Trouble's Afoot

[shanmonster]

When I was in grade school, the craft of poetry was considered core material. We learned about meter, strophes, trochees, iambs, etcetera. This was covered off and on from elementary through to high school. I falsely assumed this was still core curriculum in Canadian schools, but after talking with knightky, I see this is not the case at all. He doesn't recall ever covering any of this in grade school. I am curious as to what actually is being taught within English/language arts classes, now.

As an English literature major and creative writing minor in university, I continued my studies of the craft of poetry. I've barely thought about it since graduating.

Today I decided to dust off my technical poetry skills. The mission of the day is to write in iambic pentameter.

I started with this concept:

You're my moment of exhalation

The moment when a building swell breaks and sends a rush of water across the shore, smoothing small pebbles and sand, pulling them back into you.

My first attempt resulted in three feet per verse, or trimeter. It's very sing-song, in a nursery rhyme kind of way:

You're the moment I exhale

The time when building swell prevails

And bursts upon the pebbled beach

To pull the sand into your reach.

My second attempt achieved pentameter, but lost the rhyme as it gained pretentiousness:

To think you are the time when I exhale,

When gentle swell doth build and over tips

To send its load of water onto shore

And pulls the grateful sand into its grasp.

Clearly, I need more work. It's all rather schmaltzy, but at least my brain feels like it's getting some of its rusty bits oiled.

Comments

[greyanna.livejournal.com]

I learned quite a bit of poetry in school as well. I have no gift at all for poetry and I admire your efforts! (US schools in small towns)

[zydee.livejournal.com]

One of the hardest things I ever did, writing-wise, was to make a sapphic verse poem. Oh dear god that was hard. But it remains one of my best works. I wish schools still taught proper poetry; nowadays it's just subjective emotional vomiting and masturbation, blank verse and "nothing is wrong with any poem you write as long as it expresses how you feel", and it's no wonder most folks don't like it anymore. The way it's taught, you'd be sure poetry's just a rambling journal entry with funny line breaks and is relevant only to the writer. I think my generation was one of the last years to be taught actual mechanics in high school; college poetry writing classes still do it, I think. At least mine did. Judson Jerome, who taught at my university, wrote an awesome nuts-and-bolts book about it.

I think you'd like James Tate's poetry. And you write like Anna Akhmatova. :)