Writing Poems

Peter Sansom

• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781780370088
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism in Poetry
• Index: Literature

Drawing on his extensive experience of poetry workshops and courses, Peter Sansom shows you not how to write but how to write better, how to write authentically, how to say genuinely what you genuinely mean to say. This practical guide is illustrated with many examples. Peter Sansom covers such areas as submitting to magazines; the small presses; analysing poems; writing techniques and procedures;
and drafting. He includes brief resumes and discussions of literary history and literary fashions, the spirit of the age, and the creative process itself. Above all, his book helps you learn discrimination in your reading and writing -- so that you can decide for yourself how you want your work to develop, whether that magazine was right in returning it or if they simply don't know their poetic arse from their elbow. ' "Writing Poems" includes sections on:
• Metre, rhyme, half-rhyme and free verse.
• Fixed forms and how to use them.
• Workshops and writing groups.
• Writing games and exercises.
• A detailed, annotated reading list.
• Where to go from here.
• Glossary of technical terms.
"Writing Poems" has become an essential handbook for many poets and teachers: invaluable to writers just starting out, helpful to poets who need a nuts-and-bolts handbook, a godsend to anyone running poetry courses and workshops, and an inspiration to all readers and writers who want a book which re-examines the writing of poems.

EIGHT

SOME GIVEN FORMS

Stanzas

Poems are generally arranged in verses, or, as we tend to say now, stanzas. (A ‘verse’ usually appears in a rhymed poem; though it is ambiguous in that poems are sometimes called ‘verses’, and poetry itself ‘verse’. It can also mean ‘light verse’ or birthday-card poetry.) ‘Stanza’ – which is Italian for ‘room’ – is the equivalent of a paragraph in prose. There are individual terms for some stanzas: one of four lines is called a quatrain, for instance.

line: a line

couplet: two lines

tercet: three lines

quatrain: four lines

quintain or quintet: five lines

sestet: six lines

septet: seven lines

octave: eight lines

Some stanza and given forms

Lots to choose from. But the simplest is the rhyming quatrain (four line stanza). We mark the rhymes with letters.

Because I could not stop for Death –	(x)
He kindly stopped for me –	(a)
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –	(x)
And Immortality.	(a)

Non-rhyming lines, as you see, we call ‘x’. In the opening to this Emily Dickinson poem, you see the form is uncomplicated – only one rhyme to find and an easy metre: iambic lines interlacing tetrameter (four feet) with trimeter (three feet). The tone and diction are colloquial, in fact chatty. It continues:

We slowly drove – He knew no haste

And I had put away

My labor and my leisure too,

For His Civility –

We passed the School, where Children strove

At Recess – in the Ring –

We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –

We passed the Setting Sun –

Or rather – He passed Us –

The Dews drew quivering and chill –

For only Gossamer, my Gown-

My Tippet – only Tulle –

We paused before a House that seemed

A Swelling in the Ground –

The Roof was scarcely visible –

The Cornice – in the Ground –

Since then – tis Centuries – and yet

Feels shorter than the Day

I first surmised the Horses’ Heads

Were toward Eternity –

(‘Tippet’ is an overscarf, apparently, and ‘tulle’ is stiffened gauze.) This was written in the middle 1800s – hence the capitalised nouns; so it may seem that the rhymes are surprisingly free, apart from that repetition ‘Ground/Ground’. (Not half- but one-hundredth rhyme that ‘Ring/Sun’!) Yet they don’t sound free because of the strong, definite metre. And also, to an extent, because the ‘rhyme’ words accord with each other: ‘the day’ balances with ‘Eternity’ ‘stopped for me’ contrasts with ‘immortality’; and even the notion of a setting sun draws meaning from (closed but eternal) ‘the ring’. Rhyme is not, as I said earlier, just there for binding; the rhyme words have to have some semantic relation to each other too.

The next one really is chatty, since it was ‘Overheard in County Sligo’: the first two lines were the starting point for the poem. It is ballad metre (four stresses alternating with three) and again only the second and fourth lines rhyme.

I married a man from County Roscommon

And I live at the back of beyond

with a field of cows and a yard of hens

and six white geese on the pond.

At my door’s a square of yellow corn

caught up by its corners and shaken,

and the road runs down through the open gate

and freedom’s there for the taking.

I had thought to work on the Abbey stage

or have my name in a book,

to see my thought on the printed page,

or still the crowd with a look.

But I turn to fold the breakfast cloth

and to polish the lustre and brass,

to order and dust the tumbled...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Description
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Epigraph
• INTRODUCTION
• ONE : WRITING POEMS
• TWO : A POEM ANALYSED
• THREE : THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE
• FOUR : ALMOST A REMEMBRANCE
• FIVE : WRITING POEMS
• SIX : WORKSHOP TECHNIQUES AND WRITING GAMES
• SEVEN : METRE, RHYME, HALF-RHYME AND FREE VERSE
• EIGHT : SOME GIVEN FORMS
• NINE : SOME POETS AND POEMS
• TEN : WHERE TO GO FROM HERE
• Bibliography & ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
• Copyright