Paul Acevedo

October 3, 2009

The Flip-side of Poetry Study

                As a future high school English teacher, I will someday instruct students about poetry. Of course, one must understand something in order to teach it effectively. Creative Writing is the third UHCL class I have taken toward that end. While the other classes provided me with a smattering of great poets’ works, I cannot confess to learning much about the creation of poems from them. This could have caused problems when I finally received my own classroom. Thankfully Creative Writing has given me new insights into the building blocks of the genre.

            Before I discuss poems at length, I should establish just what they are. A kid could ask, you know. Many people can identify poetry by sight, but defining it takes a bit of effort. Stephen Minot accomplishes this task by naming five characteristics that differentiate poetry from prose. Poems utilize lines instead of sentences, use lots of images, consider the sound of words, develop rhythm, and “create density by implying far more than is stated directly” (1). Poems feature these qualities to varying degrees, creating infinite possibilities for expression.

            Many of those possibilities come from poetic imagery. As Dr. White’s lyric poetry page says, poems are “highly condensed.” Poems generally consist of far fewer words than novels or even short stories, so they cannot waste precious words by describing things in endless detail. Figurative language is the poet’s primary tool for creating imagery. He or she can say much about abstract, complex concepts by comparing them to concrete ones. For example, in my poem “The Censor Ship,” the titular ship functions as a metaphor. Censorship itself cannot be seen or touched, but I compare it to a sea vessel. When I write that the ship “drops anchor / and fires upon” various banned books, the reader visualizes such a scene, while still realizing that I am actually talking about censors attempting to ban those books. I enhance my poem’s nautical images by clustering them. Image clusters are “groups of related details” (69). They allow the reader to take in multiple images and comparisons without needing a new frame of reference. Developing images through repeated use adds thematic cohesiveness to a poem.

            Figurative language has the power to enhance poems, but only when used effectively. A complacent writer’s metaphor can become a mixed metaphor. “A mixed metaphor is one with two contradictory vehicles” (61). This amounts to comparing two things which have no obvious similarity. Could anyone name a clear similarity between a raven and a writing desk? A poet would be mad as a hatter to stick both things in the same simile or metaphor - such mix-ups confuse instead of delight the reader. Another type of imagery poets generally try to avoid is the cliché. These are similes and metaphors that have lost their visual impact from overuse (63). Clichés are like “Employees must wash hands before returning to work” signs – if displayed too often they get overlooked, soon nobody washes their hands any more, and harmful germs thrive. Well, people have long ceased visualizing clichés, anyway. They cannot contribute to a poem’s beauty. Thus an essential part in writing poetry is to find new ways to express things – new comparisons to make.

            Printing is actually a fairly new form of poetic expression, given poetry’s ancient origins. Preliterate societies delivered poems orally. Beowulf, the oldest surviving poem written in Old English, almost certainly began life as an oral epic (Slade, “Introduction”). While print has become the primary form of distribution for poetry, readings have not disappeared (Minot 72). Reading poems aloud enables us to appreciate the sound of their carefully-considered words. Alliteration, assonance, consonance, onomatopoeia, and of course rhyme are poetic devices whose full effects can only be experienced with oral recitations. Live performances give Shakespeare’s plays a different life than the printed page, and readings can accomplish the same effect for poems.

            Poetry readings formed a key component of our class poetry workshops. Each author shared his or her poem out loud, followed by a class discussion. This allowed the writers to gauge audience reaction, learning which elements worked best in their poetry. The feedback could then aid in the revision and improvement of their creations. These workshops taught me something important about poems in general: they are always works in progress. And why not? Other forms of art like drawing and painting work the same way. None of these things starts out perfect. Poets change and update their works multiple times until they are satisfied with the final product. My censorship poem began with a good idea, but the first draft did not develop its themes or imagery far enough. After I received helpful advice from others and put a lot more thought into the piece, it really matured into a better product. I will incorporate poetry workshops into the classes I teach and encourage my students to seek feedback on their writing whenever possible.

            The poetry portion of our Creative Writing class has given me new awareness of poetry as an art form. I have read and analyzed poems in other classes, but those poems were always the long-finished products of professional poets. I had essentially looked upon poetry as an outside observer only. But learning about what goes into a poem and then writing one has made me an active participant – a creative writer. I feel far less ignorant as a result. I look forward to helping people in my class feel the same way, and maybe even writing more poems in the future.

Works Cited

Minot, Stephen. Three Genres. 7^th ed. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 2003.

Slade, Benjamin. “Introduction to the Old English Poem called Beowulf.” Beowulf on Stereoarume. 21 December 2003. 3 October 2009. <http://www.heorot.dk/beowulf-vorwort.html>.