Studying Poetry

I've been a reader of fiction all of my life, but not a reader of poetry. It requires patience. It requires problem-solving. Rhyme can be off-putting.

When it comes to writing, I've written few prose pieces. I've only written short stories under the watchful eye of instructors, the real incentive being that the course was part of a degree program, and that I did indeed have a g.p.a. to be aware of.

I was briefly a member of a writing group. It was enjoyable until the organizer moved and we scrounged for members with new work to share.

With the group, I did work on one story. It was a sci-fi-esque story about a girl who works in publishing, but one day realizes she is invisible. While she cannot leave the office building, she also cannot work because she is invisible. She has to then befriend the other people who have gone invisible over the years as well. She is seen by some of them as 'the one' who can get them out of this mess.

As you can imagine, the plot was complicated. I had little experience in fantasy to finish it properly.

On the other hand, I've always jotted down sloppy, messy inspirings that are poem-like. So this fall I decided to register for a Seminar in Poetry as part of my Publishing graduate degree.

F***, I know absolutely nothing! Here's some of my thoughts on it so far:

• Yeats (I believe it was Yeats) once said that you shouldn't write poetry beyond your twenty-fifth year without being aware of the history of the form. (I'm turning 30 in 6 months, and I'm just now starting to look at the history of the form.)


• You can do pretty much anything in poetry, but you should have a reason for what you're doing.


• It (may be) important to try to achieve the personal and the political in a poem. Even if you're writing about your kitchen sink, it's useful to try to relate it to what's going on in the larger world. Or to think about how other people might experience that same scene.


• Hearing a poem makes ALL of the different. I would rather not record and then listen to myself reading famous works, so I am lucky to have discovered that there are numerous resources to hear poetry read and discussed online. The best one I've found so far is Poetry Foundation. The audio and podcasts section of the site, found here, has a great series called Poetry Off the Shelf recorded every couple of weeks. The recordings are about 15 minutes in length with poets or other people talking about poetry.
  
• It's not as easy to bullshit about poetry as it is to bullshit about fiction. I've found myself at several wrong turns in every class. The wrong turns can be fun sometimes... but I've never felt so flustered by follow-up questions when I attempt to contribute in class. "The verse was formal," I say. "How so?" asks the teacher. "Ummmmm, it is.... well, it looks formal the way the lines were spaced, but actually maybe it's verse libre."
  
• Are verse libre and free verse the same thing? They are translations of one another. But from the class discussion, I am not entirely sure.

That's it for tonight!

~ kate