What's in a name ??

[Robyn]

I like to think that words are to poets as paints are to artists. What is important is how they all fit together, as colours in a painting. It's not so much the individual shades (words) we choose, athough it helps to choose good ones, but it's more about making the colours mesh so the the final product comes alive.
And poems don't have to spell out every detail, they can be like the Impressionists, or use light and shade like Turner etc
Robyn

[Zondrae]

G'day Robyn,

What a good analogy you have used. Pretty spot on.
I also have the idea that each writers personalty overshadows everything we write.

Neville, we have the 'South Coast Writers Centre' and they are also offering this course. I have been to one of their courses and, once I told them I wrote 'Rhyme and Metre' verse, I felt they ignored me. For some reason some people think that rhyming verse is easy to write.

[Neville Briggs]

I reckon you are right on the mark Robyn. Trouble is, I think I know what the ideal is, I am still struggling to bring it into reality.

G'day Zondrae, I have heard of the South Coast Writers Centre course, I think it is geared for the favoured mode of the contemporary literati, we know what that is.

I would suggest that if anyone goes to one of these courses is that they go with the flow and see what can be learnt from contemporary approaches. When you have finished the course you can apply the knowledge in any way you choose.

[Vic Jefferies]

"They are rhymes rudely strung with intent less
of sound than of words..."
(from Adam Lyndsay Gordon's "A Dedication.")

Could not agree more Neville. We too often see stories written as poems with absolutely no poetic worth or content other than they are written with metre and rhyme.
A poem should touch the senses and invoke a reaction in the reader (audience.) That is what makes it poetry.
I don't believe we need special or obscure words but we do need the best words used in the best way.

I remember attending a free verse workshop and being puzzled by one of the words used by another poet. I had never heard the word before and when I asked the author for its meaning he replied it meant nothing. It was a word he had made up and he had used it because he liked the sound of it. I left shortly afterward.


Vic Jefferies

[Rimeriter]

"ONYA" Vic.

A little something I collected, probably last year -

An Extraction.

In the June issue of Writers Voice,
the quarterly magazine of the
NSW Fellowship of Australian Writers,
the Poetry Editor, David Berger, wrote the following:

“A good poem should show something and not tell it.
Ballads were fine for earlier cultures,
but a modern poem is a reaction to an emotion
which is then linguistically encrypted and transmitted through time.
When this poem is unpacked,
the reader should be able to feel that original emotion: the anger, the fear, the joy.”
***

Well, David -
If linguistic encrytion is code for making it impossible to understand without a code breaker, then it has to be unpacked.

Blimey, far too much work for me as an average reader.

To ‘see’ the images.
To ‘feel’ the emotion.
To ‘enjoy’ the easily written, easily understood writers work,
is far superior to having to decode it.


Understandably, linguistic encrytion is vital to an item which is to be a limited publication, then cloistered in the bowls of academia,
rarely if ever to see the light of day.


Writers will earn a much more handsome income, writing to suit a larger, wider, understanding and appreciative audience.

Jim Spain – the Rimeriter.
A Writer of Rhyme.
A backward poet who writes inverse.

***

[Robyn]

Trouble is, I think I know what the ideal is, I am still struggling to bring it into reality.

Oh how I agree Neville If only the brain would take note, and conjour words to the satisfaction of the poet...
But I keep plugging away, and every now then come up with a line or two I'm happy with. I'm hoping that the occasional inspirational product will help my brain understand what it is meant to do!
Robyn

[Maureen K Clifford]

I used two words in this one I made up and thought they worked rather well but nobody else picked them. They weren't typing or spelling errors either


Those days are long gone but I often recall
that bloke far too pale to be Midnight.
I valued a friendship that stood staunch and strong
through the outblack shadows to daywhite.

[Zondrae]

OK lets give it a try,

what are the criteria again?
emotion - yep I've got plenty of that
linguistic encryption mmmmm I'll have to think about that one
a poem that needs to be unpacked? from where?

I was of the impression that we poets always use lingu..... what they said.

The line I referred to earlier in tis thread was
"I can taste the crimson juice of life" is that enough encryption? Must I explain?

The next bit goes... I looked at this and thought 'where is the rhyme' and I realised I had taken two lines from two stanzas. So I edited and made a space and added two more lines.

'I can taste the crimson juice of life that oozes from my mouth
and I fear I will not make it out alive.

Am I never more to hear my children beging me to play
and never more to feel their warm embrace.
Will I sing not one more birthday song or sooth them in the night
and feel their cherished kisses on my face.'

and so on. It that emotion? because it has rhyme and metre, is it a lesser work?.. I don't think so. but then I don't have an arts degree.

[Vic Jefferies]

Zondrae, that is a fine example of the sort of writing that Neville was trying to encourage!
If you had of written " I can taste my blood in my mouth....." it would then have been the sort of thing Neville is trying to discourage.
I think Jim was referring to the obscure, almost opaque free verse ramblings that mean little to anyone (and I sometimes wonder if the author understands or knows either.)
Ballads are perhaps the oldest form of poetry and there is absolutely no reason why a well written ballad or narrative poem cannot be great poetry and many such poems are, but then let's not kid ourselves, we are not striving for great poetry here in the ABPA anymore than the country and western musicians are aiming to create opera. Ours is the poetry of the people much like folk and country and western music is the music of the people.

Vic

[Vic Jefferies]

Spot on Marty! Could not agree more! Learn the basics and enjoy yourself. Go for it get it down and most times it will sort itself out.

Vic