Published by admin on 10th July 2009
I love good poetry. I can spend hours at a time reading excellent poetry, particularly reading it aloud to taste its musicality and experience the words in three dimensions. Few among us are capable of writing good poetry, though. I know because I’ve also seen my share of bad poetry. As an editor, I occasionally am called upon to edit a series of poems. I approach such an opportunity cautiously, for I have come across few contemporary writers who can actually write good poetry.
Well, maybe I should modify that last sentence: I have found few contemporary writers (except for those already published and/or famous) who have written good poetry. Maybe they could write good poetry if they had a better understanding of how to go about it. Anyone who can communicate through poetry has achieved the ultimate writing craft, so creating a fine poem is a worthy goal.
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Published by admin on 9th July 2009
In the Red Engine Press January 2006 newsletter, “Yardspinners and Wordweavers,” Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of Tracings, writes:
“Auden thought the purpose of poetry is to disenchant. That, my reader, may be why I am not much for rhyme or pretty, though I do like food images, especially sweets. I prefer melancholy, wistful and if a song is sung, let it discord to keep the reader alert make him reconsider. Nursery rhymes are for nurseries, sunsets to be viewed firsthand from a bluff, preferably while holding hands with someone handsome. The tendons of the best poetry are politics, introspection, and the abominable snowmen among us tempered–occasionally–by a look back at where we’ve been. Oh, and irony. That’s better than tiramisu and latté for keeping people talking late into the night.”
In the preface to One Hundred and One Famous Poems, published in 1929, editor Roy W. Cook talks about the great need for poetry in a modern industrial age.
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Published by admin on 8th July 2009
Introduction
What Makes Poetry-Poetry?
I find-in my minds-eyes, what can make splendid poetry is: irony, symbolism, resemblance, metaphor, meter-arrangement, expression, confession, spontaneity, but at the end of the poem-like at the end of a day-when the reader looks back and all is said and done, he needs to ask, “Has it affected me?” if not-why? A poem should bring some kind of a chill, if not, some kind of voice to the reader. Again I say, if not, go on to the next poem or page of the book, each poem may not be suitable for you, like every song a singer sings is not necessarily the song that influences you.
Poetry at its most raw and rare form, and wickedest, is from spontaneity.
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