Faron Samford

10-1-09

Experience with Lyric Poetry

                As a literature major, I’ve been exposed to lyric poetry in almost every class that I’ve taken in the last few years, but have never really been able to fully grasp the concepts.  Having read examples assigned in classes of high quality lyric poems, I could recognize when a poem had the right elements to be considered “good,” but could not truly define what these characteristics were. Through the combination of the assigned readings for this course and the workshop experience, I have come to a better understanding of lyric poetry and been inspired with ideas of how I’d effectively teach the subject.

                The only true poetry centered class that I’ve taken was at University of Houston’s main campus and was called “Structures of Poetry.”  The text for the class was assembled by the professor and was a collection of poems that she used to explain the importance of the structural elements that made them good. What was lacking in that text as opposed to the reading assignments that have been provided in this course are written definitions of the terms that make a lyric poem effective. In the chapter seven reading assignment, the explanation of ballad meter, accompanied with a single stanza from Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” is an effective way of explaining the meter schemes of a stanza and the way that the beats are arranged to give the lyrical quality.  

Along with this explanation of structured lyric poetry, chapter eight of the reading countered my prior belief that free verse poetry was not lyric poetry. Whether it was from the methods of teaching that I had been exposed or a misunderstanding of the concept, I had always believed that lyric and free verse were mutually exclusive. The text explains that free verse could in fact be an effective form of lyric poetry through the use of alliteration, assonance, and consonance to instill a rhythm, despite the lack of a classical metered structure.

Having never taken a creative writing class or been exposed to the workshop style, I did not realize how effective it would be at not only helping me understand how to write poetry, but also how to further understand how to use the concepts in practice. The workshop of Tara McGee’s poem, “Old Number 7,” was when I first noticed that I was beginning to understand how to take these concepts and make them work.  When discussing the images that she used and attempting to make small adjustments in them to try and improve upon a poem, which I liked from the original version, I began noticing how important the combination of images and how the sound the specific words used contributed to the overall effectiveness of the poem. A quality image is a great asset to a poem but to make it truly effective, the image needs to be worded in a way that keeps with the rhythm of the poem when read aloud.

This combination of knowledge from the textual source as well as the workshop experience has proven to be extremely valuable in the writing and revising of my own poem for submission. Consonance is the main device that I tried to use in the writing of my poem. In a poem about sunrise, I wanted the repetition of the “s” sound that often appears in words having to do with sleep: sleep, snooze, snore, silence, etc. I felt that this repetition of the “s” sound would contribute to the mood and image of a person fighting to wake from sleep and felt it was fairly effective.

What I’ve learned about lyric poetry from our workshop exercises and my experience with writing and revising my own poem has given me an idea of how I would attempt to teach lyric poetry. The effectiveness of this combination has given me the idea to bring in an early draft of a lyric poem to have the class revise together. During the process of revising the poem, we could discuss the concepts that apply to the changes that we make so that the students not only are told the definition of the concepts and shown examples, but actually get to see their use put into practice. I feel this could be a valuable teaching method for getting across the concepts associated with poetry.

I have to admit that the experience from this class has taken away much of the fear and anxiety that I have always associated with poetry. I now have a much better grasp of the concepts associated with poetry and more confidence in my ability to recognize when they are present and when they are lacking in different poems.