TOLT Poetry Exercises 19 and 20!

Okay, this week I have the last two exercises from The Ode Less Traveled.  First was exercise 19, in which I had to write some sonnets.  First I had to do a petrarchan sonnet, named after Francesco Petrarca who first popularized the form.

I guess the main idea with a petrarchan sonnet is that the speaker is debating something internally.  So the first eight lines are called the "octave," which rhyme abba abba, and which show one viewpoint of a topic.  Then the ninth line is called the "volta" which is the turning point.  The last six lines collectively are called the "sestet" which can either rhyme cde cde (which I chose) or ccd ccd, or cdc cdc.

For the first part of exercise 19, Fry suggested I write a Petrarchan sonnet about voting.  In the octave I was to talk about how lazy and uninterested voters are, and then in the sestet I was to decide that apathy is probably the best response.  This isn't exactly how I feel about voting, but here's what I came up with just the same:

In 2012 the time will come to vote,
  But many voters will not heed the call
  Of TV ads and signs in yards and all
The names of candidates they've learned by rote.
These lazy people, to their friends will gloat,
  That they're too busy shopping at the mall
  To visit a polling station booth or stall,
As if they were protected by a moat.
Maybe there's a reason for this 'tude.
  It's easy to be sick of politics
In modern times of mudslinging and lies.
  At first the candidate's an awesome dude,
But post election, promises are nix
  And trust that took so long to build, then dies.

For the second part of exercise 19, I was to write a Shakespearean sonnet, which is formed a little differently.  There are three quatrains, which rhyme abab, cdcd, efef and then there is a couplet to wrap it up rhymed gg.  Again the topic was voting, but this time I was to spend the first four lines talking about the apathy of voters, the middle four giving complaint against this fact, the last four admitting my own apathy and then the couplet saying it makes no difference anyway.  Again, these aren't necessarily my views, but it helped me to have a clear idea of what I had to write.  Here's mine, with apologies to Shakespeare!

On voting day, a lot of people don't
Attempt to use their democratic right.
It's not because they can't it's 'cause they won't.
For politics, they've given up the fight.
Come on, you folks!  Let's get out there and vote!
Help steer the course our country's set upon.
It takes all hands to keep this ship afloat.
It does no good to stay at home and yawn.
I know that politics can be depressing,
Corruption spreading up and down the hill.
And often, casting votes can feel like guessing,
Who knows if yours will pass the proper bill.
I know the voting system needs improving.
Just hope there are no plans for its removing!

The last section of the book is devoted to some pretty weird poetic forms, including pattern poems, which were the subject of exercise 20, which was the last one in the book!  I was to write two, one about the letter "I" (with serifs) and one in the shape of a cross.  Here's what they look like:

The Magnetic Fields

Made

That

One

Album

Which was called "I"

I never

Went to

Church

When I was a child growing up

In Seattle, so I don't know a thing 

About Christianity or religion.

To each

Their

Own, I

Always

Say.  If

It helps

People,

Good for

Them.

The very last thing I had to do was to write a rhyming acrostic verse, spelling out my name with the first letters of each line.  

After many months of struggle

Lines have finally all been written

Elevated, I hope, above a poet muggle.

Certainly, by the poet bug, I've been bitten!

Well, that last poem says it all.  It took me two years to get through this book, and it was one of the most challenging things I have ever read, but I'm glad I did it.  Honestly, it felt like taking a really good college course about poetry.  So if you'd like to learn more, I highly recommend The Ode Less Travelled by Stephen Fry.  

I'm still working my way through The Best of Ogden Nash (and still loving it) and I guess I'll try to keep posting some poetry in here on the weekends.  It'll be fun to dive back into it, armed with new knowledge!  

TOLT Poetry Exercises 16, 17 and 18

The next section of The Ode Less Traveled focused on even more poetic forms.  For exercise 16 I had to write a triolet about my love (Claire Sanders) and then a rondeau redoublé about any topic of my choosing.

A triolet is an eight line poem, with two rhymes, in which the first (A) and second (B) lines are used thusly:  ABaAbbAB.  I guess since the A line is used three times, that's where the "tri" comes from.  Here's mine about Claire, sorry it is so mushy.

Of all the girls I've ever met
I love Claire Sanders the best.
I'm lucky she's the one I'll get
Of all the girls I've ever met.
We'll set out on quest after quest
And build ourselves a little nest.
Of all the girls I've ever met
I love Claire Sanders the best.

I wrote all of these on the train from White River Junction to New York.  When Mr. Fry said I could write a rondeau redoublé on any topic, I asked Claire and she said I should write it about our pet rabbits, Patty and Selma.  Rondeau redoublé is another one of those really complicated forms.  Like the triolet, it only has two rhymes, and it reuses the first four lines, one line in each of the subsequent stanzas.  It looks like this:

Stanza 1: A1 B1 A2 B2
Stanza 2: b a b A1
Stanza 3: a b a B1
Stanza 4: b a b A2
Stanza 5: a b a B2
Mini Envoi: repeat the first four words of the poem

So the key here was to write the first four lines very carefully, and to pick end words that had lots and lots of rhymes.  Here's what I came up with, which is also kind of mushy...  sorry!

We own two bunnies who love to hop.
Patty is white and Selma is brown.
They are cute from bottom to top.
Watching them washes away any frown.

Up they'll go, to sniff the air, then down
To bound around until they drop.
If napping was a country, they'd have the crown!
We own two bunnies who love to hop.

Patty cleans herself all day, the fop.
But give her lots of hay and she'll act the clown.
Selma peed again, grab the mop!
Patty is white and Selma is brown.

Once Claire made them each a gown,
But neither liked the extra prop.
Bunnies' fashion sense is not renown.
They are cute from bottom to top.

After a long day, down they plop.
To them "cage" and "home" are the same noun.
They'd still be cute if they tried to stop.
Watching them washes away any frown.

We have two bunnies.

Okay!  If you've made it this far without barfing, you should be able to get through the rest with no problems.  The next chapter of TOLT was all about comic verse, including the Limerick!!!  Alas though, the exercise was not to write some limericks of my own.  Oh well, I'll get back to those as soon as I'm done going through this book.

For exercise 17, Fry first suggested that I write a parody of my favorite poet.  I knew right off the bat that I would not be able to do that.  As I mentioned a few weeks ago, my new favorite poet is Ogden Nash.  I have been steadily plowing through The Best of Ogden Nash (as of this writing I'm on page 244 of 438).  But still, I don't think I could write a poem in his style.  So instead, I decided to attempt Fry's second option, which was to create a cento.

One creates a cento by pulling real lines from various poems by one poet, and then rearranging them and trying to make them have a different meaning.  Luckily, I had my collection of Nash with me on the train.  I flipped through randomly, trying to come up with lines that were somehow related.  Here was my fist false start:

The citizens of Oklahoma
Their water has a chlorine aroma

Of course, this was cheating, because I took two different poems where Nash had rhymed the word "Oklahoma."  Oh well!  Then I tried to get something going with water-based imagery:

The fisherman, oh the fisherman,
I'm hoping not to see one.
On the shores of Lake Michigan
Slumbered a princess waiting to be won,
That whales are mammals, just like us
A shrimp who sought his lady shrimp,
We laugh at how he looks at us.

Hmmmm... as you can see, that stopped making sense pretty quickly.  It's too bad I couldn't find some way to turn those first two lines into a story told from a fish's perspective.  Oh well!  The only couplet I built which I didn't scratch out, was the very simple:

I'm only waiting for my cue,
That's how much I love you.

Good enough for me!  And apologies to Mr. Nash, who is probably rolling over in his grave right now.

In the next section of the book, I was very excited to finally, properly learn something about haiku, and some other forms of poetry from far away lands.  It turns out, according to Fry, that haiku are traditionally about a season and have a "kigo" word, which focuses on the weather or atmosphere.  For exercise 18 I had to write four haiku, one for each season.  As you have seen elsewhere on this blog, english versions of haiku usually have 5 syllables, then 7, then 5, which I have used here:

"Shluf" the sound of snow
Sliding off the roof next door
New snow collecting

April showers
Bring May flowers, but not here
Instead we get mud


Homesickness is worst
In the hot humid summer
I miss Seattle

The crisp autumn air
Red, orange, yellow and brown leaves
My favorite season

Well, that's it for this week.  Next week I will post the LAST exercises from TOLT and then I'll finally dive back into writing some poorly-crafted limericks, just for the fun of them!

TOLT Poetry Exercises 13, 14 and 15

Okay, these three exercises from The Ode Less Traveled each focus on a different poetic form.  For exercise 13 I had to write some heroic verse (iambic pentameter with AA BB CC DD rhymes, but using enjambments and caesuras, in a modern sort of way).  As for the subject manner, Fry suggested "a short dramatic monologue... in which a young man in police custody, clearly stoned off his head, tries to explain away the half-ounce of cannabis found on his person."  I'm not super proud of how my effort turned out, but here it is nonetheless:

Oh officer, why don't you hear my plea?
In any other country I'd be free!
You locked me up because of pot?  As if
I'm out to sell.  It only took one whiff
Of me for you to start your search.
My lousy luck, it happened by the church!
Would you have thrown me in this cell, if all
Those god damn catholics hadn't left the hall
Exactly during your discovery
Of the ounce of pot I had on me?
I know you're quite devout they say, but had
We been alone that Sunday morn, a tad
More leniency, perhaps?  The USA
Has such a rigid stance on "Mary J"
I'm sure the Europeans'd let me free
Including Rome, the heart of Italy!

Yes, well.  Good practice anyway!  Next up was exercise 14, in which I had to write a villanelle, which is extremely complicated.  It has six stanzas, the first five with three lines, and the last with four.  Each line either ends with an A rhyme or a B rhyme,  but also entire LINES are reused thusly:

Stanza 1: A1 b A2
Stanza 2: a b A1 (where A1 is the entire first line from Stanza 1)
Stanza 3: a b A2 (where A2 is the entire first line from Stanza 1)
Stanza 4: a b A1
Stanza 5: a b A2
Stanza 6: a b A1 A2

Got it?  Fry gave permission to write on any topic, so I chose one of my favorites: sequence.

All things in life are sequence.
No moment stands alone.
Someday this all will make sense.

Maybe thirty-five years hence,
Or when your children are grown.
All things in life are sequence.

You're hired to paint a picket fence
'Round a house with a lawn that's mown.
Someday this all will make sense.

You grow so weary of monthly rents,
You work your fingers to the bone.
All things in life are sequence.

So you save your dollars and your cents,
And buy a house of your very own.
Someday this all will make sense.

You mend and fix and paint the dents
With skills that took ten years to hone.
All things in life are sequence,
Someday this all will make sense.

Exercise 15 required an even MORE complicated poetic form, the sestina.  Now let's see if I can get this right...  There are six stanzas and an ending "envoi" and this form is all about the end words of each line, or "hero" words.  The numbers below represent the hero word at the end of each line (or rich rhymes, or homonyms), which are reused throughout the poem.

Stanza One: 1 2 3 4 5 6
Stanza Two: 6 1 5 2 4 3
Stanza Three: 3 6 4 1 2 5
Stanza Four: 5 3 2 6 1 4
Stanza Five: 4 5 1 3 6 2
Stanza Six: 2 4 6 5 3 1
Envoi: 2-5 / 4-3 / 6-1

Is that complicated enough for you?!  In the book, Fry's father comes up with a mathematical algorithm which explains how the order is arrived at for the hero words.  It's very complicated.  Anyway, for my sestina, I started out by trying to figure out six words that each had multiple meanings, including an old confusion that used to arise from the possessive of my name, "Alec's" and the name of my best friend in high school, "Alex."  Then I started to weave a little story, using Alec and Alex as characters, not me, or my real friend Alex, mind you!  I think I was more focused on the hero words than the meter, so I apologize if this doesn't scan well.

The sit inside the dingy flat,
Alec, Mark and his roommate Alex.
Each of them, at the wall now stares
At the newly hung poster of Karl Marx.
"That's that," says Mark, the the A-L-E pair.
"It'll give this place a revolutionary air!"

But when they move out, who will be the heir
Of this poster, hanging on the wall so flat?
Alex bought it, but he's been known to pare
Down his belongings.  Maybe he'll make it Alec's!
Or Maybe Alec won't want it and it'll be Mark's,
If it leaves this apartment at the top of the stairs.

It's a well-worn path, up the steep, creaky stairs
With the smell of factory smoke thick in the air
And names scrawled on the wall with spray paint marks,
But the rent is cheap, so it's not a bad flat.
Like the poster, the apartment was found by Alex,
Then Mark moved in, an unlikely pair.

Each morning Alex begins to munch on a pear
As he heads out to work, down the steep, creaky stairs.
A few blocks away, he swings by Alec's
And the two go to work in the cold morning air.
Meanwhile Mark sleeps on his back, dead flat.
He used to be a student, but he had bad marks.

They still send him money, those parents of Mark's.
They think he's still in college, that unknowing pair.
Mark drinks gin all day, with tonic that's gone flat
and waits for the sound of Alex coming up the stairs.
When he enters, Mark begins to throw ideas into the air.
But a long day of work has made a weary man of Alex.

If there's a knock at the door, they know that it is Alec's.
He comes to talk to Mark about the philosophy of Marx.
They talk and smoke and talk and smoke, 'til both do fill the air,
While Alex sits there quietly, munching on a pear.
At last a final silence falls, their eyes all in stares
Looking at Karl Marx on the wall, whose ideas spin 'round the flat.

Someday Alex will move and retire, he'll eat his daily pear.
Less certain is the path of Mark's, who'll always live upstairs.
Alec moves in and the fill the air with ideas that just fall flat.

Okay, next weekend we'll take a look at a Rondeau Redoublé, a pathetic Cento I whipped up, and my first proper Haiku!

TOLT Poetry Exercises 10, 11 and 12

Okay, back to the book!  I'm afraid this entry might be a bit dry, but we need to plow through to get to some of the more exciting stuff!

Exercise 10 was all about rhyming.  For the first part, I was given ten minutes to come up with as many rhymes for "girl" as I could, using the masculine "url" sound for the rhyme.  Here's what I came up with:

1. pearl
2. whirl
3. unfurl
4. hurl
5. purl
6. rural
7. curl
8. mural
9. earl
10. squirrel

Next, I had ten minutes to come up with rhymes for the feminine ending in "Martyr."  I only did slightly better with this one:

1. barter
2. Carter
3. farter
4. garter
5. parter
6. starter
7. tarter
8. smarter
9. harder
10. ardour
11. larder

Mr. Fry said that his rhyming dictionary had 24 rhymes for "girl" and 28 for "martyr" and that if one could get ten that was pretty good, so I felt okay about this.  In the second part of exercise 10 I had to come up with at least twenty words about things I could smell, see or hear in my current location.  When I wrote this I was staying at Claire's old place in Oakland, so here is some of what I came up with:

Next up was exercise 11, which was the only exercise in the book that I feel is poorly designed.  In the section preceding exercise 11, Fry showcases a series of open forms: Terza Rima, Ottava Rima, Rhyme Royal, Ruba'iyat and the Spenserian Stanza.  For each form, he has written a poem IN its form, and then he supplies one other example of each.  The exercise is then to write you OWN poem about the form, using the form.  This is extremely frustrating, because I only just learned about the form and so as I look back to try and figure out what the form is, I'm looking at Fry's example, which is written on the same topic that I'm trying to write upon.  I only made it through the first form before I got extremely frustrated and gave up on the rest of the exercise.

In Terza Rima mode, the rhymes are three

And in the first two tercets you'll use two

First there's ABA, then BCB

Then if you know what you are supposed to do
CD CD will use the final ryhme
Your first section of T.R.'s through!

But this form can repeat time after time
Its interlocking scheme will never end!
I know this poem's not worth a lousy dime
but check out Dante, Terza Rima's best friend!

For exercise 12, I was to finish off a ballad that was begun by Mr. Fry.  He supplied the first two stanzas (in italics below) and then I continued the rest of the story (I'll warn you, it gets a bit gruesome).  This was fun because I didn't have to worry about meter or syllable count, as long as the lines rhymed and it had a nice bounce.  Here goes!

Now gather round and let me tell
The tale of Danny Wise:
And how his sweet wife Annabelle
Did pluck out both his eyes.


And if I tell the story true
And if I tell it clear,
There's not a mortal one of you
Won't shriek in mortal fear!

Now Danny Wise was quite a flirt,
He talked to all the girls.
Lewd comments he would ofter blurt
When passed by golden curls.

Annabelle grew mad with rage
To see her husband acting so.
She felt as though locked in a cage
While he was flitting to and fro.

One night while Danny took repast
His wife snuck to the loo.
And there she got revenge at last
With some super glue.

See, all those years of looking 'round
Had weakened Danny's eyes,
So a pair of glasses were often found
On the face of Mr. Wise.

But lately the specs had not been seen.
For contacts he'd traded them in!
Danny thought the contacts were keen,
So the glasses went in the bin.

And now while Danny ate his fill,
His wife had found his contact case.
The saline water she did spill,
A wicked smile upon her face.

In its place, she poured the glue,
Some in right and left.
Then down the stairs Annabelle flew,
So sneaky and so deft.

That night before Danny went to sleep,
His contacts he took out.
And in the glue they rested deep,
Which Danny knew nothing about.

The morn, you can imagine, my friends,
For Danny was quite a surprise.
When he put one glued-up contact lens
Right onto one of his eyes.

He screamed for help from Annabelle
Who calmly entered the room.
He asked her if she knew what the hell
had happened to her groom!

She gave his arm a tiny pull
And then there was a "pop."
No longer was his socket full,
His eye now sat on finger top.

Dan wailed "I'll make amends!"
He tried to back away.
"You forgot your other contact lens."
He heard his dear wife say.

Now when a sweet young thing walks by,
Old Danny can't remark.
He is a much more faithful guy
Now that he's in the dark!

Okay, that's that.  I'll try to post some more exercises next week!

The Ode Less Traveled... finished!

It's national poetry month!  To celebrate it, instead of bringing a bunch of comics to work on during my recent trip out to Portland, Oregon, I brought The Ode Less Traveled by Stephen Fry and a notebook to write in.  After almost TWO YEARS of working my way through this book, I am happy to announce that I finally finished it off today!  Thank goodness for long flights and even longer train rides.

Needless to say, it was one of the most challenging, yet rewarding books I have ever read.  If you are interested in learning more about poetry, I highly recommend it!

There were a total of twenty poetry exercises in the book, and it looks like I left you all hanging back on exercise number nine, so I'll try to post the rest of my examples, a few each week and then I can get back to writing some new limericks!

TOLT Poetry Exercises 7, 8 and 9.

The next section of The Ode Less Traveled was all about accentual verse, which was much simpler than all of this crazy FEET and METER nonsense. The idea here is that each line has four beats. The first three beats are alliterated (all start with the same sound, or have the same sound in their stressed syllable, such as "comPELLing" and "apPEALing"). Then the fourth beat is something entirely different. Mr. Fry sums this idea up with the phrase "Bang Bang Bang CRASH!" It doesn't matter how many syllables there are, or whether or not the lines are the same length or anything, as long as those four accents are in there.

So for Exercise 7, I was supposed to write 20 lines about what I would and wouldn't like to eat, using the "Bang Bang Bang CRASH!" form of accentual verse. Here's what I came up with, which was written last October, while I was staying with Claire in Oakland.

I don't delight in dips and sauces
I'd rather taste a recipe's original intention
Condiments could conceivably ruin
Food that I'm fixing to feast upon
Mayo and mustard mustn't be spread
On a sub or a sandwich made especially for me
When I feast on fries, you'll find no ketchup
My bread isn't buttered, or blanketed with jelly
Some folks suspect this sauce aversion
Hints at a hindrance of happiness in me.
I often feel that food is just fuel,
But cooking with Claire in her kitchen together
Has shown me that sharing food surely enhances
Its taste and tenderness, not to mention
My appreciation of, and my patience during the preparation of a meal.
Perhaps my habit of hermit-like eating
Forced me to feast too fast without
Stopping to smell the "spices" so to speak

Next was syllabic verse, which is pretty much the exact opposite of accentual verse. For this one, all that matters is the number of syllables on a line, and the accents don't matter in the least. Like HAIKU! which have 5, 7 and then 5 syllables. There are all kinds of other weird forms that this type of poetry takes. For exercise 8 I had to write two poems using syllabic verse: 1) two stanzas of alternating 7 and 5 line syllabic verse about Rain and 2) Two stanzas of verse running 3,6,1,4,8,4,1,6,3 syllables (?!) on the subject of Hygiene. Here's the first one, which is obviously written by a Seattleite:

No one seems to like the rain
They call it dreary
People get depressed in towns
Where it ever rains

But if you are born and raised
In a land of rain
Raindrops upon your skin feel
More welcome than sun

And here's the second one - yet another poem about beards!

Once upon
A time, people believed
Beards
Were certainly
Uncleanly and brimming with germs.
And so, people
Shaved,
Thus cutting short a great
Tradition.

We now know
Beards are okay, if kept
Clean.
Soap and shampoo
Wash your beard just like your head hair.
Pour, lather,
Rinse
And repeat, to keep beards
Looking good!

Exercise 9 was one last mark-up of a poem written by Coleridge, to teach his son the most commonly used metrical feet. After I did that, I had finally completed THE FIRST CHAPTER of this book! Phew! And this is only page 122 of 357 (?!) Really, I'm on page 200, but I'm trying to space out these entries, so they don't get TOO long. Even though this book is taking me forever to get through, I am still loving every minute of it. I only wish I had less stuff going on, so I could devote more time to it!

TOLT Poetry Exercises 4, 5 and 6!

Sorry for the long silence on this blog. It hasn't been for lack of poetic activity on my part, just a lack of blogging. Back in October I finally finished reading The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats. I ended up enjoying it quite a bit, I'm sure in large part because I had worked through the first half of The Ode Less Traveled. It's definitely given me a greater appreciation for poetry, the same way I appreciate paintings more after having taken a few painting courses.

I've got a backlog of TOLT exercises to post, so I'm going to do 4, 5 and 6 in this entry and then try to do another big batch in the next entry to catch up to my current place in the book.

Exercise #4 had me write 16 lines of unrhymed iambic pentameter, and then I "scored" each line: 2 points for enjambment, 2 points for hendecasyllabic or "weak" line endings, and 5 points each for trochaic or phyrric substitutions (if you want to know what all these crazy words mean, you should totally get the book! I was supposed to use current newspaper headlines as my inspiration, but I didn't have one handy when I was writing, so I chose fake headlines... Here are some examples, with their "scores" after each line:

The walls of Azkaban have fallen down (5)
Eaters of Death have gone and run away (5)
Surely this means that Voldemort is back (5)

Why must the world insist on typing Qwerty? (7)
Dvorak is a better choice by far! (5)

All in all I scored 104 points for my 16 lines. The author, Stephen Fry, got 104 points for his, so I feel pretty okay about this...

The next chapter of the book dealt with different meters. The "PENTA" in "Iambic Pentameter" just means 5 sets of iambs, so this chapter had Iambic TETRAmeter (4) and Iambic TRImeter (3), etc. etc. Exercise #5 had me write two quatrains of eight-syllable iambic tetrameter, two quatrains of alternating iambic tetrameter and trimeter and finally two quatrains of trochaic tetrameter. Also, I was actually allowed to RHYME this time, so I did. I'll just post the first two here, since they are my favorites. The topic was television.

A dozen years have passed since I
Escaped the clutches of TV.
In childhood, my brain did fry
So many hours were logged by me.
Each afternoon from light to dark
I sat in front of cathode rays,
Instead of playing in the park,
Or spending time creative ways!

"Reality TV?" you ask,
As if I'll list my faves.
But years it's been, since I did bask
In TV's current craze.
I used to watch sitcoms galore
and game shows by the hour.
Escapism I did adore,
But real life seems so sour.

The next section of the book dealt with "Ternary Feet" which is a foot with three sections, instead of a binary foot (like iambs, trochees, spondees, etc.) So there are Anapaests (weak weak strong), Dactyls (strong weak weak), Molossuses (strong strong strong) and Tribrachs (weak weak weak) and then Amphibrachs (weak strong weak) and Amphimacers (strong weak strong).

For exercise 6 I had to write some anapaestic hexameters about how to get to my house, and some dactylic pentameter about cows (?!) I'll post the prior, as my effort on the latter is too horrible to post, even on this silly blog! These lines are crazy long, so they got word-wrapped. I put some slashes in to notate the actual line breaks...

Of the many attractions of White River Junction, my house is the best./
The apartment is three, with a letter of C, okay now here's the rest:/
One oh four is the building, the street is called "Main." Is there anything left?/
You ask "Where do I find it?" the answer's up North, in Vermont's Eastern cleft

Ugh... pretty bad, huh? Well, the good news is that Excercise 6 ended all of the crazy accentual-syllabic verse stuff. The next section is only about accentual verse, which was much easier. I'll try to post about it soon!

TOLT Poetry Exercise 3

I'm still working my way through The Ode Less Travelled. This week I learned about End-stopping (when a line of a poem ends on a complete thought), Enjambment (when a poem flows straight through the end of a line and into the next) and Caesuras (a pause in a poem). I also learned my new favorite poetry term, which I think describes me to the T: Poetaster - someone who writes really, really bad poetry. ;)

The third poetry exercise sort of kicked my ass. This time I was supposed to write five "blank" (non-rhyming) pairs of iambic pentameter in which the first line end-stops and there are no enjambments or caesuras. THEN, I was supposed to write ANOTHER five blank pairs of iambic pentameter, using the same subject matter, this time using enjambment and two caesuras. Here's one set of mine, which has a bit to do with the one year anniversary of me growing out my beard.

My beard and hair have grown for one full year
It makes the summer feel a bit too warm!

A year has made my face hirsute, it makes
the summer heat acute, please fall arrive!

I'll post more as I work my way through the book. Stay cool everyone!

The Ode Less Traveled by Stephen Fry

Holy cow, today I finally started reading The Ode Less Travelled by Stephen Fry and I am totally in love with this book! It's very positive and witty (and RIFE with puns) and makes you feel like ANYONE can have fun writing poetry, with a bit of studying. I've only read the introduction and chapter one, but I've already learned about meter and feet and iambs and trochees and spondees and THE IAMBIC PENTAMETER!

Each chapter ends with a series of poetry exercises, so I thought I would post some of mine here, in case anyone else wants to try their hand and post some response-poetry in the comments. Get ready for some bad poetry!!! :D

The first poetry exercise was to mark-up the meter and feet in a bunch of lines of iambic pentameter. The second exercise was to write 20 lines of your OWN iambic pentameter in 10 minutes! Most of mine were crap, but here are a few I thought were so-so:

My beard has grown in length and girth and gray
I wish I had more hours in the day!

That Shakespeare bloke could do this in his sleep

I've also started reading a giant collection of WB Yeats Poems which was given to me over ten years ago, but which I only just cracked the spine on last week. A lot of it is going over my head, but there sure are some sweet lines in there too. I'm sure I'll get more and more out of it as I plow through the Fry.

Please post some iambic pentameter in the comments!