Blog: New Year, 2007
I've enjoyed writing haiku here. It got me out of a rut, where I wasn't writing anything because I never "finished" anything. I like the form of a haiku (and the other types of poetry that use the same form). Most of all, I like that it's short. It forces me to focus on the core message: what do I really want to say? Seventeen syllables does not accomodate much digression, I quickly learned, and it is so short, I could actually finish something.
I've actually enjoyed writing haiku so much, my new year's resolution is to write more poetry, and in different forms. I'd love to try my hand at a sonnet, for example.
Inspired by an interview with Stephen Fry about poetry, where he observes, amongst other things:
Another fascinating observation (earlier in the interview) about iambic pentameter:
So, that's what I've decided to do for 2007: write more poetry. I'll use Stephen Fry's book on that very subject, The Ode Less Travelled, for help, as inspiration, and as a suitable nag to actually write. I think it will be fun, and I hope you'll give me feedback and criticism (don't be shy; I can take it).
I've actually enjoyed writing haiku so much, my new year's resolution is to write more poetry, and in different forms. I'd love to try my hand at a sonnet, for example.
Inspired by an interview with Stephen Fry about poetry, where he observes, amongst other things:
The interesting thing about poetry is that it is concrete. It is about the actual. People think of it as being ethereal. It's quite the reverse.- which has been my experience. I never even wrote poetry before last month. My first ever poem was the haiku Wicked Winter Sun which, I think, captured a very specific moment in time when the winter started closing in here.
Another fascinating observation (earlier in the interview) about iambic pentameter:
And often you hear people speaking it in the street, or, I phoned somebody the other week and they said "I haven't time to take your call right now, so leave a message when you hear the tone." It's two lines, with perfect iambic pentameter. Exactly. It's the same form that Shakespeare used.I never really thought about that before. The iambic rhythm is similar to the heart's rhythm. It's a very natural rhythm, I think.
So, that's what I've decided to do for 2007: write more poetry. I'll use Stephen Fry's book on that very subject, The Ode Less Travelled, for help, as inspiration, and as a suitable nag to actually write. I think it will be fun, and I hope you'll give me feedback and criticism (don't be shy; I can take it).
posted by Mark on Friday, December 22, 2006
7 Comments:
mark,
i am beyond delighted by your decision. you are a poet - i'm glad to see you've recognized that.
sarah
From time to time I might drop a poem by here, in hopes of inspiring you (via people more talented than I):
The Snow Man
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
--Wallace Stevens
To OKP: Yes, please, but never use the phrase "more talented than I" unless it's qualified with "in one particular area". You are, for example, probably a much more talented computer user than Wallace Stevens.
I had to check Mr Stevens' bio, which says:
"Stevens is a rare example of a poet whose main output came at a fairly advanced age. Many of his canonical works were written well after he turned fifty. According to the literary critic Harold Bloom, no Western writer since Sophocles has had such a late flowering of artistic genius. The Auroras of Autumn was not published until after his seventieth year. His first major publication ("Phases" in the November 1914 edition of Poetry Magazine) was written at the age of thirty-five".
So, I've got a couple of years left before my first major publication is due. That feels good!
OK, more talented than I at poetry. How Hamlet of you -- speak by the card and all that!
WS was a cool dude. I like this poem, and another I'll send along later (which I wrote a paper on).
MWAP is gone! I knew it was on hiatus, but it seems to have been deleted...
...everything OK?
Hamlet? Words, words, words.
I did, indeed, delete MWAP. It may rise again some day, but for now, it's CoM or nothing!
Haiku follow-up:
The Christmas book rush
means my Stephen Fry book is
delayed; no more news.
Haiku follow-up 2
Bokus wrote again
and told me: "Now your book is
in the post." Hooray!
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