A few jaundiced words on the subject of p03try
Some people love it, others hate it. It was forced down our throats in school.
I have come to the conclusion that Poetry is a dodge. Call it Poetry, and no one dares criticize it because it is sacred. Bad writing is just bad writing; but if it is Poetry, no standards need apply. A Poet can wank 24/7 and never have to edit a word.
This has led me to yet another revelation, the flip-side of the uncriticizable aspect of Poetry. If it is Poetry, no one should take offense from it either.
Damfino. Hey, lookie - everything I say, everything I write, is POETRY!
Basic poetic forms:
1. The free-verse pity party:
The writer enjoys a hearty wallow in a morass of aching heart and garbled metaphor. Teen angst or thirty-some lost love, just pour your soul into a plastic bag and drop it off the balcony to splatter passers by
.
2. The omigodit'ssobeautiful rave:
In which the writer displays a keen sense of esthetics and expounds upon some brilliant discovery of wonderfulness to the point of exhausting the reader's vocabulary, credulity, and patience.
Like, the rest of us are blind-deaf idiots and have to have the glories of whatever explained to us.
3. The Grand Gesture:
This often, if not always, follows a traditional form or some semblance thereof. The theme is similar to that of #2, but stiffer, an excess of Nobility rather than rapture, extolling the ancient rather than the newly perceived. It may not scan, but it is Art. Medieval/fantasy topics abound where religion peters out. Patriotism has its day. The main thing is to sound Poetic and soar so far above the everyday that you lose sight of reality and its mean old language rules.
The GG is the rarest of these three, since it does require a small amount of discipline to pull off.
4. The Abstract Maunder
(almost forgot this one!)
Forget about making sense altogether! Don't bother with punctuation, just let the words flow and never mind where. Add flavoring from any of the above genres to suit your taste. Hit "Enter" at random intervals to create lines. This is as good as it ever gets.