April 3, 2015 Chautauqua

Beth's Ponderings
 
   April is National Poem Writing Month (NaPoWriMo http://www.napowrimo.net/) and participants are encouraged to write a poem a day for the month of April.
 
   While I’ve never participated, or taken any formal poetry writing classes, I have participated in some poetry challenges of my own.  For example, friends and I have, in the past, exchanged emails consisting entirely of limericks for weeks in a row.

   A limerick I dash off in a sec,
   It’s a pithy rhyme, what the heck,
   Something highbrow
   Doesn’t work for me now,
   When my life feels like a train wreck.
 
   Limericks are the poetry I write,
   And occasionally even recite,
   No finer rhyme,
   For my time,
   The Irish blood in me to excite.

   While a limerick is my favourite poetic style (I’m not strict about following rules of format), I also enjoy reading epic poems such as the old English ones by Tennyson or Robert Service’s poems of the Klondike.

   Another form of poetry I enjoy is Haiku.  A few years ago I came across a book on writing Haiku and basically it said throw out everything you learnt in school.  As Japanese doesn’t translate exactly into English, adjustments have to be made.  For example, instead of the 5-7-5 syllable form we were taught, it is actually closer to a 3-5-3 syllable form and each line should invoke an image by itself, and each pair of lines (1-2, 1-3, 2-3) should be a complete images by themselves too.

   lush carpet
   emerald green grass
   under my feet

  No matter what your personal poetic preference is, or even if you aren’t a poetry fan, why not try writing a poem, whether it rhymes or not, or follows a pattern or not.  You may just surprise yourself.

Beth

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