Poetry (Articles)

Poetry is the ultimate symbol of the refinement of the human culture. "Spontaneous Outflow of Emotions" Shelly defined poetry thus. Wordsworth said "our sweetest songs are that which tell of saddest thoughts". Poetry has been written and enjoyed eversince the languages were born. Poetry was the staple diet of courts of kings and the durbars of emperors. Poets were held in huge respect and pampered by the kings of yester years. The fine taste for all things literary especially poetry was prevalent in those days when the all the kings had to do was to sit back and enjoy poetry, jesting and tales of valour(Their Own!). Poetry really flourished in the post-christ era with great poets like Milton, Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson, Shelly, Byron and the like enriching the English literature with their great works. In India too, literature and poetry flourished, greatly patronised by Kings and Emperors. The Great Hindu Kings of the Maurya,Chalukya, Chera, Chola and the Pandya kingdoms and the great emperors of the Vijayanagara,Maratha and such great kingdoms thorough out the Indian Sub-continent, were all unreserved admirers of poetry and contributed greatly to fostering great poets.

Poetry floursihed in almost all languages known to man. After the formation of the USA, English literature saw such great poets like Walt Whitman. The French revolution was permanently placed in the world map of great freedom struggles through the immense literary works of the great poets of the time. Poetry produced enhanced perception of romanticism, heroics, patriotism, sorrow and joy. The entire gamut of human emotions was brought forth through the magical pen of the great poets. Graduating from the tough old English poems of yesteryears, with its hard to understand imageries and ideas, today the modern poetry lays emphasis on simple language and great content.

Poetry often sparked off great debates as to what constituted good poetry.Several schools of thought came up with differing opinions. Poetry, some said, was the noblest of all literary forms and should not be vulgarised by making it easy to understand. But other pundits said poetry was to be enjoyed by all, the plebiscite and the aristocracy.

Even to this day, the debate rages on. But the real heartening thing is that Poetry thrives.

Seven Deadly Signs of Poetry Scams

2009-12-26T05:15:00.001-08:00

In America, poets are held in such low esteem that even the most Honored Representative from Nigeria won’t bother scamming us. Society says to us what Dermot Mulroney says to Julia Roberts in “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” that we are “The pus that infects the mucus that cruds up the fungus that feeds on the pond scum.”

Even being cheated by Mr. Honorable Minister, however, is preferable to the poetry scams that have proliferated. Wind Publications’ Literary Scam guide has this to say:

Hidden among the many sponsors of legitimate literary contests advertised on the internet lurk those who care little about literature, its audience, or authors. These organizations and individuals exist solely for profit through their so-called writing or poetry contests. Often you'll find these "free" poetry contests lavishly advertised in your local newspaper.

There is a cottage industry of writing scams perpetuated by pus poetry pimps, the chief among them International Library of Poetry, aka Noble House Press, aka Poetry.com. They advertise in USA Weekend and the Penny Saver--well, not the Penny Saver, but they might as well, because that sums up their opinion of poets. If you’ve seen the ads or received a letter that says, “Congratulations, your poem has been selected for our next anthology,” congratulations, you’re being scammed.

Like so-called modeling agencies or “talent agents” who prey on the dreams of nubile girls wanting to be the next Lindsay Lohan, poetry pyramid schemes exploit the number one hope of writers: publication, and more importantly, recognition. Many excellent Web sites such as Preditors and Editors and PoetryNotCom detail the outrageous mechanics of poetry “anthology” scams, and the infamous Wergle Flomp Poetry Contest by WinningWriters.com cheerfully skewers vanity poetry contests and the submicroorganisms who perpetuate them.

How do you spot a poetry scam? Look for…

1. Insane pie in the sky prize amounts.

I ran the DeAnn Lubell Professional Writers’ Competition. Most poetry contests with reading fees pay, at most, $1,000, and that’s for a book-length manuscript of poetry. For a single poem, the first prize pot is usually a whopping $100, $150 tops. A $20 million prize, as dangled by Noble House, is a big crimson flag. Oh, and no one ever offers poets a chance to win a world cruise. It’s usually assumed that we sail around the world on a Mark Twain raft, a sampan, or a Hemingway skiff.

2. No contest fees.

Wergle Flomp is the only “F*r*e*e” poetry contest. Now, people on the Internet and toiling poets naturally leap at the word “F*r*e*e”. But, like victims of those modeling scams, you’ll end up paying for your moment of bargain hunting. Modeling scams want you to work with a particular photographer (usually fake European). Likewise, poetry scams won’t let you even see your poem in print unless you pay for the anthology. When you do pay for the anthology, you may wonder if you just bought a copy of the Penny Saver, because your poem looks like it was crammed onto the page to make room for the “Spot the Difference” puzzle and the adult talk lines. Then there are those awards banquets…

3. Phony awards banquets.

Ten years ago, no joke, I received a mailing from Famous Poets Society that lured me to fork over the cash to attend an awards banquet and convention. If I paid my money, I could join the elite company of poets such as…Ted Lange of “Love Boat” fame. Who knew Isaac the bartender was a closet Langston Hughes? Plus, I could win $6,000 in door prizes. Now, if you’ve ever attended a poetry reading, especially in coffeehouses, you know that poets wear their vow of poverty as proudly as a Che Guevara T-shirt. Just the thought of winning $25 in a poetry slam made my fellow poets and me weep more cathartically than the contestants on “Deal or No Deal.” And Ted Lange usually doesn’t attend.

4. Questionable reputation or none at all.

In poetry, if you don’t have Nikki Giovanni, Czeslaw Milosz or Donald Hall front and center in your magazine, plus several angsty Eastern European poets, would-be poets drop you like Oprah dropped James Frey. Look for magazines, publishers and poetry contests that publish and are judged by literary lions. It’s Bukowski or bust. And when Poetry.com can’t figure out that Dave Barry and 20/20 are hoaxing them, the joke’s on Poetry.com. Similarly, if a vanity press charges you $3,000 to $8,000 to publish your collection of poems, and the top author promoted by Façade Press is an eighteen-year-old writing poems from the point of view of her liver, save your money for the hard work of actually submitting your poems to Threepenny Review, or literary magazines or publishers that you read about in Writer’s Market or Poets and Writers.

5. Advertising in newspapers and glossy magazines.

Real poetry contests don’t advertise in USA Weekend--sure, USA Weekend may sponsor a teen essay contest, but poetry advertisers? Forget it. People don’t pick up USA Weekend as a literary publication, even though USA Weekend features books and authors. If you see a mass call for poets in a mass market magazine, give it a miss. Real poetry contests get deluged with submissions as it is. They don’t need to fish for more.

6. Sending you a letter of acceptance for a contest you can’t remember entering or a publisher you can’t remember submitting to.

I admit, as a writer I have difficulty keeping track of what I sent to whom and when—we go into writing to avoid paperwork, not do it, although when we’re not in the mood, reorganizing files suddenly becomes as tempting as a day in Cancun. Fortunately, Writer’s Market features a Submission Tracker, and some enterprising bloggers actually post their submission schedule to make the rest of us sigh in unorganized envy. If you can’t find the cover letter/e-query in your file cabinet, on your computer, on your Zip drive (you do back up, right?), or in your Sent folder, chances are you never submitted to National Library of Poetry or Wordscum.com (apologies if there actually is a Web site out there called Wordscum.com). Yes, after 300 rejections, getting an acceptance letter may be a boost, but to misquote Groucho Marx, think twice before you accept just any club that will have you as a member. Aim higher. Imagine if JK Rowling had just said, “All right, I’ll pay a million pounds to have a few hundred copies of Harry Potter for my friends and relatives to buy.”

7. Promising to get your book or handsome anthology on the bestseller rack in bookstores.

Number one, PoetryNotCom is one of the many sites reporting that this claim is bogus. Number two, most people who go into a bookstore to read poetry probably can find the poetry section blindfolded and spend three hours debating the symbolism in Whitman over a decaf skinny latte at Borders Café. Number two, although getting your book in bookstores is still the gold standard, Amazon.com and online retailing make it easy for even the tiniest press to get books noticed. Number three, bookstores are so glutted with inventory that they can’t even stock the POD books, let alone anything from ScamPoet Publishing or Poetry.com, and bookstores will not accept vanity press books. For that matter, no poet besides Ludacris or Jimmy Carter will end up on the bestseller list in a bookstore. We don’t go into poetry to be rich. We go into poetry to sound our barbaric yawp…and a fellowship or two is nice, too.

Many beginning poets get bilked, but you don’t have to. If you’re smart and ambitious, you’ll be a successful poet with tons of lierary magazines and e-zines bearing your byline. Poetry.com and its ilk will always be “The pus that infects the mucus that cruds up the fungus that feeds on the pond scum.”

Movie reviewer/screenwriter ("Blood Mask," filimng summer 2006) Kristin Johnson composes personalized poems, speeches, toasts, vows, and family memories. Visit http://www.poemsforyou.com to order your personalized memories. She is also co-author of the Midwest Book Review "enthusiastically recommended" pick Christmas Cookies Are For Giving: Stories, Recipes and Tips for Making Heartwarming Gifts (ISBN: 0-9723473-9-9), dedicated in part to her mother and grandmother.

Poetry Slams: Performance Plus Art

2009-12-26T05:14:00.001-08:00

Performance artists of all types enjoy the awe and the kudos coming their way from the general public. In return, any concert or performance turns livelier with audience participation. During the recent decades, more and more musicians--even those in the classical music field--have begun to encourage the audience to sing along or clap to the beat. This behavior has seeped out to other fields such as stand-up comedy and open-mic poetry readings.

With these facts in mind, I imagine, the slam poetry is succeeding because people are drawn into the magnetism of our clannish eras when everyone participated in the tribal dances, telling stories, and sing-along sessions. Truth is, I had not heard of “Slams” in regard to poetry, until--in the writing site I belong to--I started to participate in the slam poetry contests, hosted by two site members: one, a creative writing professor from Chicago and the other an English teacher/poet from Australia.

Later on, I found out that slam poetry was sometimes attacked by the academia with the idea that slams cheapen the true art of poetry. As an answer to this accusation, slam poets became more vocal and more organized to make themselves accepted as members of a serious performance media.

The first slam poetry started in 1984, in the Get Me High lounge, a Chicago jazz club, by a construction worker named Marc Smith. Two years later, Marc Smith offered a plan to another jazz club, the Green Mill. When the owner accepted Marc Smith’s plan of hosting a poetry competition for performance poets every Saturday night, the slam poetry competition was introduced to the public arena.

Although the opposition to the poetry slams still exists, slams have performed an impressive function in promoting poetry to the general public. During the later years, more poetry books have been sold and an astonishing number of searches about poetry have been conducted on the internet search engines.

Poetry slams are here to stay because they have pushed poetry into the livelier world of performance, turning it into an intense experience for both the poet-participants and the audience. The art of poetry too, when faced with detachment or worse yet extinction, has welcomed the slams, as if returning to its earliest origin of spoken words made to be heard.

A serious poetry slam, as performance poetry, does not depend on the quality of the words, lines, and the poetic devices alone. It also involves oral skills such as eye contact with the audience, emphatic reading, voice control, and controlled body language. This is because poetry slams are performed primarily for the audience entertainment. A slam is not the same as an open-mic performance since an open-mic is there to encourage the poets while the audience fares second.

Sometime ago, I was among the audience in an informal poetry slam. True, it felt akin to a vaudeville show, but the audience participation and the poets’ enjoyment were genuine. In an informal slam poetry contest, the judges are selected from among the audience and all forms of audience participation are encouraged, even booing the poets at the end or the middle of their poetry readings. If the audience is dissatisfied the poet leaves the stage; however, during the slam I watched nobody left the stage as the result of public booing. Probably, I was inside a quieter audience.

In the beginning, slam poetry used to be about specific subjects that involved public concerns like politics, baseball, social issues, etc. Afterwards, the themes and the subjects expanded in range immensely.

At present, poetry slams find worldwide fame due to the efforts of PSI or Poetry Slam Inc. and The National Poetry Slam or the annual slam championship tournament. During the first round of a serious slam competition, all entrants can read their poetry. The time period for each poem is three minutes. Poets are allowed to enter the succeeding rounds if they qualify. The judges’ scores are numerical from zero to ten.

In the beginning, this competition was for poets singly. Nowadays, poets compete in four or five persons in a team in their home states and countries from North America and Europe. The winning teams travel to a city hosting the final competition. Since most local public radios broadcast the competition live to their listeners, the annual National Poetry Slam has become a popular event.

Besides the National Poetry Slam, any community may organize special slams such as: Dead Poet Slams that is reading from the works of deceased poets; Cover Slams where poets read other poets’ works; Improv Slams where poets say whatever comes to their minds without previous preparation; Group-Poem Slams written by a group of poets instead of one; Haiku or Limerick Slams; and the very funny Bad Poem Slams or the Low-Ball Slams where the worst score wins.

Poetry slams are not a passing fad. Any form of entertainment that is grounded in imagination with its roots in art will surely endure excess showmanship or high-brow criticism. Poetry Slams and their organization Poetry Slam Inc. are here to stay in earnest.

Joy Cagil is an author on http://www.Writing.Com/ which is a site for Poetry Contests. Her education is in linguistics and foreign languages. She has been involved with poetry all her life. Her portfolio can be found at http://www.Writing.Com/authors/joycag

My Opinions on Poetry (A Personal Review of Poetry)

2009-12-26T05:13:00.002-08:00

Index

Introduction: What Makes Poetry-Poetry?

Commentary: Perhaps my Style

Free Verse

Definition of Poetry I

Definition of Poetry II (effect)

Substance of a Poem

The World of Art in Words

Separate Excitement

On Poetry's Form

Figurative Language

What is Confessional Poetry?

Reading Poetry

Understanding the Poets

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.

Perhaps my Style

A Commentary on Poetry

I prefer to join the ranks of the naturalness, spontaneity, free from rhymed couplets, romanticism, and passion, leave the Elizabethans, to them. I prefer to shift a bit to the 11th century, or just before that era, when rhyme was becoming modernized, but not quite in place. Right there, there was a world of nature and mysteries and emotions to be written, told, and stories to be handed down, and memorized: addressing the times, its cultures, and heroes; and so I must take that period, with my era, and mix it with fragments and dreams, and all such things, and let the dead bury the dead. Let the artificial reproduce half the literature (they will anyway) and my kind the other half. It can be hard to live in a world where critics who write mostly criticism, discard themes, dignity, manners, this perhaps is a strong protest against all such things, but poets must reassert their right to represent the world, in a clear and genuine tone, it is our duty. We are only passing through, we leave behind what we write (we infect minds, or produce wholesomeness), the irate citizens will always get their full of whatever, but those who wish not to have their pockets picked, wait on us to circulate literature that is filled with swimming thoughts of such things I've already mentioned. And to these readers, and the generations to come, I write.

Free Verse: Today's poetry, often it has no voice, theme or even recognizable form. We call this free Verse, which is the dominate form of Postmodernism; prior to this, we had of what was called Modernism, where we reexamined what poetry is.

Definition of Poetry I: Each poem is a story, a short story, which involves density of language and intensity of imaging, or imagery (mental images); and descriptiveness, metaphors, similes (comparisons).
Effect (definition of Poetry II) as a poet, you need to ask 'Did I get the effect I wanted out of my poetry?' perhaps you did, and if so, you are on the right track. I mean I never ask a person this, I rather listen to see what they say about my poetry, and I then can answer the question myself.

Substance of the Poem

A poem has to have substance to survive...! Some of this substance is in the theme and in the insight of the poem.

-In writing a poem, like anything in life, one must have a plan, destination (where do you want to take your reader?), again, this is part of the substance, that will come out later.

-A poem perhaps is the secret life of the poet; it can be his black twin, his detached self-this is often the case. Thus, the poet and poem become more of a riddle of despair than a work of art.

The World of Art in Words

The world of Art, in words, has a definite meaning for me; it is a romance, produced during its stages of creation. Like a book. As I write it, refine it, proof it, and then finally victory comes-an opening and closing romance has taken place. Idleness is never involved, it is a horrible sin, an enemy of the soul. Man should not be idle, if so, the phantom comes out of him, not art.

The World of Art in Words

The artist appeared upon the land

from behind the sea-

the sun passed over him,

it shinned only for a moment

to clear a path for words.

#1718 3-5-2007

Separate Excitement

If you are looking for the poet inside the poem, look for the undercurrent he has left, the continuous hint of feeling, it should be everywhere, but seldom does anyone look for it, it is called separate excitement; or poetic art. Yeats uses it. If you missed the fountain and the beauty, and the exact riming in the poem, which is sometimes called 'duty,' go back and look for it, if you need to. I do not use as often as I used to and for various reasons, I do not take pleasure in the ordinariness.

On Poetry's Form

People get obsessed with structure, trying to choose the correct form they want to use in poetry (perhaps trying to learn their style, or approach in the process). I prefer to let go and blend one idea or event into the next, lest I lose the soul of it trying to fit it into something that never should have been.

I try to listen to my voice, the one speaking inside of me, if I can find the silence, I will find the voice with no pretense, and inside that voice, are the syllables, letters, words, rhyme, and other elements of poetry you may want to use.

Figurative Language
(An Example): figurative language, meaning words used to refer to something that you don't really mean, is used here to make noises, as are metaphors sometimes

Derivative Echoes

I would show you love in a handful of clouds-

Could I find the clouds, and find the love

And is it love one is really looking for?

Fallen angels had love from heaven

And chose lust in place, on earth...!

In hell one loves lust and thus, would be

Unhappy in Heaven I imagine...

Ah! Maybe allusions is the strand we're

Looking for...? We're living for...

We live in the age of imagined howling

...with aches and pains in the mind

Fear of death-nymphs (well dressed)

Schoolmasters serving children a blotted

Light; perfect pitch, more questions than

Answer; disrupting the harmonic balance!...

(Perhaps under all this is love.)

#728 6/2005

What is Confessional Poetry?

((And why do we write it?)( 3-1-2007))

What is Confessional Poetry? It is when you set yourself up for the big fall, when you get daring enough to tell all. Sylvia Plath, Anne Saxton, the perverted Allen Ginsberg; Robert Lowell, whom I have several books by, was a little calmer in his verse than those poets I just mentioned. Often the "I" is used or "You" in Confessional poetry. I find most of this poetry is unflattering, and that is why I do not do a lot of it; it wasn't meant to be. It is usually personal and autobiographical. The poet usually is speaking to you directly, the reader.

When I read Plath, her confessional style seems more fantasy than fiction, but be that as it may, it is her soul talking; one must forget the themes and subject matter in confessional poetry, it explores certain details, processes past emotions, events, the author is actually exploring and processing his life in front of you.

The question has arisen, "Why do they write it?" and a fair question that should be answered perhaps more from a psychologist, than a poet, for at times one needs to be brutally honest. To me, it seems it would clear the brain, and make one's guilt duller. Often times the more you write out something, the less potent it remains. A form of processing your pain.

Reading Poetry

In Reading poetry, first read it slowly, give it your attention, like you do when you eat dinner, then read it slowly again a second time, with an open mind, third, read it again, this time, as you would read prose, it will now jump out at you.

Many poems are complex, and perhaps ambiguous, if they are too much for you, trash them (unless you want to suffer through them, then you are asking for pain, and may receive it).

Know the poet you are reading, his history will help you understand why he is writing as he is, his mind perhaps will come clearer to yours.

Get rid of your preconceptions (bias and so forth) as you read-enjoy the experience. If you like the poetry and not the poet, because of your prejudice, you've got an issue.

Understanding the Poets

-To understand some poetry, or poets, one must have experienced what the poet has-identical experiences; or you must be shaped like the poet-, the exceptions are from the old school of poetry-one shoe fits all (thus, understanding the theme, plot and insight of poetry becomes much easier); from the contemporary scene, you must have the same shoe size of the poet to understand where the poet is leading you, and in poetry the poet should have a destination for the reader-lest he doesn't care (and he should).

-The poet survives perhaps because he or she is oblivious (or not connected so much) to the world, and all its compulsions (suicide is often on the other side of this coin, if not drugs and alcohol).

-Poetry has accomplished something if it causes one to mull over it...; stretching this a little further, there is (it seems) coming a day (not so far off in the future), when poets will not even need to know a thing about literature (most don't today); yet poetry is (or should be) considered the highest form of literature.

-Most poets write about love and death-which perhaps are the two main ingredients (or themes) to poetry; some write on social issues, which make for bad poetry; but it is "Beauty" that shines above everything, and that is often, too often over looked in place of self-interest, or a combination of negative delirious confusing thoughts put into writing by a poet under the influence of some kind of chemical. One can get a high off the beauty that surrounds them.

Last words: we as poets should not forget, we influence people, young people in particular, and owe an obligation to (if not duty to), set a good example by the way we live and write.

See Dennis' web site: http://dennissiluk.tripod.com

Modern Poetry - Poetry for Everyone

2009-12-26T05:13:00.001-08:00

Poetry has changed over the years, and modern poetry is not the same eclectic and elitist prose you may remember from your high school reading. Modern poetry is written in plain English, filled with imagery and emotion, and is so much easier to read than poetry of the past. If you haven't read modern poetry, you don't know what you are missing!

Edgar Allan Poe wrote the Raven, which is a wonderful piece of prose or poetry, and it is filled with imagery, emotion, metaphor, and hidden meaning. It's also filled with Old English and esoteric lines, making it difficult to read without having to stop and analyze the deeper or hidden meaning behind it.

Even some current poets write in the eclectic poetic stylings of the past, but the reader will spend so much time trying to figure out what the writer meant, that the meaning and emotion behind the writing is all but lost. Poetry is not something most readers want to analyze. It is something readers want to feel and experience.

The old style of poetry writing is great if you have the time and inclination to sit and read through it and study the meanings and imagery behind it. However, with today's busy schedules, only the literary types or students have the time to stop and put that much thought into something, when poetry should really be evoking emotion, not analysis.

That's what makes modern poetry works!

Modern poetry creates a short story, with visual imagery, in a few lines rather than a few pages. Modern poetry touches your heart, by evoking emotion with which you can relate, about things you probably have experienced yourself.

The common themes for modern poetry are love and romance, nature, beauty, and loss and grief. These are all things that everyone can relate to, and when written in verse form, with modern language use, a poem or piece of prose can bring about feelings long forgotten, remind of times of strong emotion, or speak of dreams for the future...all in a few lines, instead of pages of story.

A good book or a novel makes you think, striking the imagination...poetry and prose makes you feel, striking the emotions. Why not give modern poetry a chance? You can search online for samples or go to your local bookstore and pick up a copy and check it out. You may just be surprised how much you enjoy reading modern poetry!

Michelle L Devon is a freelance editor and author for Accentuate Services http://www.accentuateservices.com as well as several traditional publishing houses. Ms. Devon is also the author of a newly released modern poetry and prose compilation entitled In a Perfect World. For more information or to purchase a copy of Ms. Devon's book, please visit http://www.MichelleLDevon.com

Teach For Success - Why We Learn Poetry Part 2

2009-12-26T05:12:00.001-08:00

Poetry is the soul's music, and without it we might forget how to move to the rhythm of the universe. It is also the distillation of our perceptions of what we experience in our separate realities, and its expression is our creative, written attempt to share that reality with each other. You know, poetry is a very human thing to do, and we could say that poetry is where Man's hand meets God's creation on the written page.

As you move through any day in your life you have to acknowledge the utterly complete, and even incomprehensible, organization of the material plane in which we exist and live. The organization allows for our minds to achieve, and maintain, a sense of "reality." Within those existential boundaries, regardless of who they were created by, we are able to construct our experiences via our awareness and memory. This organization, this set of rules that we all agree to by default (since we have no say in the matter), allows us to know love, hate, peace, war, chaos, calm, life and... death. These are the "stuff" that poems are about: life.

The authors, the poets, the creators of the poems, songs and musical stories we read and love use numerous rules, conventions and inventions that allow us, the readers, to share in their reality; their life experiences and understandings. So, in our study of poetry it is sometimes worthwhile studying these very same rules, conventions and inventions so that we may better understand the poet's intent. In the final analysis, the study of these may even allow us to try our hand, no pun intended, with secretly creating a poem or two of our own. Wink, wink!

Just for starters there are rhyme, meter, rhythm, alliteration and word choice. And that's just for starters. We can continue with figurative language, hyperbole, similies, metaphors and analogies. Still there are more, and oh yes, it is at this point that I can hear the students beginning to groan. You know - I have to agree with them. Poetry is NOT the methodology used to write the poem, and studying these takes away some of the magic.

Poetry is NOT meter. Poetry is NOT alliteration. Poetry is NOT rhyme. Poetry is NOT any one convention.

Poetry is an idea that the author wants to share with the reader. So, if students are groaning because we are simply going down the list of "poetic vocabulary" then we are doing them a great injustice. The authors certainly did not intend for that. Frankly, the authors couldn't care less whether the students know how to define rhyme. They only care that they can hear it and enjoy it.

Instead, the focus should revert back to the author's intent, and it is here that the lesson of poetry should begin and end. A search for understanding and truth in the author's words. Now, during this process it may be worthwhile examining one or two of those aforementioned rules, conventions and inventions.

When teaching these conventions, it behooves the teacher to pick a poem that perfectly illustrates the rule or convention. For example, while studying Shakespeare I would probably go ahead and let them know it is a Sonnet; however, I would not allow this to detract from the meaning of the poem. I simply label the type of poem so that they may recognize it in the future. Sonnets use meter and rhyme to place emphasis on specific words or ideas within the poem. The construction of the Sonnet is a tool that Shakespeare used to help him single out words and phrases to help the reader understand the idea he was trying to communicate.

As teachers, one thing to keep in mind is that if a student is fairly proficient in reading they can, and will, "get" poetry. They don't need to know what the rules or conventions are that they are reading. Rhyme happens when the poem is read whether the students know what rhyme is or not. So, while we teach poetry the last thing we want to do is add fuel to the fire for those students who do not like poetry. We don't want to cause the "I hate poetry because it is too complex" syndrome. My experience has been that students who don't like poetry are not very good readers. So, invariably, reading poetry is difficult for them.

Therefore, another consideration with poetry is the reading level of the student. Poems must be on par with the student's reading level. This is especially true with poetry since in many cases the poem's author relies on the reader to supply some of their own understanding, words or interpretation during the course of the reading.

To summarize, when you are sharing a poem with your students the key focus will be for the student to understand what the author is trying to communicate. What idea or experience are they trying to give life to in the reader's mind? What is the poet's intent? Of secondary focus, and not required with every poem, is the exposure to the various elements used by poets to construct and convey their message. Finally, use poems that are relevant to the student's experiences and on par with their reading level. The more contemporary the language and ideas, the more understood the poem will be. Make sense?

Teach for success, and empower your students to think on their own.

R. Chris Wilkins
rc.wilkins@hotmail.com
http://teachforsuccess.spaces.live.com

What Is Poetry Becoming - Concrete, Visual, Digital, Performance, Experiential?

2009-12-26T05:11:00.001-08:00

There are many forms of poetry. Some are best read while others are best viewed and in the future we may add that some are best felt or experienced.

Some think that "good poetry" must rhyme while others think that "good" poetry "speaks" giving a clear or profound message. Others may call poetry that behaves like a springboard, launching creative responses in those who share it, the best, but however it is viewed, poetry like fashion is clothed in styles that affect its acceptability and/or respectability and promotion, and all poetry is about communication. It publishes, records or makes visible our experiences as well as showing things that have not necessarily been seen or noticed before, triggering that "Ah ha!", eureka or identification experience.

The exploration of image triggering and message transmission as an artistic form of communication can cause a blurring of the boundaries between poetry and art, if we can say that they in fact do have boundaries. We have created words to say this such as word art, concrete poetry, visual poetry, pattern poetry, visual riddles and puzzle poetry.

The concept of concrete poetry and word art has been around a long time although the words to define it as an art form may not. It is believed that the word "concrete poetry" began to spread as a new term in the 1950's helped by an exhibition of concrete poetry and a manifesto that was published in Brazil.

If we looked closely at some of the ancient forms of poetry we might see that many have relied on the visual aspects of the written language to communication, but more recently beginnings have been attributed to Apollinaire, who created calligrammes in 1914.

In visual poetry, the juxtaposition of letters, sound and shapes may be played with. The synergy of these words, letters and shapes trigger images, sounds and messages that can be called the art of the poet....making more from the sum of the parts in a visual communication.

The key element in visual poetry is the visual nature as apposed to the sound the words make. However some poets, as I have, use their homographical and homophonical discoveries to make poetry that needs to be read and seen:

Here/hair

is light

on

hair/here

as

light on

here/hair.

Performance poetry also relies on visual and oral communication. The difference being that aspects of the poem must be seen in the poet rather than on other forms of published material.

With the development of communication technologies, we can embed aural and visual stimuli into unique still or animated artistic expressions....what shall we call these new art forms? We already have words such as digital art and new media to talk about some art forms but do the words digital poems really communicate all that they can be? We have the technology to bring more senses into the poetry equation, touch for instance. What terms will we use for the touchy feely poems....experiential poetry?

Jennifer Phillips has published 4 books of poetry, and read or performed them at numerous events. You can view some of them at citwings.com

Online Poetry Communities - 10 Tips to Finding the Right One for You

2009-12-26T05:10:00.000-08:00

Online poetry communities, in their simplest sense, are sites you join to share poems and to meet other poets who also share an interest in poetry. However, finding an exceptional poetry site, dedicated to its poets, is not quite that simple. With so many poetry sites out there, how do you choose which one is best for you?

1. Membership Fees: Some poetry communities say they are free, once you join, however, you have to “upgrade” for additional features. Other poetry sites rely on donations, and advertisements. Look for a site that is no more than $35.00 annually.

Bottom Line: Find a site that only charges you ONE fee to use EVERY feature on the site.

2. Site Features: Look for a site that has tons of features, not just a few lame areas of posting and reading poetry. A good rule of thumb is this: For every $2.00 you spend annually, you should find ONE UNIQUE Feature of the site. If you are willing to spend $40.00, then you should get at least 20 UNIQUE Features.

Bottom Line: Find a poetry site that offers as much bang for your buck as possible.

3. Communication System: An online poetry community should be a community. An internal mail system, and an active Bulletin Board—a place where poets share ideas—is a must.

Bottom Line: Find a site that has a few ways poets can communicate.

4. Feedback System: Examine not only HOW you receive feedback, but the QUALITY of that feedback. Will you simply be getting brief comments? Is there a point system in place? Does that point system address areas of analysis that are important to you?

Bottom Line: Find a site that has a quality review system that provides you the feedback you are looking for.

5. Recognition Programs: Most poetry sites function as a fancy bulletin board for posting poetry. A solid poetry site encourages friendly competition, and a way for you to measure your progress. Being able to rise up the ranks, gain recognition from your fellow poets is not only fun, but rewarding.

Bottom Line: Find a site that encourages several recognition programs and poet rankings.

6. Site Layout: A poetry site should be clean, inviting, friendly, and easy to navigate. Many sites are just the opposite: laden with ads, thousands of words, and links that bring you everywhere but where you ought to be.

Bottom Line: Find a site that is clean, fairly devoid of ads, strong linking and ease of organization.

7. Poetry Database: Most online poetry communities lack meaningful poetry research tools. A site that provides its poets with as many links to resources as possible, is one has your best interests at heart. Bottom Line: Find a site that helps you learn poetry forms, movements, history, poets, etc., one stop shopping if you will.

8. Awards: Poor sites have either no award system, or a poor awards system. Quality sites invest in their members. Would you rather win a quality award, or receive certificates, magnets and bumper stickers in the mail?

Bottom Line: Find a site that is dedicated to giving back to its community in the form of quality, timely awards.

9. Support: So often I hear poets lament the fact that “no one seems to be behind the wheel.” A quality site responds promptly to its members, usually less than 48 hours. Send a trial email, see how long it takes to hear back.

Bottom Line: Find a site that responds to your concerns, questions, or suggestions within 48 hours.

10. Free Trial: Avoid any poetry site that does not give you AT LEAST a 7 day free trial. You should be able to access ALL the site features, not just a few teasers.

Bottom Line: Find a site that allows you a generous, all access FREE TRIAL, so you can fully understand its community.

Finding the right online poetry community doesn’t have to be difficult. If you asked me what ONE thing I would look for it is this: The more features a poetry site offers its poets, the more likely your experience is going to be a great one.

Rob Levasseur is a former English Teacher, published poet, owner, creator, and operator of WorldofPoets.com, an online poetry community built for, and by, its online poets. To learn more, email Rob at admin@worldofpoets.com.

The Therapeutic Benefit of Poetry

2009-12-26T05:09:00.002-08:00

Poetry Therapy and the Impact of Poetic Dialogue

From the beginning of time, poetry has been a means for people to express their deepest emotions and create healing in ritual and ceremony. In Greek mythology, we know that Asclepius, the God of Healing, was the son of Apollo, god of poetry. Hermes served as messenger between the two worlds to communicate between the gods and humanity. He carried the caduceus, "the winged rod with two serpents intertwined, which has become a symbol of the medical profession" (Poplawski, 75). Poems have also been viewed as carriers of messages from the unconscious to the conscious mind. Wherever people gather to mark a moment, they speak from heart to heart, with poetry.

In the counseling office, perhaps you have read a poem to a client that seemed to capture an issue she/he was struggling with, offering not only understanding, but hope. After the tragedy of 9/11, the airwaves and internet rang with poems of solace. When war in Iraq was imminent, a website developed where people could send poems expressing their feelings: Poets Against the War. Within days, thousands of poems were posted.

Mary Oliver, in her poem, "Wild Geese," says, "Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine." (Oliver, 110) Joy Harjo, in "Fire" says. "look at me/I am not a separate woman/I am the continuance/ of blue sky/I am the throat of the mountains." (Harjo, 25) The fourteenth century Persian poet Lala speaks about poetry:

I didn't trust it for a moment
but I drank it anyway,
the wine of my own poetry.

It gave me the daring to take hold
of the darkness and tear it down
and cut it into little pieces. (Barks, 11)

These are lines to carry in our hearts, because they open us to beauty, a sense of self, healing, truth, and human connection, and all this in just a few words!

At conception, we are born to the rhythm of the heart, growing in the fluid darkness until one day we stretch our way into light. With our first cry, we make our first poem, a sound that reverberates in our mother's heart, and when she cries in response, we hear our first poem. And so it continues, the voices of those who care for us convey all of the emotions we will come to know as our own, words, that if written down, would be poetry. It's that simple. Poetry is giving sound and rhythm to silence, to darkness, giving it a shape, turning it to light. When we read a poem that speaks to our experience, there is a shift, a click within. Someone has understood our darkness by naming their own. We feel less alone. Therapeutically, the "I" of us gathers energy and insight. Our world expands.

The following poem illustrates the concept of writing a poem to give darkness and suffering a voice. It was written by a participant in Phyllis' poetry therapy group, part of an intensive day treatment program for women addicted to alcohol and drugs. This poem states the truth of the author's experience in a haunting and beautiful way, giving the reader the opportunity to relate to what it feels like to be "broken."

Today I didn't care
whether or not they stared
didn't have time to put on airs.

Yesterday was a different story
wanted to look like a morning glory
fresh and bright couldn't tell
I was up all night.

Sometimes I can hide behind
my colored lines other times
I feel like a stained glass
window that's just been shattered
pretty pieces everywhere. (Klein, 16)

Rather than diminish the excellence of the poet's art, the poetry therapist enhances it. Poet Gregory Orr, in his book Poetry and Survival says "...the elaborative and intense patterns of poetry can...make people feel safe...the enormous disordering power of trauma needs or demands an equally powerful ordering to contain it, and poetry offers such order" (Orr, 92). Poetry structures chaos.

Dr. James W. Pennebaker, one of the most widely published researchers on the benefits of writing, says in his book, Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions, that writing about emotional topics improves the immune system by reducing "stress, anxiety and depression, improves grades in college (and) aids people in securing new jobs." (Pennebaker, 40). "Disclosing secrets beneficially reduces blood pressure, heart rate, and skin conductance." (Pennebaker, 52). Gregory Orr says that when we share secrets "we take a small step from survival to healing; a step analogous to the one a poet makes when he or she shares poems with another reader or an audience." (Orr, 88)

In a therapeutic environment, the trained facilitator addresses the healing elements of poetry: form and shape, metaphor, metamessage, the words chosen, and the sounds of the words together (alliteration and assonance). These elements, in association with each other, carry the weight of many feelings and messages at once, creating a link from the secret internal world to external reality, from the unconscious to the conscious.

Because a poem has a border, a frame, or structure, as opposed to prose, the form itself is a safety net. Strong emotions will not run off the page. A poetry therapist might ask his/her clients to draw a box in the center of the paper and write the words inside. Metamessage implies the ability to carry several messages in one line that "strike at deeper levels of awareness than overt messages" (Murphy, 69). Through the capacity to convey multi-messages, clients are able to experience merging as well as individuation/separation. The poem allows for a trial separation and then a return to the therapist for merging and "refueling" through the therapist's understanding of the poem. If the therapist says he/she appreciates a particular metaphor and how the words flow, the client feels loved and heard. In reading a poem aloud, the client may become caught up in his/her own rhythms and feel caressed.

An important question students of poetry therapy ask is how to find the right poem to bring to a group or individual. The best poems to start with are those that are understandable, with clear language, and a strong theme, as well as emotions that reflect some hope. Another essential element is that the poem must resonate with the mood and/or situation of the group or individual. This is called the isoprinciple, a term also used in music therapy for the same purpose. Dr. Jack Leedy says that "the poem becomes symbolically an understanding- someone/something with whom he/she can share his/her despair" (Leedy, 82)

A woman in Perie's cancer/poetry support group recently published a book of her poems and writings titled, I Can Do This: Living with Cancer-Tracing a Year of Hope. This title contains the critical word hope, for that is what we need in our lives to sustain us and heal. In her poem. "The Uninvited Guest," Beverley Hyman-Fead writes:

I feel fortunate my tumors came to me
in the fall of my life...
I'm grateful for this uninvited wake-up call, ...
Would I have appreciated the beautiful
images the moon makes in the still of the night?
No, I have my tumors to thank for that. (54)

She was able to write this poem in response to a Rumi poem called "The Guest House." This poem, written so long ago, reframes the meaning of suffering saying:

This being human is a guest house,
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, A depression, a meanness....

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows...

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond. (Barks, 1995, 109)

Perie chose this poem to bring to the cancer support group because it might engage the attention of the group members, perhaps to think about how their illness was a "guide," and what they had learned about themselves in the struggle. Another important response might be: "This makes me so angry! How could I ever want to invite in the darkness?" Whatever the emotional reaction, the poem is a catalyst for helping the reader to access and express feelings in a supportive, safe environment. Reading a poem a second time helps the client feel even more deeply the content and emotion. Also, lines spoken spontaneously will often form the first lines of poems.

After a poem is read, the therapist might then ask participants for lines in the poem that speak to them, or to which lines they are most drawn. This might be followed by questions for discussion of an emotional nature. Considering the Rumi poem, the therapist might suggest they discuss: What am I to experience in this life? What am I not inviting in? How can my place of work or home be a Guest House? How is the Guest House like your heart? Comments center around what the poem emotionally means to the reader, not what the poem means intellectually. Through group discussion, time to write and read what was written in the group, both members and facilitator can learn to think differently, perhaps applying newly formed concepts to existing behaviors and attitudes.

For instance, if one has felt like he/she was victimized by illness, through discussion and writing of this or another pertinent poem, she/he might be enabled to begin thinking about how to move toward acceptance. Even writing about rage toward illness is an important step. There is a beginning of some resolution within the poem. Rumi says to be grateful, and in her poem, Beverley, who is far along in her emotional healing process, is able to thank her illness, which gives her hope.

Another kind of healing that poems can provide is illustrated by poems written in response to the other. Here are excerpts from poems that Perie and Phyllis wrote:

Maybe angels are

mistakes
corrected,
old times resurrected, misguided love
back on course to lift the inner flute...
The moon is ripe with hope

but don't look there, angels hover
at elbow bend, between your toes
rows of them, wings of leaves or breeze...
Notice when they arrive
how their wings vary,
some traditional-fully feathered...
others blossomed like heather...

There are those with only goosebumps
not always on the back,
and some no wings at all,
just scratched knees trying to get off the ground.
- Perie Longo

Phyllis responded:

Maybe angels
were with me the day
my sister and husband were run down
on the road in New York, guided my
thoughts to what it would feel like to get hit
as I crossed the street in San Francisco.

Surely angels, familiar with misfortune
and emergency rooms,
watched as my sister and her husband,
almost as big as a small
bear, stepped off the curb, his size what saved them.

Accident angels hovered, caressed, willed them
to survive. Saw the ambulance come.

Did friendship angels, familiar with compassion and coincidence,
know I wouldn't be told for a week?
Did they bring me to the sangha* and the teacher who spoke
about bearing unbearable pain?

Perhaps they remember what it was like to walk,
have shoulders without wings.
Do they know when humans will enter the next life,
and when the unopened tulips
on my table will bloom, die, resurrect?

*sangha-a Buddhist congregation

Gregory Orr talks about "The Two Survivals"-survival of the poet, in that the poet struggles to engage with the disorder to write a poem, and in the act of writing, "bring order to disorder." The other survival is that of the reader, who connects with poems that "enter deeply into" him or her, leading to "sympathetic identification of reader with writer." (Orr, 83-84) This kind of connection can be heightened with direct dialogue because the reader and writer cross back and forth from one role to the other, deepening the possibility for empathy and sympathetic identification.

To illustrate this concept, we return to the two poems we wrote about angels. Perie wrote her poem when her daughter was going through a very difficult period. For Perie, the whole poem is for her daughter whose nickname was "angel-pie." The last three lines of the poem, and some no wings at all /just scratched knees/trying to get off the ground, is a message to encourage and empower her daughter, and more broadly for anyone who is feeling discouraged, traumatized, or troubled. When Phyllis received Perie's poem, she took the theme of angels and wrote her own family story about terrible pain and hope. The poems transcend the theme of angels because there is an even deeper content here-the theme of ordinary people becoming heroes, and the rebirth and reconciliation that can come from tragedy. Also, as is often the case with poetry, there is an unconscious connection as both authors write about family.

In speaking about poetry, it is also important to recognize that it can be an intimidating form of expression, carrying with it a need for perfection or a feeling like "I could never write a poem-my writing isn't good enough." In poetry therapy with groups or individuals, poems are never edited. Editing belongs in a poetry-for-craft setting. The objective of poetry therapy is to use the poem as an entry point for the writer, and it is a helpful way to work with transcendence of the inner editor, that resides in us all. To address a way to think about writing poetry, we turn to the words of our colleague, Robert Carroll, MD, who writes,

Read it aloud
pass it through your ears
enjoy the
ride and
know
the difference between poetry and prose
is that poetry is broken
into lines-
that is all.
(Carroll, 1)

Anyone can write poetry! It is our natural right and human instinct. All we have to do is allow the words to move and inspire us. The National Association for Poetry Therapy (NAPT): Promoting growth and healing through language, symbol, and story (http://www.poetrytherapy.org), has much useful information on its website including more examples of how to use poetry therapy with clients. We, in the Association, are like-minded psychiatrists, psychologists, college professors, social workers, marriage and family therapists, and educators-all of us are also poets, journal writers, and storytellers who have experienced healing through the written and spoken word, and want to share it with other clinicians as a skill they might like to develop. Poetry for self-expression and healing is used with mothers, children, and adolescents; battered women, the elderly, the depressed, the suicidal; those living with terminal illness, the bereaved, those with HIV, the mentally ill, and now hurricane victims and soldiers returning from Iraq who suffer post traumatic stress. We also exchange poems with each other, across the country, that have been effective in helping others heal. This exchange continues the healing rhythm and heart of poetry therapy.

As Jelaluddin Rumi says:

Out Beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing there is a field. I'll meet you there. (Barks, 1995, 36 )

Let's find each other along the way.

REFERENCES

Barks, C. (tr.) (1992). Naked Song. Maypop Books.
Barks, C. (tr.) with John Moyne. (1995). The Essential Rumi. NY: Castle Books.
Barks, C. (tr.) and Green, M. (1997). The Illuminated Rumi. NY: Broadway Books.
Carroll, Robert, MD, (2005) "Finding Words to say it: The Healing Power of Poetry" eCam 2005:2(2)161-172.
Harjo, Joy, (2002), How we Became Human, NY: W.W. Norton and Company.
Hyman- Fead, B. (2004) I can do this/ Living with cancer: tracing a year of hope. Santa Barbara Cancer Center: Wellness Program Publishing.
Klein, Phyllis, ed. (2001). Our Words-The Women of Lee Woodward Center Speak Out, SF: Phyllis Klein and Women and Children's Family.
Leedy, J.J. (Ed.). (1985) Poetry as healer: Mending the troubled mind. NY: Vanguard. Orr, G. (2002) Poetry as survival. Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press.
Murphy, J. M. (1979). The therapeutic use of poetry in Current Psychiatric Therapies, vol. 18. Jules Masserman, ed. NY: Grune & Stratton, Inc., pp. 65-72.
Oliver, M. (1993). Wild geese. New and selected poems. Boston: Beacon Press.
Pennebaker, J. (1990) Opening Up: The healing power of expressing emotions. NY: Guilford Press.
Poplawski, T. (1994) Schizophrenia and the Soul in The Quest, August, 74-79.

"This article appeared in the July/August 2006 issue of The Therapist, the publication of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (CAMFT), headquartered in San Diego, California. This article is copyrighted and been reprinted with the permission of CAMFT. For more information regarding CAMFT, please log on to http://www.camft.org."

Perie Longo, PhD, MFT, is a Registered Poetry Therapist (RPT), poet, poet in the schools, and poetry therapist in Santa Barbara. Perie is the past president of National Association of Poetry Therapy. She can be reached at http://www.perielongo.com
Phyllis Klein, LCSW, CPT, is a psychotherapist, poet, poetry therapist in San Francisco and Palo Alto and was on the Board of National Association of Poetry Therapy. She can be reached at http://www.womenstherapyservices.com

Writing Science Poetry

2009-12-26T05:09:00.001-08:00

Science poetry or scientific poetry is a specialized poetic genre that makes use of science as its subject. Written by scientists and nonscientists, science poets are generally avid readers and appreciators of science and "science matters." Science poetry may be found in anthologies, in collections, in science fiction magazines that sometimes include poetry, in other magazines and journals. Many science fiction magazines, including online magazines, such as Strange Horizons, often publish science fiction poetry, another form of science poetry. Of course science fiction poetry is a somewhat different genre. Online there is the Science Poetry Center for those interested in science poetry, and for those interested in science fiction poetry The Science Fiction Poetry Association. In addition, there's Science Fiction Poetry Handbook and Ultimate Science Fiction Poetry Guide, all found online. Strange Horizons has published the science fiction poetry of Joanne Merriam, Gary Lehmann and Mike Allen.

As for science poetry, science or scientific poets like science fiction poets may also publish collections of poetry in almost any stylistic format. Science or scientific poets, like other poets, must know the "art and craft" of poetry, and science or scientific poetry appears in all the poetic forms: free verse, blank verse, metrical, rhymed, unrhymed, abstract and concrete, ballad, dramatic monologue, narrative, lyrical, etc. All the poetic devices are in use also, from alliteration to apostrophe to pun to irony and understatement, to every poetic diction, figures of speech and rhythm, etc. Even metaphysical scientific poetry is possible. In his anthology, The World Treasury of Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics, editor Timothy Ferris aptly includes a section entitled "The Poetry of Science." Says Ferris in the introduction to this section, "Science (or the 'natural philosophy' from which science evolved) has long provided poets with raw material, inspiring some to praise scientific ideas and others to react against them."

Such greats as Milton, Blake, Wordsworth, Goethe either praised or "excoriated" science and/or a combination of both. This continued into the twentieth century with such poets as Marianne Moore, T. S. Eliot, Robinson Jeffers, Robert Frost and Robert Hayden (e.g. "Full Moon"--"the brilliant challenger of rocket experts") not to mention many of the lesser known poets, who nevertheless maintain a poetic response to scientific matters. Says Ferris, "This is not to say that scientists should try to emulate poets, or that poets should turn proselytes for science....But they need each other, and the world needs both." Included in his anthology along with the best scientific prose/essays are the poets Walt Whitman ("When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer"), Gerard Manley Hopkins "("I am Like a Slip of Comet..."), Emily Dickinson ("Arcturus"), Robinson Jeffers ("Star-Swirls"), Richard Ryan ("Galaxy"), James Clerk Maxwell ("Molecular Evolution"), John Updike ("Cosmic Gall"), Diane Ackerman ("Space Shuttle") and others.

Certainly those writing scientific poetry like those writing science fiction need not praise all of science, but science nevertheless the subject matter, and there is often a greater relationship between poetry and science than either poets and/or scientists admit. Creativity and romance can be in both, as can the intellectual and the mathematical. Both can be aesthetic and logical. Or both can be nonaesthetic and nonlogical, depending on the type of science and the type of poetry.

Science poetry takes it subject from scientific measurements to scientific symbols to time & space to biology to chemistry to physics to astronomy to earth science/geology to meteorology to environmental science to computer science to engineering/technical science. It may also take its subject from scientists themselves, from Brahmagypta to Einstein, from Galileo to Annie Cannon. It may speak to specific types of scientists in general as Goethe "True Enough: To the Physicist" in the Ferris anthology. (Subsequent poets mentioned are also from this anthology.)

Science poetry may make use of many forms or any form from lyrical to narrative to sonnet to dramatic monologue to free verse to light verse to haiku to villanelle, from poetry for children or adults or both, for the scientist for the nonscientist or both. John Frederick Nims has written for example, "The Observatory Ode." ("The Universe: We'd like to understand.") There are poems that rhyme, poems that don't rhythme. There's "concrete poetry" such as Annie Dillard's "The Windy Planet" in which the poem in in the shape of a planet, from "pole" to "pole," an inventive poem. "Chaos Theory" even becomes the subject of poetry as in Wallace Stevens' "The Connoisseur of Chaos."

And what of your science and/or scientific poem? Think of all the techniques of poetry and all the techniques of science. What point of view should you use? Third person? First person, a dramatic monologue? Does a star speak? Or the universe itself? Does a sound wave speak? Or a micrometer? Can you personify radio astronomy?

What are the main themes, the rhythms? What figures of speech, metaphors, similes, metaphor, can be derived from science. What is your attitude toward science and these scientific matters?

Read. Revise. Think. Proofread. Revise again. Shall you write of evolution, of the atom, of magnetism? Of quanta, of the galaxies, of the speed of sound, of the speed of light? Of Kepler's laws? Shall you write of the history of science? Of scientific news?

Read all the science you can.

Read all the poetry you can.

You are a poet.

You are a scientist.

What have you to say of the astronomer, the comet, of arcturus, of star-sirls, of galaxies, of molecular evolution, of atomic architecture, of "planck time" to allude to other poetic titles.

What does poetry say to science?

What does science say to poetry?

Susan Shaw is a freelance writer and web content writer. Her articles and web content appear online. Susan Shaw is an affiliate of The Book Store/The Science Library, [http://thebookstore.vstoremarket.com/index.htm] (For The Science Library, put "Science" in their search engine.)

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