Ooooh, I only have a few minutes and I don’t want to break my slicing streak. Can I write a haiku?
Summer’s almost here
Days get longer, weeks are short
The beach calls my name.
Funny, I just listened to Thomas Newkirk talk about his book, Embarrassment, and that’s exactly what I’m feeling. I am self-conscious about all of my writing, but poetry…oof! I need to put “try more poetry” on my goal list. How else will I get any better? How else will I get over the cringe I feel when I try my hand at it?
Poetry folks, what advice do you have?
Might I suggest trying a pantoum. I did these poems with my students and they loved them because the end result always looked like they wrote lots because of the repetition of two lines in each stanza.
I’ll have to try this!
You did it! The beach has been calling my name, but I haven’t answered, waa!
As far as advice, honestly, free-verse is my favorite because I don’t have to worry about anything. I tend to be a stream-of-consciousness writer and I feel that with poetry, I can ramble, lol! Sometimes I play with punctuation, sometimes I don’t. I’d like to try more structured forms, but sometimes what I want to say won’t fit into those parameters, but perhaps I just want to get the words out. On the flip side, it gives me something to play with. I love using enjambment and breaking up lines in different ways. This is much easier on a computer than on paper, because you can just copy and paste the same poem a bajillion times and adjust what you want, try something, and compare it to the original. For me, it’s like building something with LEGO bricks, you have the words and you can play with arranging them in different ways.
Great tips, Alice! I love reading your poems.
Hooray for haiku! And I feel you about sharing poetry – it’s the writing I feel least confident about. Still, I keep at it now & then and try to console myself that Emily Dickinson didn’t share her poems, either. 😉
Let’s keep at it together! =)
I love your haiku! Christie Wyman, who blogs at https://wonderingandwondering.wordpress.com/ (and often slices) is a great person to connect with about poetry! I’ve learned a lot from her. Amy Ludwig Vanderwater is another awesome resource. I have experimented more and more with poetry as a result:)
Thanks so much!
Enjoyed this. Who needs advice? Certainly not you. Please write more poems.
Too kind!