A little funny thing before I get started…I see a lot of people who think they are writing free verse…when most often they are actually using various aspects of couplets, triplets and other forms of poetry…without even knowing it. This leads me to wonder how poets of the past came up with the various forms of poetry that we today call “formal” or “literary poetry”. Did they start with an outline of the structure of what they wanted it to look like and then write a poem using those rules of structure or did they write a poem and then makes the rules of structure. It was probably a little of both…but it makes me wonder. I will have to look into that.
That is basically what free verse is…creating your own form of poetry.
This is the kind of poetry people are most familiar with. Why do most people enjoy writing this form of poetry more than any other? Because they think there are no rules and that it is simple and easy to write. Well hmm that is almost correct. There are no rules of versification. That is to say there are no rules of meter or rhyme. In a free verse poem you can set your own meter if you wish or have none. You can have rhymes or not. You can have one or the other or neither…that is all up to the writer. However, there is more to writing a free verse poem than just putting your thoughts down on paper or typing them into your computer.
Rules…
What are the rules…or since there are not set rules maybe I should say…what should the rules be?
The rules are very simple…the writer makes the rules for each poem they write.
The rules should be…choose your words carefully…make proper line breaks…make your stanza breaks at the right point. Pay attention to the words you use and where you place them within each line and within the poem. And the most important rule should be…keep your readers attention.
Strategy…
(this can be used with all forms of poetry…not just free verse)
What are some good ways of writing a good free verse poem?
For me…I just write it out and if there are things about it that I do not like I edit it and do what has to be done to make it a good poem. Sometimes I can have a three or four stanza free verse poem written in five minutes but sometimes it can take several hours.
Write your poem in a raw form…that is to say, your thoughts on whatever the subject or topic is.
Once the poem is written in a raw form then we can go back and edit the words, removing unnecessary ones or choosing more powerful synonyms, and working to cut and shape the poem. You will know when you are done when your poem gives the message you want.
Other points of strategy to consider…
Know what the poem deals with. Does this poem deal with emotions…does it deal with an aspect of your own life…is it a topical poem that deals less with emotion and more with a point of view on some subject?
How do you want this poem to be read…what aspects do you want to bring to life?
What I mean by this is…do you want this poem to be more of a visual type of poem where you need the reader to see what it is your looking at and so on or are you seeking to bring out an emotion or something else entirely. Are you looking to bring forth a combination these things? In short…know how you want the poem to be viewed by the reader. You want them to see what is in your mind and feel what you feel.
What do you want the reader to do?
Do you want to bring tears to there eyes…do you want them to feel the deep emotions of love, anger or fear etc. that you feel? To sum it up…you want to put the reader at the point of contact…to weave them into the poem and you want them to feel the emotions and/or see the visual you want to paint with your words.
There are many different angles of which you can use to move the poem to suit your needs and whatever those needs are that is what you need to concentrate on. Why? Because you want the reader to see what you see and feel what you feel without having to use a thousand words of detail to describe the scene or feeling.
*Note* I have said these words a lot in the past and will say them many more times…You want the reader to see what you see and to feel what you feel. That is true in any form of writing and the most effective way you have to do that is with the words you use.
*Tip* Get a dictionary, a thesaurus and a rhyme dictionary these three items will be of immense value to you.
Now we have some “rules” lol and know a little strategy for writing a free verse poem…what else could we need?
We need to know where and when to end our lines and how to flow the verse along.
A free verse poem that is done well will have a rhythm to it and you may notice patterns of sound that could be compared to the lyrics of a song. Oh but free verse does not have any set pattern…does it? No it does not…at least not until the writer creates one.
How long should a free verse line be?
Well since there are no set rules…in free verse each poem has its own rules…it can be as long or as short as you wish…however it is my own opinion that a line should be at least three or four words long and that one word lines should be used sparingly because that is like jamming the word into the readers eye. Using a single word line puts enormous emphasis onto that word…so that word had better be important and able to stand on its own.
Breaks…
In moving from line to line and stanza to stanza, the poet's main consideration is where to insert line breaks. Some ways of doing this include breaking the line or stanza where there is a natural pause or at a point of suspense for the reader. Walt Whitman often used the breath rule for breaking a line or a stanza…that is the point where if you were reading the poem aloud you would naturally stop to take a breath. You may want to have your break at the end of a thought or in the middle of a sentence. Creating a line break or stanza break in mid-sentence gives a specific word or phrase more emphasis.
What about punctuation?
Ok lets talk about punctuation. A line that ends with a period or comma is called an end stopped line. A line that continues onto the next line without punctuation at the end of the line is called an enjambed line.
For example here are some lines of end stopped verse.
I saw her sitting,
on the porch with her face,
resting in her hands,
as tears streamed out,
from between her fingers.
Here are some similar enjambed lines of verse.
I saw her sitting on the porch, with her face
resting in her hands. From between her fingers
tears streamed out.
While this is a good example of punctuation showing end stopped and enjambed verse it is also a good example of “how” you say something can give “what” you say more or less emphasis as well as more or less power which depends on how you want to say what you have to say. Look at the lines of verse above and look at the word “tears” and tell me in which example does the word have more effect? Most likely (I know some will choose the other) but most will say the second had the most effect. That is because the word was given more emphasis because of its placement. You may notice that the word “from” has more emphasis in the second example than it does in the first. That is because it was also given a position of more power by making it the first word of a new sentence. Now if we were to capitalize the first word of each line then the word “Tears” in the second example would have even more emphasis places upon it and it would also be more pronounced. It all depends on how much emphasis you want a particular word to have.
Word placement is very important in poetry and vastly more important than punctuation (which I do not use a lot unless I need to) because where you place a word molds what you are wanting to say.
In free verse it is important that you make your end words strong words because you will not always have that rhyming effect to draw attention to them so they need to carry more emphasis and this is also true with the first word of a line though it is not as important as the end word. When you read a poem you do not consciously know it but there is anticipation as the eye moves from the end of one line to the beginning of the next, and from punctuation marks within a line to the next word this can give that word within a line more emphasis and cause more attention to be drawn to it. There are more ways of giving words and phrases more emphasis that I have talked about in the feedback section and in this section of the forum and I will give more information on this in the future but remember this…you want to pull the reader through the poem with the flow of the poem and words create flow. In the two examples above there is one word that is really not a useful word…can you tell me which word it is?
Other things to know…
In writing a free verse poem it is important to know that you can use a combination of the structural styles of other forms of poetry. You also have all the tools of formal poetry at your disposal and you are free to use them. You can use metaphors, rhymes, meter, consonance, assonance, personification, alliteration, rhythm, simile, synonyms, antonyms and so on. They are there for you to use…use them. That is one of the great things about exposing yourself to other forms of poetry outside of free verse because it gives you a better understanding of poetry and how a poem is put together and what you can do to give a poem imagery and how to bring the words to life for the reader…that is what we all want to do…isn’t it…bring our poems to life and give the reader a chance to experience our imaginations, emotions and our life for a brief moment in time.
History…
While many believe free verse poetry is a rather recent poetic style…it is not. Free verse has been around for hundreds of years. I read in a book “Origins of Free Verse” by H.T. Kirby-Smith where he has traced free verse back to England in the 1600’s with the writings of John Milton and Abraham Cowley. However there are hints that free verse possibly goes as far back as the 1400’s but I have seen no evidence of this. The advent of free verse poetry was of direct reaction against formal poetry but only in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries did free verse become one of the most popular poetic forms with the writings of poets such as Walt Whitman and T.S. Eliot.
Now my poem…
Sense of love
It can be seen,
it is there in your eyes,
I see it in the smile upon your face.
It can be heard,
in the sound of your voice,
it is there, as you call my name,
it rolls off your tongue,
out past your, lips.
It can be felt,
with the touch…of you hand,
resting in the palm of my own,
while your lips press against mine.
I can see it,
I can hear it,
I feel it all around.
It is there for me as I awake
every morning. It is there
as I lay next to you, every night.
It is there all the day long.
I feel the love of your embrace.
I see the love of your heart.
I hear the love within your words.
Your love for me is here…
touching my very
soul.
Tue Jun 27, 2006 10:00 pm
ghost
Joined: 06 Nov 2005
Posts: 2828
Location: MIA
hi eire
hmmm... i love challenges. so the answer about which word is superfluous in your examples, is the word "from".
technically speaking, a question though.
why on earth did you put a comma in this line?
out past your, lips
spoils the whole line for me (speaking as a reader of course).
what about patterns? repeating certain lines, or different thoughts in the same way, is something i am very fond of. too much so at times, i'm afraid.
Thank you very much for your reply and support of this section of the forum.
Hugging you tight.
"why on earth did you put a comma in this line?
out past your, lips"
I could lie to ye and tell you that I just forgot to remove it as I edited the poem.
But the truth is...as I closed my eyes and imagined every word I always paused in my thoughts between the word "your" and the word "lips" and that is because as I would think or say those words I always had the image of her lips moving as she spoke...mmm those beautiful sweet lips.
"what about patterns?"
As I said in the post you have all the tools of formal poetry at your disposal.
Refraining lines (repeating lines) is one of those tools (I did not mention it in particular because if I mentioned every single tool...I would still be writing this post LOL). If it fits your poem and can be used to express your thoughts then do it.
antonyms and synonyms are also tools that can be used to express the same thought in a different way or the same thought in an opposing way.
As to the challenge... I am not answering that yet lolol maybe someone else wants a crack at it.
Eiregirl
Sun Jul 02, 2006 7:11 pm
desert-fish
Joined: 13 Apr 2006
Posts: 2777
Location: deleted
Hi eire
what i want to know is this:
Some times I like to indent certain lines and not others when i write a poem.
Can't say why, it just makes sense to me like that. Do you agree with that? I mean, giving an actual physical shape to what you have written?
It cannot apparently be done when you submit a poem to mels, I tried with the poem "screaming" and did not succeed. the indents disappeared.
I like doing that sometimes myself...indenting lines but as you found out it does not work all that easy here...sometimes I just use my dots...I like my dots (giggle). If you want you can make it appear as though you have intended by adding colour to the dots that is the same as the background. For more information on this and to know what colour to use...
GHOST...stop being invisible and tell Pale what colour to use...
But if ghose does not become visible fortheloveofagoodwoman also knows what colour to use.
If our wonderful beautiful and very kind ADMIN would enable HTML we would not have to mess with that but I am sure she has her reasons and I will respect those reasons whatever they may be.
I do totally agree with the use of indentions and would do it more often myself if I did not have to spend so much time adding dots and removing dots and messing with finding the right colour code (i never wrote it down...bopping myself on the head) because there are many forms of poetry that require giving the poem a specific shape such as a diamond or trianglular shape.
Hopefully ghost will respond and I believe she knows but I am not sure and I am certain fortheloveofagoodwoman knows what colour to add to the dots for the appearance of an indention. I will also ask them and post it here for you just in case you cannot contact them or if they do not post it here.
Hugs,
Eiregirl
Sat Jul 29, 2006 4:34 am
ghost
Joined: 06 Nov 2005
Posts: 2828
Location: MIA
hi you two
lol, still not visible but i see all....
in the Help and Tips section there are full instructions on how to stagger text using the colour Gainsboro.
this is great advice; lots of excellent points for me to think of when I write some more free verse, which I used to like to do, but lately have stopped.
So thank you.
And thanks for that poem - it's so moving. For me, the last line then puts the emotion up a notch even further and it's just so beautiful.
quote:Originally posted by Violets-On-The-Sea:
Hi Eire
this is great advice; lots of excellent points for me to think of when I write some more free verse, which I used to like to do, but lately have stopped.
So thank you.
And thanks for that poem - it's so moving. For me, the last line then puts the emotion up a notch even further and it's just so beautiful.
Violets
Hello Violet
Thank you very much for the reply and I hope you got some good information from the post...I admit that I do not know everything about poetry and that from time to time I have trouble with stressed and unstressed (such as you find in sonnets) sometimes I have it and blaze right through it but other times the stressed and unstressed words are just out the window. I always encourage input if there is anything in any of my posts that I have incorrectly stated.
Thank you again for you wonderful reply
Hugs,
Eiregirl _________________ All poems and stories posted by Eiregirl are
Copyright 2005 - 2008 Aoibhegréine
These literary works are my property under copyright. If you wish to use my work for any purpose please ASK FIRST.
It looks like you are the only one that is going to take a crack at the challenge.
Here is the answer to the question..."In the two examples above there is one word that is really not a useful word…can you tell me which word it is?" Well the examples are now below...
I saw her sitting,
on the porch with her face,
resting in her hands,
as tears streamed out,
from between her fingers.
Here are some similar enjambed lines of verse.
I saw her sitting on the porch, with her face
resting in her hands. From between her fingers
tears streamed out.
In both examples the word "from" is not really useful or needed but there is nothing truly wrong with having it there but it is just not useful.
There is another word in the first example that is not real useful that word is "as" but if "as" is removed then in my opinion the word "from" would have to stay because to me removing both words in this example hurts the flow of the verse. Removing one or the other...not a problem but to remove both could create a problem.
In the second example there is also another word that could be removed and that word is "with". In this example you could remove both "with" and "from" without having any adverse effect on the verse.
Why can we remove the two words from the second example that are not real useful with no adverse effect but we cannot do it with the first example?
There is a very simple explanation...word placement.
ghost...you were correct...the one word in both examples that is not useful is "from".
Hugs ghost tight mmmmm
Eiregirl _________________ All poems and stories posted by Eiregirl are
Copyright 2005 - 2008 Aoibhegréine
These literary works are my property under copyright. If you wish to use my work for any purpose please ASK FIRST.
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I am not answering that yet lolol maybe someone else wants a crack at it.
