Poetry

As a bit of a companion to the series I just wrapped up, I wanted to touch on poetry in general as it can come in many different lengths. For now, I’m addressing it in a single entry as I don’t play in the poetry sandbox all that often.

Off the hop, let me say that I strongly admire poets. Poetry can be descriptive, imaginative, and even invoke your senses. Morse so than typical storytelling in writing, every single word matters in poetry. Whether your William Carlos William writing The Red Wheelbarrow or Homer writing his epic poem, Odyssey, you can be sure that they chose their words and phrasing very intentionally to have the most impact.

There are so many suggested poem structures of varying length that it would be difficult to go through them all. Some rhyme while others don’t, some have a classic layout while others go scrolling around the page in a zig-zag configuration. Likely, however, we all learned the haiku in school, with its classic 5 – 7 – 5 structure.

Maybe its the way my mind processes poems but I can, at times, find them cryptic and vague, to the point of being frustrating. When I’ve put myself out there to write one, I find the process very intimidating as my typical writing voice has to be put aside. It’s difficult to find a poem of mine that I’m even comfortable sharing as it always comes across like some child wrote it. For the sake of this post though, I’ve gone back and pulled one which used the Asefru structure and included the rhyming structure and syllable use required.

Asefru (AAB AAB AAB 7+5+7)

Scanning the dark horizon

distant flames brighten

the sun it is not, still night

Crept closer to the beacon

far from my region

‘til I was within eyesight

Two devils, broke from prison

said prying is poison

That night, I gave my last fight

That is all for now! Back out Christmas shopping, I go.

Keep turning the page,

Chris