Archive for the 'Tom' Category
informal talk about forms: the pantoum
13 Comments Published by Tom February 28th, 2008 in Informal Talk About Forms, Tom.Repetition is one of the pillars of poetry. Sometimes the repetition is of words and phrases (as in sestinas, ghazals, or villanelles), sometimes it’s a repetition of sound (rhyme, alliteration, assonance), sometimes the rhythm of the words (which we most clearly see in formal meters like iambic pentameter). All these types of repetition are used [...]
read write prompt #16: It’s like deja vu all over again!
8 Comments Published by Tom February 27th, 2008 in Read Write Prompt, Tom.I suppose I should start by apologizing for the cliché, but your prompt this week is to repeat yourself poetically. Repetition is one of the most important concepts in poetry. Songwriters understand this with their catchy choruses and repetition is very common in verse forms. Villanelles, sestinas, rondeaux and pantoum are all built on repetition. [...]
informal talk about forms: the villanelle
8 Comments Published by Tom January 24th, 2008 in Informal Talk About Forms, Tom.Without making any judgments about the value of obsession in poetry, the villanelle is an excellent vehicle for obsession. The repeated use of the refrains force the poem to keep circling and grabbing onto a very small set of ideas. This repetition is the key element of the villanelle.
Villanelle of Change
by Edwin Arlington Robinson
Since Persia [...]
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read write prompt #10: meta-whatsits?
5 Comments Published by Tom January 16th, 2008 in Read Write Prompt, Tom.The pendulum of poetic taste has swung in many directions over the years. While much surviving poetry comes to us in anthologies - and is given to us as representative - we really have no way of knowing what all the poets from any given time period were writing. Today, with so many poets able to participate [...]
From now until midnight one week from today, comments on this post will be open, so you can leave a permalink to your blog post for this week’s contribution.
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read write prompt #4: change up your line length
20 Comments Published by Tom December 5th, 2007 in Read Write Prompt, Tom.Poetry has a strange dual-identity. Historically, and certainly currently, much of poetry existed to be spoken or performed. It had a rhythm and timing in the delivery, the speech or chanting of the poet being the form of the poem.
Rendered on the page, poems still have a rhythm (even if it is not patterned) and [...]