Poetry Exercise #1 (updated Jan 4), Join In! Options

[Cleo_Serapis]

Hi all!  

Let's start our first interactive class with an abbreviated definition of poetry characteristics:

Poetry communicates and conveys feelings in a concentrated form. It uses language to create sound effects and word pictures, to set up associations in the reader’s mind, and to make striking comparisons through figures of speech.

Jox's take: Poetry conveys emotions and ideas in a concentrated form. It employs language creatively, both as imagery and for its tonal qualities. It is the purest form of writing.


In our first class, we will read a few lines from a famous poem.

The exercise is twofold:

• First, write down your first image and emotional reaction.
• Second, write a few lines with your own feeling and figure of speech to match the lines of the famous poem.

From the works of Alice Meynell, "Builders of Ruins", first stanza:

We build with strength and deep tower wall
that shall be shattered thus and thus.
And fair and great are court and hall,
but how fair--this is not for us,
who know the lack that lurks in all.

To view entire poem, click here.

Things to keep in mind:

• Is there a set metered pattern (of stressed and unstressed syllables)?
• Is there a set rhyming pattern (repetition of similar sounds)?
• Is there a set rhythmic pattern (the sense of movement attributable to the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables)?

Let's start now. Please ADD REPLY to this tile.
GOOD LUCK!

~Cleo  

[Guest_Jox_*]

And make our pause and silence brim
with the shrill children's play, and sweets
of those pathetic flowers and dim,
of those eternal flowers my Keats,
dying, felt growing over him!

Alternative ending...

Man has but a short time to live...
Ashes to ashes, etc...

I wouldn't have the ability nor interest to write an alternative ending to another's poem. However, I've put both my brain cells to this and I think I have a perfect ending. Mind you, the rest of the poem would need changing too!

Seriously, I could not do as well as this...

Don't live today for tomorrow like you were immortal.
The only survivors on this world of ours are
The warming sun, the cooling rain,
The snowflake drifting on the breath of the breeze,
The lightning bolt that frees the sky for you
Yet only eagles seem to pass on through.
The words of love, the cries of hate,
And the man in the moon who seduced you
Then finally loosed you.

(Excerpt of lyrics from “Burning Rope” song by Genesis - from their Album “And Then There Were Three” - March 1978)

Album available from Amazon.Com here - well worth buying!

Now, I know one is spoken poetry and t'other lyrics but I think they express not dissimilar sentiments but in extremely different ways.

Besides, I’m sure Mr Moon is more romantic than Mr Keats

(Just to prove that I do have an interest in Keats and don't dismiss him lightly, here's an excerpt from his biography... (Sir Sidney Colvin (1887))

and went in the second week of August to Winchester. The old cathedral city, with its peaceful closes breathing antiquity, its clear-coursing streams and beautiful elm-shadowed meadow walks, and the nimble and pure air of its surrounding downs, exactly suited Keats, who quickly improved both in health and spirits. The days which he spent here, from the middle of August to the middle of October, were the last good days of his life. Working with a steady intensity of application, he managed to steel himself for the time being against the importunity of his passion, although never without a certain feverishness in the effort.

Winchester... 2004 - I'll be in the City Centre tomorrow (I'm rather later than Keats, he was here in 1819) - passing the Keats Room in our Guildhall so I'll give a nod in its direction in respect of John Keats from all his friends at MM.

James.