KirahIf you don't like it, you don't like it. You can't force yourself.
I'm not an expert, but I can show you some stuff I really like and tell you why I like it.
It's not the highest-quality poem of all time in terms of content, but I think the writing is great, and might have something of the narrative you want to hear. Either way, it's fun, so give it a go. Also, hear. Some poems are for performance: this one, in particular, has some nice jazzy music behind it. In this, I really like the way that the lines don't stop just because there's a rhyme. If you look at the old classic;
- the rhymes end the lines which I think gives people reading it the inclination to leave a (mental) pause when reading it to oneself or (actual) pause when reading it out line - Storm proves you don't have to and is kinda how I learned not to. Some lines do wanna end with pauses, but, in my book, unless there's some punctuation to indicate you should do so, you're just gonna disrupt the flow and make it feel disjointed and awful.
I don't tend to go for old-school classics. They tend to overly rely on strict form because that was, well, the format at the time. The artform simply hadn't moved to anything a little more free-form in old-school classes, so maybe they seem stilted and unnatural because, well, they are. If you add to that the realisation that most of the references are basically wasted on modern audiences who literally don't understand what is actually meant by things. The Lady of Shallott is a rare exception. I can't put my finger on it, but this is the stand-out strophe (not stanza - the term is 'strophe') for me.
I don't know if you know about meter, but much of this is written in Iambs: two syllables back to back that have emphasis on the second syllable, so it kinda sounds like Da-Dum as you read it. Read through the first section of this strophe (until Camelot), but focus on the first line for now. It's eight single-syllable words, divided into four pairs (groups of syllables in poetry are called Metric Feet): they're iambs, so it sounds like this -
Read the same line again, and put your finger of your right hand in the palm of your left hand (really). On each 'Da' syllable, tap your palm. On each 'Dum' syllable, tap your first finger. This should help you get the rhythm. Now read through first section of this strophe again and see what happens. Done it? Did you find that the rhythm 'broke' on 'she looked down' - it's not an iamb anymore. In the narrative of the poem, looking down to Camelot is something the Lady of Shallot must never do, lest a curse befall her. The rhythm breaks in the poem exactly as the curse hit her - while the Iambs, to me, read like the (rapid) beating of her heart as she basically gets the hots for sexy sexy Lancelot - they're steady, but gives it speed.
I read the next Metric Foot (Out flew) as a Trochee, the opposite of an Iamb - the emphasis on the first syllable of the two. This gives the second part of this strophe real urgency (because you are forced to pause before it to get the emphasis right), and rightly so, because she just invoked the curse and now magic shit is happening in her room. All of the rest of it is in Iambic, again; as before, it gives it speed and rhythm, but the speed no longer has anything to do with a romantically-quickened heart but more to do with OH SHIT THE CURSE IS MAKING SHIT HAPPEN.
I hope this made sense and you can kinda see how meter (which is basically exclusive to verse) really makes the (are you ready for a cliche?) words kinda come alive. It's not just words on a page that rhyme.
Incidentally, Shmoop has a brilliant analysis of it, which is pretty engaging, so if you did want to delve in, I'd say to start there.
This is another performance. I have to say; if I saw this on a page, I would, well, turn the page and go read something else. I certainly can't pick it apart like I can with The Lady of Shallot (maybe because I'm no expert), but I think this illustrates one of the great things about poetry; it's frequently short-form and, nowadays, can stand for itself without any context whatsoever. This means that a shit-load of metaphors, which on their own, don't actually say a whole lot (being metaphors, they're divorced from direct meaning) but poetry is a great vehicle for those gooey little feelings, which I think Sarah Kay does really, really well here - which is subjective, but whatever. As a bonus, this is also a Ted Talk about poetry and Sarah Kay works with people who've never written poetry before.
Now, Simon Armitage is my favourite poet. I just have one rule: he's not allowed to perform, because my god he makes (his own) great poetry boring. But on a page, I bloody love it.
The 'da-dum' thing I tried to explain is a really useful way of finding the rhythm, incidentally, and will help you pick out maybe where you can't quite put your finger on the stresses. If you count the metric feet in this, you'll find that you have to invert the rhythm (dum-da) for the first sentence/two lines, but then it kinda blends into the next sentence. If you start with the emphasis on the first syllable of mother and alternate stresses every syllable, you find by the second sentence/third line, it feels iambic again. This inversion from trochee to iamb happens almost invisibly so unless you can find the rhythm, sometimes it might feel like it's just prose with surprise carriage-returns in it. It's anything but.
This is a modern poem and you ought to be able to tell from the way it's structured, though if you look at it, you'll still find the meter is hugely important, even though the beginning of each strophe. My favorite part is 'Anchor. Kite.' You just have to pause before 'Anchor', which lends these two words great weight - a kind of thoughtfulness completely applicable to the content and which single-word sentences in prose can also have, but the fact that poetry is deliberately break-down-able into metric feet and that should underpin how you read it, means the effect is amplified. In this case, it's because 'Us' is the back half of an Iamb (and therefore stressed) and 'Anchor' is itself a Trochee. The two stresses back to back are awkward, so you stop. And you think.
There are other great clues in the poem, like the variable line-length, that help to give imperceptible pauses (both literal and, for thought), such as 'something \ has to give'. The literal shape of the words on the page is so important in much modern poetry, which I've never seen apply to prose; for me, the drastically variable line-length somehow echoes the 'back-and-forth' nature of the encounter in question (shouting measurements up and down the stairs), but also implies an inconsistency of physical presence within the relationship more generally. How much of this is me talking bollocks is entirely up to you: god knows I've had people try to sell me poetry with their own interpretation and I've basically politely said "that's cute but it's also subjective nonsense" - but hopefully even if you think I'm talking shite, you can kinda see why I get the impression that I do.
Here's a bonus one whose actual constituent parts I won't try to unpick because, as I say, I'm no expert, and I can't quite work it out myself. But poetry and flash-fiction can have similar functions; at face-value, it's just a psychopath. On closer scrutiny, you remember that it's basically impossible to hit somebody with a bigass metal krooklok while in a car at all, let alone while driving and let alone without swerving - when the guy's dead, the weather seems to miraculously change (while blending the idiomatic reference to his inner self and the literal meaning later in the poem). So it's a bigass metaphor for other-ing and killing off part of himself - the kind of dark twist that short-form fiction can also have. I'm not saying fiction can't do this, but I'm saying that poetry also definitely can.
Hopefully some of this helped. If you have any questions, I'll do my best, but, as I say, I'm not really an expert.
I'm not an expert, but I can show you some stuff I really like and tell you why I like it.
It's not the highest-quality poem of all time in terms of content, but I think the writing is great, and might have something of the narrative you want to hear. Either way, it's fun, so give it a go. Also, hear. Some poems are for performance: this one, in particular, has some nice jazzy music behind it. In this, I really like the way that the lines don't stop just because there's a rhyme. If you look at the old classic;
Roses are red
Violets are blue
I'm feeling sticky
All 'cause of you (or whatever)
Violets are blue
I'm feeling sticky
All 'cause of you (or whatever)
- the rhymes end the lines which I think gives people reading it the inclination to leave a (mental) pause when reading it to oneself or (actual) pause when reading it out line - Storm proves you don't have to and is kinda how I learned not to. Some lines do wanna end with pauses, but, in my book, unless there's some punctuation to indicate you should do so, you're just gonna disrupt the flow and make it feel disjointed and awful.
I don't tend to go for old-school classics. They tend to overly rely on strict form because that was, well, the format at the time. The artform simply hadn't moved to anything a little more free-form in old-school classes, so maybe they seem stilted and unnatural because, well, they are. If you add to that the realisation that most of the references are basically wasted on modern audiences who literally don't understand what is actually meant by things. The Lady of Shallott is a rare exception. I can't put my finger on it, but this is the stand-out strophe (not stanza - the term is 'strophe') for me.
She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces through the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She looked down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror cracked from side to side;
"The curse is come upon me," cried
The Lady of Shalott.
She made three paces through the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She looked down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror cracked from side to side;
"The curse is come upon me," cried
The Lady of Shalott.
I don't know if you know about meter, but much of this is written in Iambs: two syllables back to back that have emphasis on the second syllable, so it kinda sounds like Da-Dum as you read it. Read through the first section of this strophe (until Camelot), but focus on the first line for now. It's eight single-syllable words, divided into four pairs (groups of syllables in poetry are called Metric Feet): they're iambs, so it sounds like this -
Da-Dum Da-Dum Da-Dum Da-Dum
Read the same line again, and put your finger of your right hand in the palm of your left hand (really). On each 'Da' syllable, tap your palm. On each 'Dum' syllable, tap your first finger. This should help you get the rhythm. Now read through first section of this strophe again and see what happens. Done it? Did you find that the rhythm 'broke' on 'she looked down' - it's not an iamb anymore. In the narrative of the poem, looking down to Camelot is something the Lady of Shallot must never do, lest a curse befall her. The rhythm breaks in the poem exactly as the curse hit her - while the Iambs, to me, read like the (rapid) beating of her heart as she basically gets the hots for sexy sexy Lancelot - they're steady, but gives it speed.
I read the next Metric Foot (Out flew) as a Trochee, the opposite of an Iamb - the emphasis on the first syllable of the two. This gives the second part of this strophe real urgency (because you are forced to pause before it to get the emphasis right), and rightly so, because she just invoked the curse and now magic shit is happening in her room. All of the rest of it is in Iambic, again; as before, it gives it speed and rhythm, but the speed no longer has anything to do with a romantically-quickened heart but more to do with OH SHIT THE CURSE IS MAKING SHIT HAPPEN.
I hope this made sense and you can kinda see how meter (which is basically exclusive to verse) really makes the (are you ready for a cliche?) words kinda come alive. It's not just words on a page that rhyme.
Incidentally, Shmoop has a brilliant analysis of it, which is pretty engaging, so if you did want to delve in, I'd say to start there.
This is another performance. I have to say; if I saw this on a page, I would, well, turn the page and go read something else. I certainly can't pick it apart like I can with The Lady of Shallot (maybe because I'm no expert), but I think this illustrates one of the great things about poetry; it's frequently short-form and, nowadays, can stand for itself without any context whatsoever. This means that a shit-load of metaphors, which on their own, don't actually say a whole lot (being metaphors, they're divorced from direct meaning) but poetry is a great vehicle for those gooey little feelings, which I think Sarah Kay does really, really well here - which is subjective, but whatever. As a bonus, this is also a Ted Talk about poetry and Sarah Kay works with people who've never written poetry before.
Now, Simon Armitage is my favourite poet. I just have one rule: he's not allowed to perform, because my god he makes (his own) great poetry boring. But on a page, I bloody love it.
The 'da-dum' thing I tried to explain is a really useful way of finding the rhythm, incidentally, and will help you pick out maybe where you can't quite put your finger on the stresses. If you count the metric feet in this, you'll find that you have to invert the rhythm (dum-da) for the first sentence/two lines, but then it kinda blends into the next sentence. If you start with the emphasis on the first syllable of mother and alternate stresses every syllable, you find by the second sentence/third line, it feels iambic again. This inversion from trochee to iamb happens almost invisibly so unless you can find the rhythm, sometimes it might feel like it's just prose with surprise carriage-returns in it. It's anything but.
This is a modern poem and you ought to be able to tell from the way it's structured, though if you look at it, you'll still find the meter is hugely important, even though the beginning of each strophe. My favorite part is 'Anchor. Kite.' You just have to pause before 'Anchor', which lends these two words great weight - a kind of thoughtfulness completely applicable to the content and which single-word sentences in prose can also have, but the fact that poetry is deliberately break-down-able into metric feet and that should underpin how you read it, means the effect is amplified. In this case, it's because 'Us' is the back half of an Iamb (and therefore stressed) and 'Anchor' is itself a Trochee. The two stresses back to back are awkward, so you stop. And you think.
There are other great clues in the poem, like the variable line-length, that help to give imperceptible pauses (both literal and, for thought), such as 'something \ has to give'. The literal shape of the words on the page is so important in much modern poetry, which I've never seen apply to prose; for me, the drastically variable line-length somehow echoes the 'back-and-forth' nature of the encounter in question (shouting measurements up and down the stairs), but also implies an inconsistency of physical presence within the relationship more generally. How much of this is me talking bollocks is entirely up to you: god knows I've had people try to sell me poetry with their own interpretation and I've basically politely said "that's cute but it's also subjective nonsense" - but hopefully even if you think I'm talking shite, you can kinda see why I get the impression that I do.
Here's a bonus one whose actual constituent parts I won't try to unpick because, as I say, I'm no expert, and I can't quite work it out myself. But poetry and flash-fiction can have similar functions; at face-value, it's just a psychopath. On closer scrutiny, you remember that it's basically impossible to hit somebody with a bigass metal krooklok while in a car at all, let alone while driving and let alone without swerving - when the guy's dead, the weather seems to miraculously change (while blending the idiomatic reference to his inner self and the literal meaning later in the poem). So it's a bigass metaphor for other-ing and killing off part of himself - the kind of dark twist that short-form fiction can also have. I'm not saying fiction can't do this, but I'm saying that poetry also definitely can.
Hopefully some of this helped. If you have any questions, I'll do my best, but, as I say, I'm not really an expert.