For your final assignment, you should write an article on writing poetry. The article should be focused on one (or no more than two) poetic elements or tips (these elements can be one of the ones listed on your Elements of Poetry sheet or other elements that you've identified) and show how these elements or tips help to make a great poem. It should be in essay format, and it shouldn't be long: 750-1000 words (not counting quoted words/poetry) in MLA format (generally, this is three to five double-spaced pages).
How to write it: For this assignment, the elements or tips you choose should reflect your own poetry aesthetics. Choose qualities that you strive for in your own poetry, and then I want you to take at least three poems from established poets (they can also all be from the same poet) and describe those elements and how each poem achieves them. To be clear, you are not analyzing every aspect of each poem. You are identifying a few key qualities that you like in poetry and using those qualities of these poems to illustrate your points. This is not a literature paper; it is a creative writing paper--a lyrical "how to," so to speak. Use specific quotes and include a Works Cited page. Remember, your goal is to guide a reader/fellow poet, so write the essay as if it were an article in a writer's magazine. Also, you should use "I" in this essay and include your own experience where relevant. Try for beautiful, lyrical language in the essay in the same way you would try for it in a poem. In fact, keep in mind that even though this is an essay about writing, you should try just as hard to make it interesting and engaging as you would a poem or work of fiction. That means, consider ways to really make the reader notice this essay, to make it stand out. Some of the tools at your disposal are the ones we've been using all along: imagery, rhythm, lyricism, energy, originality, storytelling, etc.
Examples of poetry writing articles:
"The Choice of Constraint," by Rebecca Hazelton
"Give a Common Word the Spell," by Edward Hirsch
"Learning Image and Description," by Rachel Richardson
"Why Write in Form?," by Rebecca Hazelton
"The Pursuit of Form," by Robert Pinsky
"Metaphor: A Poet is a Nightingale," by Edward Hirsch
For even more inspiration, take a gander at quotes from these great works that are essentially book length versions of what I'm asking you to do, only, in most cases, you would replace the "you" with "I":
On Writing Well, William Zinsser
On Writing, Stephen King
See D2L for due date.
How to write it: For this assignment, the elements or tips you choose should reflect your own poetry aesthetics. Choose qualities that you strive for in your own poetry, and then I want you to take at least three poems from established poets (they can also all be from the same poet) and describe those elements and how each poem achieves them. To be clear, you are not analyzing every aspect of each poem. You are identifying a few key qualities that you like in poetry and using those qualities of these poems to illustrate your points. This is not a literature paper; it is a creative writing paper--a lyrical "how to," so to speak. Use specific quotes and include a Works Cited page. Remember, your goal is to guide a reader/fellow poet, so write the essay as if it were an article in a writer's magazine. Also, you should use "I" in this essay and include your own experience where relevant. Try for beautiful, lyrical language in the essay in the same way you would try for it in a poem. In fact, keep in mind that even though this is an essay about writing, you should try just as hard to make it interesting and engaging as you would a poem or work of fiction. That means, consider ways to really make the reader notice this essay, to make it stand out. Some of the tools at your disposal are the ones we've been using all along: imagery, rhythm, lyricism, energy, originality, storytelling, etc.
Examples of poetry writing articles:
"The Choice of Constraint," by Rebecca Hazelton
"Give a Common Word the Spell," by Edward Hirsch
"Learning Image and Description," by Rachel Richardson
"Why Write in Form?," by Rebecca Hazelton
"The Pursuit of Form," by Robert Pinsky
"Metaphor: A Poet is a Nightingale," by Edward Hirsch
For even more inspiration, take a gander at quotes from these great works that are essentially book length versions of what I'm asking you to do, only, in most cases, you would replace the "you" with "I":
On Writing Well, William Zinsser
- “Examine every word you put on paper. You'll find a surprising number that don't serve any purpose.”
- “Don't be kind of bold. Be bold.”
- “If the nails are weak, your house will collapse. If your verbs are weak and your syntax is rickety, your sentences will fall apart.”
- “There’s not much to be said about the period except that most writers don’t reach it soon enough.”
- “Most writers sow adjectives almost unconsciously into the soil of their prose to make it more lush and pretty, and the sentences become longer and longer as they fill up with stately elms and frisky kittens and hard-bitten detectives and sleepy lagoons. This is adjective-by-habit - a habit you should get rid of. Not every oak has to be gnarled. The adjective that exists solely as a decoration is a self-indulgence for the writer and a burden for the reader.”
On Writing, Stephen King
- "The road to hell is paved with adverbs"
- "Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler's heart, kill your darlings."
See D2L for due date.