“Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, romance, love, these are what stay alive for.”
-Robin Williams, Dead Poets Society
Holy fuck guys, I might have a problem. It’s currently 6:20 AM and I’ve been writing like a madman since 10pm last night.
These things happen. I just get in a groove and the idea of stepping away becomes abhorrent. For a moment there, though, I thought I was screwed; I thought I wasn’t gonna be able to write a damn thing for my latest poetry post.
It took a while, and after a conversation with a close friend, I became suddenly less apprehensive about what I’ve written. To that end, I just published a new Casual Poetry Drop on Patreon and have another scheduled for release in April, each featuring two poems that I am comfortable sharing.
I recognize that most of my poetry is based on the rhythm of the words themselves rather than some preset meter or rhyme scheme. It can involve some crazy tongue-twisting couplets, tercets, quartets and other stanzas of different dimensions. Sometimes I wonder if I should just write raps.
But then I remember: I’m not a rapper.1
Anyways, this method has yielded some respectable results without precluding basic knowledge. Moreover, my style of poetry has indeed changed since high school—I’m less saccharine, less flowery—but still not enough. This has led me to a sobering confession: I need to learn more. I need to not just read poetry, but read how to write poetry.
I’ve never picked up a book going over the basics. Hell, in my English classes, it always felt like the basics of how to write poetry was always skimmed over. Even in creative writing!
What an absurd realization to make now, 13 years after graduating high school; I’ve never actually been challenged to learn and understand this form of creative writing. I’ve just done it on my own, erring, swearing and tearing up multiple different pieces of work.2
Instead of doing that, however, I did some research and found a recommendation by Mary Oliver, The Poetry Handbook. It came out in 1994, the same year as me, and has some all-around great reviews.
I’ll be interested to see how this stacks up with my own impressions. I’m not going to write a review or anything (that I know of), but I’m keen to see what I can incorporate into my own sensibilities re ars poetica.
My strategy when going into any workshop or lesson or what-have-you is to just pull one thing. One thing at a time. That way, I’m not stuck freaking out about multiple lessons and wondering how the hell I’m going to do it all.
(I have attention deficit disorder; disciplining myself is hard enough.)
So anyways, that’s the plan: get book, read book, learn how to write more sophisticated forms of poetry, one technique at a time.
Here’s hoping that I don’t have to tear out the first pages in some sort of righteous disgust and proceed to stand on my desk, hollering lines from Walt Whitman at a book about poetry. Romantic and necessary though it may be, that’s a problem I don’t have time for.
Thank you to my Patreon subscribers, including Jenny, Michael, Roshi, Zero and Phil for being such patient and supportive persons. Your support makes this enterprise possible and for that I am eternally grateful. If you would like to join our awesome group of Casual Ramblers, click on the button below! Patrons receive exclusive access to quarterly short stories, and early access to my monthly poetry and photography posts.
1 And yes, I did just say that so could I link the video.
2 No literally, I was deleting things and cussing up a storm just yesterday with my friend because a single line pissed me off and ruined the rest of whatever the hell I had written.
The Casual Ramble 