poetrydoctor

Poetry Standards

Apr 142011

POETRY STANDARDS: or, What I like in a Poem

by David B. Axelrod

Since poets now write largely blank (unrhymed) and free (unmetered) verse, often it can be hard to tell if what you read is even poetry! Certainly, whether you are reading a good or bad poem can be simply whether what you are reading is your “taste” or not. Are there no “standards” for poetry anymore? The test I most often apply to poems is whether I can believe them. There are poems written because someone said “I am a poet.” There are poems written because someone felt he or she needed to write a poem. I go with the latter. I guess, therefore, I ascribe to the belief or at least have the expectation that poetry is the language of feeling.

A poem that is written for poetry’s sake at best can appeal to poets. It’s like trading baseball cards. An objective observer is likely to ask, “How could you spend hundreds of dollars for that little piece of cardboard?” Only people really into something can appreciate its fine points. Most folks, however, are no more likely to appreciate the value of a piece of cardboard imprinted with baseball data than they are to like poetry written for poetry’s sake. Poems about poetry are “poets’ poetry.”

A poem written because it needs to be said, however, has a more universal appeal. It is a starting place for credibility and with that, empathy. Unless I believe the poem, how can I think it is real or good? I’m not trading baseball cards here; I’m communicating.

In a “felt” poem, one path (getting in touch with one’s feelings) has sought to conjoin with another (the craft of poetry). There is a confluence of energy. The language emerges from one’s consciousness to communicate a personal feeling to another reader or listener. Given the difficulty we all have when we actually try to say what we mean—and be understood by others—poetry becomes a powerful tool for communication. A well-written poem can not just give a voice to our feelings, it can actualize others—engage their empathy.

That is why poetic formalism, even when exercised with even the greatest precision, as often still feels like just a “drill.” It may show mastery of form, dexterity and even great invention of language, but ultimately, if it is only form—for form’s sake—it is not what I like in a poem.

Without “content, “ a poem is just an exercise, a drill, words marching in step. Art is not just artifice, though as often that’s all we are offered. When a poem says, “Here is how I have survived, “ when it offers a life being lived, then there is a chance for excellence. The only chance we have beyond our own survival is that transfer of some energy, some life-force from ourselves to another.

That transfer of energy happens so dramatically and clearly in birth. It happens so sweetly and simply in the caress of a loving hand. It can happen sometimes in a poem. The gift of language, the freshness of vision, the whole history of everything previously written and read can come together in a few lines so that one existence energizes another.

The effect is quite remarkable—an “anti-bullet.” All the bad intentions, the toxins, the wounds that have been inflicted are addressed in those few seconds as the poem is read and the good is transferred. How remarkable we humans are that we can do this with mere words. All the technology, all the gadgets, all apps aside, just a few odd letters, sounds strung together and one life has helped another along.

For those who might now be saying, “This is too mystical. Too diffuse, ” what would you rather I say makes a good poem? Shall we now pick up our plumes and just rhyme? Very well then…

For all the poems that talk of posies,

for all the people who rhyme their rosies,

if this is what you like in poetry,

I’m just as glad if you don’t show it to me.

SMILE…

Alternative Press and Self-Publication

Apr 142011

Dr. Axelrod is pleased to offer A NEW BOOK IS AVAILABLE TO ASSIST YOU. Order it here for just $5 including shipping or read some main points in the essay below.

ALTERNATIVE PRESSES AND SELF-PUBLISHING

by David B. Axelrod

Self-publishing, or publication with a small press is the best America has to offer! There is no greater demonstration of our freedom or vitality as a nation than our chance to speak, write and best of all, publish our creations. While self-publication sometimes connotes a “vanity” press and the term “small press” might sound, at best, diminutive, there is no stigma in either.

There are some companies which, capitalizing on a beginner’s enthusiasm, offer to publish work–regardless of its quality–and usually over-charge in doing so. However, studies of the careers of many famous writers reveal that they did indeed pay to see their own work published at least at the start of their career. Indeed, small presses are tremendously diverse, often the only real opportunity for experimentation and certainly the only outlet for small market subjects and creations.

If you believe your work is worthy, why not consider self-publication? A first step, of course, would be to look for a local or suitable literary group to show your work. Through them, you can test your “market.” Workshops provide an opportunity to perfect your art. If art is “from the heart,” then revision and publication should be more” mindful.” We create for ourselves but we revise for other. Publication may be” vanity” to some but it is good to consider it a true act of sharing. Yes, we may be living out the adult equivalent of “Mommy, watch me!” That’s not so bad. Better still, however, we are engaging in the most sophisticated of our freedoms–perfecting and publishing our thoughts and creations.

That same literary group which meets near you as likely also publishes a small-circulation magazine, or maintains a web presence to showcase work. It may be in a position, or at least some individuals within the group may be adept enough, to publish books as well. While the internet has made so much and diverse material available, there is nothing like the feel of a printed book! The task of writing, revising, formatting and publishing one’s work can be a great pleasure.

Here are some pointers regarding the preparation and publication of your work:

To do the job right, bringing out a book takes some genuine effort. Of course it is worth it–a birthing of a sort. But the getting there is work requiring lots of attention to details beyond the poems themselves.
1. Regarding printing: anything up to forty pages may be produced as a chapbook. The term itself has been explained as coming from the Middle English for a “chep” [sic] or bargain book peddled by a chapmen. The virtue of such a book is that it can be stitched or stapled rather than perfect bound and the saving on binding makes the book cheap.

2. Forty pages is no longer a chapbook. The girth of it makes a spine necessary and so it becomes a perfect-bound book. With desktop publishing and the new technologies for quality photocopying and desktop printing, it may no longer be necessary to make “plates” to print from. However, when laying out a book, it is usual to work with multiples or gatherings of 4 pages (2 pages on each side of a sheet of paper).

3. One need not travel far to find a print shop and many more print houses on line offer estimates and expertise for printing the job. The closer the book can be, in format, to print-ready, the better for obtaining a good printing price. The layout, the “make-ready” tends to be where labor and thus extra costs are encountered.

4. That brings us to the second consideration: setting up the manuscript as a book. The closer the book is to ready to print when you arrive at the print shop the better. If you are, or someone you know is adept at desktop publishing, then the thing to do is pick a format that looks like a real book–don’t experiment with format–and follow it religiously. Make your mantra: “It should look like a real book.” Layout is what makes it look other than “vanity.” If it doesn’t look like a big press did it, it looks awful.

Clearly, you’d want it to be perfect. By that I mean both that you should show it around, workshop it, let a respected friend/fellow poet comment (maybe a cover quote). Be sure the manuscript is absolutely without typos and the format is standard from poem to poem.

What Is Poetry

Apr 132011

WHAT IS POETRY?

by David B. Axelrod

Years ago, when my daughter was only three, we lived atop a high bluff overlooking Long Island Sound. Summers were spent climbing down a six-flight steel staircase to a beachfront where we could sit or swim for hours.

On a particularly hot July day, my daughter and I set out for a cooling swim with our towels and beach toys, and I, with my poetry notebook. When we got down to the scorching sand, my daughter, smart little kid, immediately wanted to swim, but I, the family poet, insisted that I capture the moment in my notebook first.

I opened to a blank page and contemplated. She waited. I contemplated some more and she continued to wait. After a while, she tugged at my arm and, pointing toward a remarkably blue sky she asked, “Daddy, what is the blue sky made of?”

I reviewed a few facts of science and looked for words a three-year-old could understand but she didn’t wait for my answer. Instead, pointing to one particularly puffy white cloud, she asked, “Daddy, what is the white sky made of?” And then, without hesitating, she said, “Look, the sky is blooming!”

Startled, I watched the white cloud expanding upward into that gorgeous blue sky just like a perfect magnolia opening to full flower. I closed my notebook, sure I couldn’t match the brilliance of her observation and we took the long-awaited swim.

My three-year-old daughter, without having taken a single course in literature, without having studied poetry or even knowing the word “metaphor, ” had written a wonderful poem:

What is the blue sky made of?

What is the white sky made of?

Look, the sky is blooming.

For me, and much of modern American poetry, that is all it takes. A good poem has the capacity to observe something–often a perfectly ordinary thing–in a way that makes it remarkable, makes it new.

The American tradition is often first person, experiential, imagistic. If it doesn’t tell a story, it has the quality of careful observation. If it doesn’t have a touch of dialog in it, it is nonetheless “conversational.” Whatever defines American poetry in our time, what makes a poem a poem is that transformation that makes the subject seem “true” for the reader.

Poetry comes from a variety of traditions, so that it is not clearly any one way of writing or another. Early poetry was as likely an oral history which used rhyme as an aid for the teller’s memory. Or, it was a song done, as likely with a dance, so that the music–sonics, metrics–were as critical as the words themselves. Poems could be prayers intoned by priests or the babbling of fools.

The beauty and, indeed, the challenge of poetry is that even the most formal poem can take some license–poetic license–with the rules.

There is, therefore, no rule for how long a poem should be. One of the shortest published poems of record is by Archibald MacLeish:

O MOON

Clearly, it can be spoken with a great variety of inflections, from a howl to a moan, implying as great a variety of interpretations. Try this to test the cleverness of it: close your eyes after looking at the poem and picture the moon.

Time and time again, students asked to picture the moon after looking at the poem, in the vast majority, picture a full moon. Hence the poet has not only played with sound, as poets often do, but controlled our eye as well!

It should be reassuring to know there is no rule for what a poem must be. Rather, it is a pass-time or a profession that allows the practitioner to observe well. The only challenge is to do it with a slight of hand akin to the stage magician who can, after all, take a simple coin and make it appear and disappear in the most fascinating ways!

Poetry can be the faithful companion of the solitary soul, and as often prove therapeutic for those who need to give voice to their trauma or pain. It can be the word-game of the witty, the slight of hand for the clever, offering a neat verse for any occasion or a literary puzzle for those who just love to parry words.

The best of poetry continues to renew the language, using words in new ways, inventing syntax that others haven’t tried, observing the ordinary in the most extraordinary ways.

David B. Axelrod, Daytona Beach (my new home), Florida

Short Poetry Explication

Apr 132011

TRY EXPLICATING A SHORT POEM

THE RED WHEELBARROW

by William Carlos Williams

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside

the white

chickens.

(http://www.gale.com/free_resources/poets/poems/redwheel.htm)

Try writing a note, literally, for each word or phrase separately and as a line or unit:

“red”

“wheelbarrow”

“red wheelbarrow”

“so much”

“depends”

“so much depends”

“upon”

“a red”

“wheel”

“barrow”

“upon a red wheelbarrow”

[Note that you should consider “wheel” and “barrow” separately first as that is how Williams presents them to you.]

“glazed”

“with rain”

“water”

“glazed with rain water”

“beside”

“the white”

“chickens”

“beside the white chickens”

Write as much you can think of for each word. Allow yourself to write even silly or unexpected thoughts that you have when you read each word and phrase. See how many ways the words can be read.

REVIEW YOUR NOTES AND INTERPRET

Try to provide a paraphrase or summary for the poem. Based on how you read all the words, what is the poem about? What subject matter has been provided? Do you think others will come to the same conclusion? What if someone says the poem is not about something (a wheelbarrow) that is red, but about an enemy sneaking up on us and for that matter, unless we defend ourselves, we are just “chickens?”

Because the poet has chosen to divide what is essentially just one “simple” sentence into a particular set of lines, say how the way the lines are divided has affected your understanding of the poem.

If “plot” is what something is “about” and “theme” is “what it means, ” can you state the theme of the poem? Trust yourself! The poem’s meaning should be directly derived from the words you just studied.

HEY, HEY! DON’T BE AFRAID. THERE IS NO DEEP HIDDEN MEANING AND YOU WON’T BE WRONG if you state your interpretation or theme!

The way we are analyzing, explicating, all we need are the words on the page!

Comment on any other idea you think is important for a reader reading the poem. Comment on whether you liked the poem and why.

Understanding Poetry

Apr 132011

TRY YOUR HAND AT EXPLICATION*

by David B. Axelrod

*This method can be applied to any writing you wish to “interpret!”

Let’s start with any one line to get the feel of the discussion! Suppose our poem consisted of a single word:

Red.

How would you “interpret” the poem?

Try closing your eyes to picture “red.” Write what you pictured. Is that what the poem means?

Try writing down as quickly as you can every thing that comes into your mind after you write the word “red” on a piece of paper. Make the list as long as you can. Don’t hold back. Free associate! Which of the things you wrote comes closest to how you read the word/poem “Red?”

Go to the dictionary and look up the word “red.” Copy out the definition. (The Merriam Webster On-line Dictionary lists at http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/red lists “114 entries”! Which definition of “red” comes closest to the way you want the word/poem “Red” to be read?)

How does your definition and interpretation of “red” go with the following definition found in the Official (ISC)2 Guide to the CISSP CBK by Harold F. Tipton?

“RED: [The] designation applied to information systems, and associated areas, circuits, components, and equipment in which national security information is being processed.”

What if someone said “red” meant “the enemy” as in “better dead than red?”

Clearly, words can have many meanings–an infinite variation of meanings if one considers the individual connotations we each bring to words! But do not despair. Reading a poem is just a matter of thinking about the words, noting what comes to mind, and weaving a “meaning” from what you think.

ARE YOU READY TO TRY EXPLICATING A SHORT POEM? CLICK HERE TO EXPLICATE!

Explication

Apr 132011

TRY YOUR HAND AT EXPLICATION*

by David B. Axelrod

*This method can be applied to any writing you wish to “interpret!”

Let’s start with any one line to get the feel of the discussion! Suppose our poem consisted of a single word:

Red.

How would you “interpret” the poem?

Try closing your eyes to picture “red.” Write what you pictured. Is that what the poem means?

How does your definition and interpretation of “red” go with the following definition found in the Official (ISC)2 Guide to the CISSP CBK by Harold F. Tipton?

“RED: [The] designation applied to information systems, and associated areas, circuits, components, and equipment in which national security information is being processed.”

What if someone said “red” meant “the enemy” as in “better dead than red?”

ARE YOU READY TO TRY EXPLICATING A SHORT POEM? CLICK HERE TO EXPLICATE!

Hidden Meanings

Apr 132011

Hidden Meanings

by Dr. David B. Axelrod

The poet John Ashbury once said “I don’t know what it means when I write it and I don’t care what it means when I am done.” He is regarded as a language poet–and I really don’t like his writing, though I see the craft of his creations. I, myself, measure the success of my own writing by how purely I have communicated what I had in mind when I wrote. That’s why writing workshops are so useful if people engage in them honestly and correctly. You get a range of interpretations so you can see if the words you picked meant what you expected when people read the work.
So, I say, when reading poetry, first read all the words–only the words that are there on the page in the poem. Then decide what all the words in a row are actually, literally, saying. Don’t bring anything else to the poem except your use of the language. If there is a word, a term, a reference that clearly, you don’t know, then the ideal reader–you–will take a moment to look up that word or detail. If no definition or clarification is forth-coming, then the poet may have “lost out” on that chance to communicate. Your job is to make sense of the words on the page without introducing the author’s life, outside critical sources, historical or any other details that are not actually word-for-word within the poems.
It isn’t what you think it means. It is how well you can read the words themselves to see what the author actually meant. But you aren’t a mind reader, after all. So of course it does come down to you “creating” a meaning from the poem as you read it–from the first time through to as many times through as you may feel the poem warrants for you to decide what the author wishes to communicate to you.

It follows that, if you begin with the notion that the words are not trying to say what the author means, then the way I’ve described reading a poem is irrelevant. If the author doesn’t intend to communicate, then just look at, listen to, read through the words and let them affect you in any way you wish. Ashbury uses words in ways words aren’t often used and even if you don’t understand him (and he doesn’t care) you may like the way it sounds. Lyricists, in fact, often care more for the music–the sound–than meaning. And certainly poets who use experimental language, or just play with words and typography, are there to enjoy.

But I think if you can’t trust a poem to say what it means–directly–then that could explain why so many people have no place for poetry. They don’t like having to figure it out and they like it less that they are made fools of with word games. We call contracts that work that way fraud.

Exercise

Apr 132011

EXERCISE TO FOCUS YOUR CREATIVE ENERGY

by David B. Axelrod

Find a time and a place where you can spend an uninterrupted period of time. Make yourself as comfortable as you can. Provide yourself with what you will need to write as soon as you feel ready. Those who meditate will find the next step familiar.

Allow yourself to feel yourself sitting; feel gravity holding you, your seat on the surface, hands and feet. You don’t have to work to relax. Sitting quietly, it happens for you. You can feel the sensations more if you close your eyes. Notice that it doesn’t get dark. There is a pleasing light that filters through.

If you listen you can feel more relaxed again, knowing that whatever sounds surround you, for a moment at least you are at rest, relaxed and untroubled. The sounds become a background on which to build. Finally, in this initial exercise, take in a long deep breath and as slowly, let it out. Let your shoulders droop.

Do it again and allow your whole body to relax. As you let the air escape you can imagine allowing any tensions leaving you. Rest in the moment and enjoy the feeling of having cleared yourself of distractions. What is left is your own clearer energy.

The next step toward learning to focus and increase your creative energy is to allow yourself to visualize a place or an event. Do the exercise above again so that you are the more relaxed and let your mind go to a moment that interests you. You could ask yourself “what is my earliest memory.” You could ask”what is my favorite place.”

Don’t feel obligated to stay with one thing. Let your mind wander where it wants. But when you find something that feels right, stay with it, picture it, feel it, remember the details. Build the recollection by asking yourself:

What season do I remember, the time, the temperature, the light, the aroma, if there was a sensation of warmth. Were you inside or out, with others or alone? Were you dressed a certain way, holding or carrying something?

Look more closely at yourself, what age you were, what color and style your hair was, how you carried yourself. The more detail you can muster, the more sensations you engage, the stronger the moment becomes, the stronger the energy.

Let the moment become as real as you can, and when it feels as if you are really there, reach for your pen, turn to the keyboard and write what you see, write what you feel. Let it all out. Write quickly, in any form your writing takes. Allow the energy to flow and enjoy your own creative power.

Rhyme

Apr 132011

HOW TO TELL GOOD RHYMES FROM BAD RHYMES

There’s nothing wrong with rhyming if you do it well. Our own new director of the National Endowment for the Arts, Dana Gioia, is a great proponent of rhyme. Lewis Turco, the author of The Book of Forms and The New Book of Forms, is a wonderful craftsman and strong proponent of both forms and rhyme.

However, there is a way to tell good rhyme for bad. One common test is to ask, when you read your own or another poet’s poem, whether the rhyme is there to help make a point, or whether, instead, the poet is working hard to rhyme than say what he or she means.

If a poem is obsessed with rhyming, if the rhyme is clearly there in the way of saying what the poet means, it can be said to be a bad rhyme. This, of course, assumes that the purpose of the poem is to say something to the reader and that the message comes before the rhyme.

An example would be a poem which clearly breaks from normal syntax for the sake of ending lines with rhymes.

“Why can’t it be/ that everyone can see/ what has happened to me?” consists of three lines which flow normally to say something (if unremarkable) and each line ends in the “e” rhyme. As rhymes go, therefore, it isn’t bad.

“For goodness sake/ for a rhyme to make/ you must give me a break,” on the other hand, is a bad rhyme because it has forced the middle line into an awkward sentence construction to keep the “ake” as a rhyme scheme.

Generally, if your rhyme comes naturally, flows with your normal pattern of thought and syntax, and adds to your meaning, it is a good rhyme. If you find yourself forcing the lines so that they rhyme, you are writing bad rhymes.

As a way to expand your skills, why not, if you rhyme, assign yourself to read and write some poems which don’t rhyme at all. In place of rhyme, most modern poets substitute a large measure of imagery—which also cures another common complaint in poems: “Don’t tell me, show me.”

Of course, if you don’t ever write rhymed poems, you owe it to the tradition of poetry to try some. They say you aren’t a “real man” if you haven’t climbed the Great Wall of China (with apologies for Chinese male chauvinism). Perhaps it can be said that you aren’t a “real poet” until you have rolled up your sleeves and sweated to create a sonnet!

Writing rhymes, or as the prominent poet and anthologist more aptly spells them “rimes, ” is bedrock for poets, who, after all, come from an ancient and honorable oral tradition. And sometimes, as with the wonderfully clever Ogden Nash, it is just fun to fiddle with rhyme.

Haiku

Apr 132011

HAIKU, POETRY AND MEDITATION

by David B. Axelrod

Haiku isn’t just a short poem, it is a way of looking at life. For so brief a form, it has a long and impressive history. If you get into the spirit of the haiku, you have learned a central principle for writing poetry, if not a philosophy which can enrich your life. The haiku–indeed many a poem–can, through it’s careful observation of detail, make the ordinary suddenly extraordinary.

As surely as haiku comes to us from a language and tradition quite distinctive and different from that of English, the definition or rules for writing haiku can vary. Imagine that early haiku was as much graphic art as written art. A haiku might consist of three artfully rendered pictographic Chinese characters. The combination of the three would be enough to create a successful haiku:

Frog

Pond

Splash

For a number of reasons, this page will encourage writers of haiku to begin with a slightly longer version. The rule of haiku here will be:

three lines
arranged by counting syllables, 5, 7, 5
each line an image
the last line the sum of the first two

Add to this, if you would, the notion that your first haikus should draw upon nature for the subject matter. The benefit in describing nature is not just in following the lead of the earliest haiku writers but in more likely finding landscapes, flora, fauna, worthy pictures to paint in words.

Here is a sample haiku by Basho (see link below) which has endured for hundreds years:

That brown leaf I saw

drifting back up toward its branch

was a butterfly.

A good haiku, in its simplicity and brevity, can offer a wonderfully revealing perspective. Indeed, the way haiku works has been likened to the logic of a syllogism and even to the technique of telling a joke with its set up and punch line. Perhaps one of the best interdisciplinary discussions of the haiku came in Serge Eisenstein’s Film Form and Film Sense. He used haiku to teach techniques for editing films. By placing images side by side in a montage, motion and meaning can be created beyond that in any one of the images. Victor Grauer, in his discussion “Montage, Realism and the Act of Vision, ” explains:

The nature of montage as Eisenstein ultimately viewed it: the shot itself is neutral until it “collides” with another shot, an event that gives rise to an active idea. It is the play of ideas rather than the simple juxtaposition of shots that is the true essence of montage. A picture of a bowl of soup is followed by a picture of a man’s face and the concept “hunger” arises. Through careful selection and relation of shots a series of very specific ideas can be made to arise in this way in the mind of the viewer — as though the shots were words. http://www.worldzone.net/arts/doktorgee/MontageBook/MontageBook-part1.html

Study these three still images, side by side:

When the eye views these three pictures, a story is created, motion takes place in the mind. The images work as a montage. In the same way, the three pictures presented in successive lines of a haiku are able to create a story. Each picture is a separate and distinct view but together something new has been created.

A good haiku has that transforming quality. Each part is of interest, but its sum is extraordinary. A haiku must present the exact words which will render the pictures clearly. There are so few syllables that wasting even one will be a great loss to the poem overall. Then there is the challenge of placing the images in just the right sequence, so that the joy of haiku is in that little “click” at the end. Your reader should give a little gasp! Can you make that happen?

Haiku links:

An essay defining haiku: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku

A link to Haiku links (also good for teachers)! http://www.gardendigest.com/poetry/haiku4.htm

More about Basho: http://www.big.or.jp/~loupe/links/ehisto/ebasho.shtml

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