Alice Friman on Poetry Part 2
First, I’m happy to announce that FORCE OF HABIT, my sf/cop/farce novel, is FREE for Kindle for another four days, 12/23-27, 2012. Go get it!
Here is (are?) the rest of my notes on Alice Friman’s Poetry presentation:
Mechanics
Rewriting–has two basic purposes:
To take these unconsious images and make them make sense
To evoke feeling–try to make the reader feel what you felt
Poems are about feelings–they are invisible–only experienced through language.
Say there is a ghost in the room; invisible. You have to throw a sheet over it in order to see it. The ghost is the POEM; the underlying emotion. The sheet is the language, the shape that shows the form beneath. The lighter the sheet, the clearer the form. Every word in a written poem must hold up a meaning or it overloads, blunts, suffocates the ghost.
The title also is working language.
Rhyme: Most people think of rhyme as end stop rhyme–where the phrase stops at the end of the line with exact rhyme.
Enjambment is when the phrase passes the end of the line and stops inside another line. The rhymes are sometimes imperfect.
Interior rhyme lends a lyric quality to the poem.
Assonance is rhyme or near-rhyme of vowel sounds.
Consonance is “rhyme” of consonants: murder/dream/drama/moored are rhymes like this.
l is lovely s is ugly d and hard th are final: death
Line length: the longer the line, the faster you read. The shorter the line, the slower and more purposefully you read.
For a philosophical, lyrical, romantic, thoughtful effect, use “ing” forms of verbs
For a strong and punchy effect, use stem of verb
Exercise: Finish these sentences:
1. The keys want
2. I wish you would
3. The sea has showers of
4. The clock hears
5. What is it that the piano loves?
Poems are made up of adjectives, nouns and verbs. Pick two of each from a thesaurus and make yourself use them in a poem.
Again, I, Marian, tell you that these exercises are as useful for prose as they are for poetry.
A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Do Friman’s exercises.
MA
