Notes toward a panel that didn't happen

[larryhammer]

Of my NASFic panels, the one I prepared for the most had none of the intended audience -- it was part of the Young Adult track and no teens showed up (just the other panelist's friend and, after 40 minutes, Rich Horton) and we ended up talking around the subject for a while. So here's a slightly expanded transcription of my shorthand notes of advice for young poets.


Along Genre Lines: How Poetry Works in Writing

References:

• How Does a Poem Mean?, John Ciardi (good beginner stuff)
  
• A Poet's Guide to Poetry, Mary Kinzie (excellent)
  
• Rhyme's Reason, John Hollander (wonderous)
  
• All the Fun's in How You Say a Thing, Timothy Steele (sometimes misleading, but has some good bits)

The mechanics of poetry are tools for shaping how a reader responds to the poem. Every poem/fiction is a rhetorical act -- you have to convince the reader of what you're trying to convey. Authority (which is part of voice) is essential, and every break in your control damages that. Some mechanics:

• Rhyme and other sound echoes (alliteration, assonance) create associations between the concepts.
  
• Rhythm (meter) creates expectation -- which you can then break, to create emphasis.

Can use to give emphasize or undercut: for oversimplified ex, with an unreliable narrator, try breaking from regular meter at each lie.

Tricks-n-tips: Never stretch syntax (say something in a way you wouldn't in ordinary speech) to fit a rhyme scheme or meter. Or if you do, use it to make the first line of the rhyme, not the second. Sestinas are good form for a narrative poem on an obsessive topic. Villanelle - variation.

Form enforces concision -- if you master it, rather than let it master you.

Write, write, write. Even the failures teach. Read. Learn. Engage. Be convincing.

---L.