Poetry Exercise 1

So, here goes: the first "official" post of 'The Poetry Student' - A Poetry Exercise in Alliteration

I spent some time brooding on the nature of poetry, it's history, it's core artistic elements, attempting to discern what exactly would serve as the ideal starting point for this poetry odyssey. But, after a little contemplation of Grecian Urns and Shakespeare, I realized it was getting close to dinner time, and decided, rather haphazardly, that the best way to start one's poetry career is by writing some poems.

So I went online and did a little searching for the ideal poetry exercise, and, low and behold, my faithful pedagogue Google pointed me in the right direction.

I discovered a great little website called 'The Poetry Resource Page,' (still not as cool as 'The Poetry Student' - I promise) and settled upon their first poetry exercise. The premise of this poetry exercise was simple: write out twenty unique lines of description, each one using entirely alliterative nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Then, once you've used the poetry exercise to conjure up some multi-syllabic masterpieces, use at least one of them to create a poem. I'll share with you my rather tongue twisting attempt at this poetry exercise, then explain what I learned from it.

Alliteration Poetry Exercise

1.   “Bing” the bell bellows, bringing a benevolence I’ve barely borne before
2.   Braying bellowed from the brambled billabong, bemoaning the banality of birds.
3.   Bells bring the bellows of bygone bastilles, born in brilliance, before the banality of buildings, bridges, bricks.
4. “Bastard!,” brayed the bitch, as brilliant as she was bewitched, broader borders beckoned, beyond the banality of these barren buildings, borne of this beleaguered  barricade, and barring her beneficence blithely                                                                                                                      
5. Counting the cartons, the crates, the cases, the crane collected cats, countless cats, carefully crafting a carnal carnival from the cats collected from the cerulean caravel
6.   Connecting cars collide, clash like the corollary to climax. Combusts, it was a celestial combination, the clatter, the crimson crests, crashing carelessly on the converging crowd
7.   Capitalist coroner, cried canonically, collecting crooning candor, from a compensated customer.
8. Cantos, cease conflicting, and cohabitate, corrections cancel clandestine clarity, cryptically c----                                     
9. Destitute, dungaree-draped dervish dawdles in december’s dormant downs  

It seems to me that these rather scrambled alliterative phrases began to take on more coherency and flow as the poetry exercise progressed, but that may simply be a product of having moved away from using the letter "B" towards the latter half of the poetry exercise.

Either way, even if I failed to produce any poetic gems with this poetry exercise, I did stumble upon a couple interesting tidbits.

First, and this may be the most broadly applicable, I realized that focusing words can generate imagery, instead of the other way around. 

In other words, there is a common perception about poetry that leans on the idea that poems stem from some kind of emotional purity, some grand intuition. Although that may be true of the greatest pieces, I found that, while writing these alliterative ditties for this poetry exercise, the struggle for the next word (in this case an alliterative word, but in other cases a word with the right rhyme, or stressing of syllables) can often generate its own imagery, and thus its own plot-line. 

By forcing yourself to brain storm for words that A. are logically consistent with the previous word, and B. fit the poem's form, you'll often end up developing your own plot tangents ad-hoc, which can be enough to drive a perfectly good poem. Point being: don't let the absence of any profound intuition or rare emotional narrative prevent you from writing some poems. 

Secondly, alliteration, or by extension, any other aspects of poetic form, demand a mastery of vocabulary. Duh - I guess thats flagrantly obvious, but it's not stressed enough. You may have 'good vocab,' but the ability to conjure up a word that fits the precise imagery, syllabic structure, and rhyme scheme of a poem right off the top of your head is a skill that has to be honed. 

In my next post, I'm going to focus on a short investigation of developing one's vocabulary recall, 

which, based on my brief experience with this poetry exercise, I realize I'm going to need to radically improve if I want to be able to write the sort of spontaneous, formalist verse that I intend to in 'The Poetry Student.'

'The Poetry Student': A Manifesto

Hi again everybody!

As promised in my previous posting, this post sets out to explain he basic premises behind 'The Poetry Student' and hopefully set fourth a half-decent little sales pitch to those potential poets who may be stopping by.

The Grand Scheme
The basic premise of this blog is simple: I'm a very mediocre poet, but a pretty decent literary analyst. Thus, I'll forgo the more traditionally conceived, heart-on-the-sleeve approach to poetry and take a more analytical avenue.

Instead of weeping fragile tears over lost love, I'll be reading up on poetic analysis, forms, and theories, and trying pull out of them whatever understanding I possibly can.

In time, the hope is that, by constantly exposing my self to more and more poetic techniques and genres, and by applying them again and again, to my own shoddy work, I'll begin to see some improvement.
More importantly, as I begin to see a direct correlation between the use of certain ideas/techniques, and the creation of a positive poetic outcome, I'll begin to be able to trace my poetic progression, thus drawing out a basic blueprint for poetic development.

Battleplans
Of course, laying out a widely applicable framework for poetic progress won't happen over night. If its going to happen at all, its going to be thanks to the nitty gritty: my (hopefully) bi-weekly posts.

The seeds of my poetic postings will be planted by a little light reading throughout the week. After studying up on some poets or some forms, I'll distill whatever I think is it's most worthwhile tidbit, and try my best to implement it in a short poem. If the poem turns out to be only mildly embarrassing, I'll go ahead and post it to Associated Content, write up a post explaining my thought processes behind the piece, and link it to my poem.

The Pivotal Piece
But I wont just drop it there. This blog is meant to provide more than just a chronicle my own poetic musings, its meant to provide real value to to poets of all persuasions.

The way I intend to add this vale is simple: I'll take my mediocre poems and, after further research, reading and analysis, I'll edit them, applying the new information that I've learned. Then, I'll post those edited pieces online, juxtaposed to their previous manifestations, and explain, to the best of my ability, what makes these poems better. 

So, not only will veiwer sbe able to see how the aggregation of poetic knowledge helps contribute to a poets writng, they'll be able to see that knowledge at work within specific pieces, and be able to tease out exactly how that knowledge interacts with poems on a line-by-line level. Its this careful observation and articulation of what makes poems vary in potency that I hope will help separate this blog from the crowd, and make it worth your while to stop by.

The Very First Post of 'The Poetry Student'

The temptation here is to be lengthy, but I'm going to try my best to contain myself. What I'm hoping to do with this nascent little blog is extremely exciting for me, and hopefully a couple other people out there won't mind it too much either.

A Brief Life Story (I apologize)
Sometime during my freshman year in college, I started to consider myself a poet, which, in retrospect, was arrogant and incredibly premature. I was far more drawn to images of an angsty Dylan Thomas smoking his umpteenth cigarette and brooding over his next masterpiece than I was to his poems, or anyone else's for that matter. But, on the bright side, this strange attraction to poets, and the aura that surrounded them, got me reading a bit of poetry.

Why I Suck as a Poet
Initially, and not to my credit, it was Charles Bukowski who I really fell for. I devoured volumes of his works for weeks on end, and, at this point, I can probably say quite honestly that I've read at least 75% of his drunken ravings.

Although I'm not by any means trying to bash Bukowski, I have to admit that he wasn't the best influence on my writing. He made poetry seem easy, and his blunt, staccato prose-poems were all too tempting to emulate, justifying my continual production of unpolished and unedited work that, in retrospect, desperately needed a formalist touch.

Why that is Kind of a Good Thing
Luckily, this epiphany did strike me when, well into my sophomore year, I came across some of my early poems and realized what an atrocious poet I really was. Whatever Bukowski had that made his no-frills rants so moving and enjoyable was simply not present in my freshman self. So, I took a good long swig of humility, and went back to the starting line.

Which is why I'm here right now.

Why this Blog Might be Worth Your Time
The purpose of this blog is to give me an incentive to develop as a poet, to write some not-so-steller stuff, and post it anyways. I'm hoping that my utter amateurishness will pay off, if not for me, then for some other wanna-be poets who checks out this site.

I intend to read poems vociferously,which is something I've done on and off many times before. And I intend to post these poems, to analyze these poems, to figure out what works, and to try and figure how out the heck I can learn from them, which is something I've never tried before.

I'm going to provide a more specific explanation of what this blog is all about in my next post, but, for now, for anyone who happens to stumble upon this, I'm very glad to meet you, and I'm very much looking foward to discussing a poem or two in the future.