing for years and they're still at the same level, maybe it's time to get a bit tougher But that rarely happens, when you're in an environment that is conducive to learning.

Yes, I hate this carping business----- Louis the what?!

[Leanne]

Louey the Lip, the bloke at the pub
Who'll do anything for a tug and a rub
He'll build you a cupboard or make you a table
Then ask for a poem, so make sure you're able

[billy]

Louis the kid, that carpenter bloke
who'll charge you your arm just for a joke
with carved acanthus and ormolu frets
for you to write on when doing your bets

[critical mass]

the question is, 'how do you bring a newb to the craft of poetry


I like the frog in the frying pan theory.

Turn up the heat fast, he'll jump out.
Turn it up slowly and he will stick to the pan.

There's a poem in there somewhere.

In college I took a creative writing course. The professor put 30 some balloons on a board with authors tags on them. Pop your author was the game.
Do a short take on one of the masters.
I got Yeats!
You know where this is going.
I read five or six pieces and then got to The Second Coming.
I thought it was a lazy unimaginative piece of writing.
Being the cocky young writer that I was.
I bashed Yeats on this one poem.
Included was the original poem I posted here. Not sure if you read that
because I rewrote it after I posted it.

I got a D-.
I also got a harsh lashing from the professor in front of the class.
something to the effect of...

Yeats was years ahead of his time. Making mockery of a poet that has more poetic talent in his titles than you have in your whole unappreciative brain, will not do in this class. We must learn from the masters if we want to improve.

I dropped out of college a week later.
Now my hands look like Ashe bark and my back hurts like a matress in a cheap motel.

Point is.
If she had used the frog and frying pan theory, I may have ended up writing soft syllables for Hallmark.


David

[billy]

actually i can see what they meant.
i think you deserved the D hehe (i'm serious by the way) not for the poem but for the age old crime
of youth. i've read a few of yeats's poems and i'm not an officianado on him or anything but the guy really was a master of what he did.
often we look at old poets (turn of the 21st century for 30 plus years in this case) and their works and think them not relevant. often all we do by acting that way is sticking a sharp stick in our own eye. his 2nd comeing poem is probably one of the better know of his poems and the metaphor he uses in it are as relevant today as they were 80, 90 years ago. they'll still be valid in another 200 years time.
while everyone can write a lemon of a poem most critics would disagree this is poem is a lemon, that and the fact most poets who have won the nobel prize for literature, (of which he was the 1st irish poet to do so), tend not to do lemon poems.
back to the age old crime of youth;
we often think because we don't like something it's bad, i loved soul music and hated country, it wasn't till my mid 20's i realized i hated it because it was different to what i liked. my crime was the crime of not understanding. but lets not make this about you disliking a poem or my hatred of something.

i think often we and i include myself, go into something with preconceived ideas already in place. our opinion has been set before the concrete of knowledge has even been poured. maybe your teacher should have better handled his dilemma, but maybe just may, we as would be poets should be more understand of poetry other than what we deem the good stuff. i think personally yeats has a bucketful of knowledge we could use. even if you me or anyone else deems him or his poetry lazy or unimaginative. (i'd actually give the 2nd coming a 91/2 out of ten based on an average poem rating a 2)
jmo.

[critical mass]

Billy

You didn't teach creative wring in the U.S. in 1975 did you.

I agree about Yeats writings lots of good stuff. I got a lot out of his works.

I still hate this poem.

By the way I got a D in Social behavior skills also.

David

[billy]

that explains it then

no i never taught anywhere, except to my kids, and certainly nothing creative in fact i never really went to school as such
i hate lots of poems, it's just that as i read more and more i realised that me hating it didn't make it bad poetry. that often when i thought of a poem as being so and so, it was just me who didn't interpret it correctly or just so far off what i liked it had to be crap.

i think a person has to want to improve to get over that first hurdle, often we say we want to improve but mean "wtf can you show me that i don't know already .

[abu nuwas]

I think that the state of English-language poetry is in flux. I find that much 'serious' poetry, is seriously terrible, and there appears to be a terror of being thought 'middle-brow' which haunts the modern garret, with all mod. cons. It would be interesting to know in which of the English-speaking countries it is most popular, per capita.

We are entitled to blame capitalism a bit: once upon a time, newspapers regularly printed poems, as well as popular magazines. The Times published Tennyson's 'Charge of the Light Brigade, I seem to recall. Recently, poetry only gets in the news when there is a bust-up (as at this very time, with the Poetry Society), or perhaps the appointment of the Poet Laureate, and similar. Just maybe, if the poetry available were attractive enough, papers might see it as they do cross-words or chess-problems. In Arabic newspapers, for example the London 'Al Quds', publishing poems is a very regular occurrence, and what poems! None of your haiku, or pithy six-liners; not even sonnet-length, but on and on and on....Then again, I read recently that the Palestinan poet, Mahmud Darwish, can fill a 40,000 seat stadium...