A journey through though, IN SEARCH OF A POEM’S VOICE

[42BelowsBack]

Thoughts for the purpose of understanding where I am.

Disclaimer, none of the following is telling anyone to do anything. They are a presentation of thoughts relative to a desired poem writing technique.

Feel Free to add your own thought explorations. I will be updating and continuously reworking mine.

“Great minds think alike and Fools never differ.” In search of peaceful solutions I for one will always look at the other side of the coin. As Sun Tzu wrote, “Know thy enemy as they self.”

 

[42BelowsBack]

Topic One: poem Titles
(in search of consistency).

To state the obvious, poem titles introduce poems.

Titles as reflections of a poem.
Presently I struggle with writing titles and poems. Most often I will write the titles after the poem has been written. It isn’t working.

Titles as key to lock in a poems meaning.

The aforementioned practice of titles as reflections evolved into an attempt to use the title to lock in a tricky poem’s possible meanings. It isn’t working in the way intended. As Jimi Hendrix reflected in the lyrics of Red House… Lord, I'm missin' the key to unlock this door…” My key / titles often don’t open my poems.

Title and poem. The eloquence of maintaining connection and disconnection, between two tracks; with singular purposeful clarity.

Example, Billy Collin’s poem titled, Reading an Anthology of Chinese Poems of the Sung Dynasty,
I Pause to Admire the Length and Clarity of Their Titles

I was introduced to this poem through a conversational piece written by @Tzara (Link to Tzara’s post).

In the wonderful way that thoughtful conversations do inspire unexpected results, I extrapolated: Titles and poems could work separated in unified purpose. Like two singular tracks conveying a train of thought.

I realized a title could clearly set out the scene for a subsequent poem. The poem is now in/directly challenged by its title to poeticizes the title sentence. I really like this idea that a title can operate on one track: The poem’s body then becomes the necessary other track. As with an actual pair of rails; consistency of separation between the two is critical.

Note: @NivKay wrote an excellent essay which explores a similar vein. I recommend poets seeking their own voice read it. Including anything Tzara has written on poetry. As always, if, @Angeline comments. Angeline’s graceful voice is vital.

 

[42BelowsBack]

How does one write a poem? How does one structure a poem?

One really good solution to this is to make a kind of story. It doesn't have to be elaborate, or showy, or linguistically frilly. It just needs to engage the reader with some basic narrative that he or she can relate to.

Like Angie's "Awakening." Twenty lines, very basic story, but interesting and compelling. The poem is more than a "I looked hot in that swimsuit" poem--it references older women's opinion, the narrator's uncertainty about how she looks, her growing confidence about how she looks, the whole thing about incipient sexuality.

It is, in other words, about the emotions experienced by the narrator, which is what makes it a poem.

Or, at least to me, a pretty good one.

A future topic. Sticking with titles for the moment.

 

[_Land]

So for me personally, titles are incredibly important and I personally like to have a tie in from the title to at least one line or stanza within the poem or to the overall context.


I generally speaking we'll start with a working title

I have a concept in mind and I start with that concept based as a title

Something as simple as broccoli salad

And I 100% write poetry with each title in mind. There are a few exceptions of course to every rule I don't always think of a title for smaller form poems like tanka....

So what that looks like sometimes is I'll have a concept or an idea I'll create a title out of that as a anchor point to the rest of the poem and then is the poem develops if necessary I will change the title to reflect and sometimes they even save the original titles for a different piece of poetry.

Because not all poetry as I write ends up fitting the title and I change it.

But again this is just my process when I post a title with intent to start with I'm not stuck on it just like I'm not stuck on any specific stanza and sometimes my poetry changes a massive amount in an hour of sitting and revisions.

I can't count the number of times where I've written a line into a piece of poetry

Where the line was better than the entire context of the poetry so I chose to create a poem around that line rather than work with what I had started with....

 

[Tzara]

Topic One: poem Titles
(in search of consistency).

To state the obvious, poem titles introduce poems.

Titles as reflections of a poem.
Presently I struggle with writing titles and poems. Most often I will write the titles after the poem has been written. It isn’t working.

Titles as key to lock in a poems meaning.

The aforementioned practice of titles as reflections evolved into an attempt to use the title to lock in a tricky poem’s possible meanings. It isn’t working in the way intended. As Jimi Hendrix reflected in the lyrics of Red House… Lord, I'm missin' the key to unlock this door…” My key / titles often don’t open my poems.

Title and poem. The eloquence of maintaining connection and disconnection, between two tracks; with singular purposeful clarity.

Example, Billy Collin’s penned a poem titled, Reading an Anthology of Chinese Poems of the Sung Dynasty,
I Pause to Admire the Length and Clarity of Their Titles

I was introduced to this poem through a conversational piece written by @Tzara (Link to Tzara’s post).

In the wonderful way that thoughtful conversations do inspire unexpected results, I extrapolated: Titles and poems could work separated in unified purpose. Like two singular tracks conveying a train of thought.

I realized a title could clearly set out the scene for a subsequent poem. The poem is now in/directly challenged by its title to poeticizes the title sentence. I really like this idea that a title can operate on one track: The poem’s body then becomes the necessary other track. As with an actual pair of rails; consistency of separation between the two is critical.

Note: @NivKay wrote an excellent essay which explores a similar vein. I recommend poets seeking their own voice read it. Including anything Tzara has written on poetry. As always, if, @Angeline comments. Angeline’s graceful voice is vital.

Some thoughts on titles:

I did a quick scan through the various books on writing poetry that I own and didn't find anything about titles. I'm not sure what that means. Do the poets who write books about the writing of poetry think titles are unimportant? Or that they're so idiosyncratic there's nothing really to be said about them? Or that they're so personal that's it's up to poets themselves to compose appropriate titles or avoid titling their poems at all?

Not all poems, of course, have titles nor are they expected to have them. Forms such as haiku and tanka typically do not have titles. Sonnets and sonnet sequences often do not have titles—think of Shakespeare's or Berrigan's sonnets which are, if anything, numbered rather than titled. Edna St. Vincent Millay's many sonnets often (usually?) don't have titles and are "titled" by placing the first line in quotes or within brackets/parentheses as a title (like some of her poems listed here).

What about a poem that is labeled "Untitled"? Is that label a title or an explicit rejection of a title? (Some publication formats require something like a title, for example a web page listing a variety of poems by a particular author where the actual poems appear on separate pages or in the table of contents of a book of poems.)

In my experience, even poets who do brilliant and descriptive titles will also write poems with rather mundane or uninteresting ones. I'm thinking particularly here of James Wright, whose poems include awesomely well-titled poems such as "Depressed by a Book of Bad Poetry, I Walk Toward an Unused Pasture and Invite the Insects to Join Me" or "In Response to a Rumor That the Oldest Whorehouse in Wheeling, West Virginia Has Been Condemned" but who also wrote poems with more generic titles like "Youth". Or take Billy Collins, referenced in the post mentioned earlier, who sometimes has great and evocative titles like "Shoveling Snow with Buddha" but also ones with titles like "Poem".

There is also the danger of crafting a title that is more interesting than the poem itself. If I had somehow managed to come up with a title like "Depressed by a Book of Bad Poetry, I Walk Toward an Unused Pasture and Invite the Insects to Join Me", any poem I could have written would fail to measure up to the brilliance of the title (unless, perhaps, I was smart enough to let the title be the poem, with no following text). The British poet Wendy Cope illustrated the problem with this little poem:

​

Making Cocoa For Kingsley Amis​

​

It was a dream I had last week​

And some kind of record seemed vital.​

I knew it wouldn't be much of a poem​

But I love the title.​

​

As to my own practice, I usually come up with a title after I've written the poem. This isn't always the case, but it probably is true 80-90% of the time.

 

[Angeline]

I'll join the title struggle club. I know they're important (well *I* think they are) in that they should invite a reader into the poem. I've written poems with horrible titles like "Dance Trance," where readers even commented that they like the poem but oy that title.

The problem is that I can't (usually) write the title first because once I begin my poem goes in whatever direction it wants. And once I've written the draft I feel like I need space from writing for a bit. Like Tzara I write the title after the poem most of the time.

I said I usually don't write titles first because long ago on this forum we had Same Title Challenges wherein we'd torture each other by coming up with the most insane titles. And then everyone who signed on had to figure out how they'd interpret the title. Of course that can mean you're writing about the title, rather like Tzara's Wendy Cope example. That's not always a bad thing obviously but this is why I'm always on the struggle bus with titles. I'm just never sure what to do or if what I choose is any good. Looking forward to anyone's brilliant suggestion(s)!

 

[42BelowsBack]

Thank you all for your posts on titles.

Thank you @Tzara for the enjoyable reading. The links were very informative. Point well made.
Thank you @Angeline for sharing the things ya’ll did back in the “hey.” And that struggle bus called Dance Trance.
Thank you @_Land for your very personal sharing of your unique titling technique.

Focus on the poem, then the title seems to be the consensus: You don’t ice a cake you haven’t baked.

 

[Angeline]

Thank you all for your posts on titles.

Thank you @Tzara for the enjoyable reading. The links were very informative. Point well made.
Thank you @Angeline for sharing the things ya’ll did back in the “hey.” And that struggle bus called Dance Trance.
Thank you @_Land for your very personal sharing of your unique titling technique.

Focus on the poem, then the title seems to be the consensus: You don’t ice a cake you haven’t baked.

I like "you don't ice a cake you haven't baked," which actually could be a decent poem title. Maybe we should revive the same title challenge. Of course we'd all have to post around the same time so as not to influence each other.

I should add that sometimes (ok maybe more than sometimes), I write a poem, can't think of a title I like and think fuck it: who cares if no one reads the poem? I'm working on not being self-defeating!

 

[42BelowsBack]

I find the following post an excellent introduction to the topic of techniques for composing English language poems. Feel free to post your own methods.

How does one write a poem? How does one structure a poem?

One really good solution to this is to make a kind of story. It doesn't have to be elaborate, or showy, or linguistically frilly. It just needs to engage the reader with some basic narrative that he or she can relate to.

Like Angie's "Awakening." Twenty lines, very basic story, but interesting and compelling. The poem is more than a "I looked hot in that swimsuit" poem--it references older women's opinion, the narrator's uncertainty about how she looks, her growing confidence about how she looks, the whole thing about incipient sexuality.

It is, in other words, about the emotions experienced by the narrator, which is what makes it a poem.

Or, at least to me, a pretty good one.

 

[SpermFactory]

On writing poems I propose a lazy man is a most efficient man: I read other poets to glean from them unusual arrangements. Then I compliment their ideas through layering them into my own explorations. Like writing a sonnet. Someone else thought of that a long time ago…

I actively look for opportunities to provide feedback. Sometimes via the aforementioned mechanism of fan-maning. I ask, what poet doesn’t want recognition? I declare, to be openly inspired is an act of humility.

Before anyone bites my head off, consider this; there isn’t a single theme that hasn’t already been written or thought of before. Conversely, we can still discover things all by ourselves. There is no greater accomplishment than that of actualization of one’s truest self.

I am often a mimic and a stylistic copy cat.

Show me a serious writer who isn’t? Novelists, play writes, screen writers all develop individual voices, for their characters by, intentionally noticing other peoples’ ways of speaking. When inspired by another poet’s ideas I shamelessly acknowledge and credit them. This is how I presently compose some of my poems. By exploring the methods of other poets.

None of the above means I don’t try to have my own ideas. It means I seek to cover the ground most quickly. After all we all follow poetical rules laid down by other poets. Whether via long established forms like sonnets or free verse; none of us invented any of these things.

I seek no honors and happily accept at best l write happiest as a screw loose poet.

Thank you @42BelowsBack for openly sharing your explorations.

 

[42BelowsBack]

Part one, a reply to @SpermFactory’s post On writing poems.

I appreciate your post Sf,

Big butt, I don’t agree with the ultimate impossibility of originality. Try as you do, I argue, a cat mimicking a goldfish is still a cat. Tzara posted one thing, I came away with an idea about titles. One informed the other, while the other (mine) ended up unrelated to the original Tzara post. Which isn’t dissimilar to using an existing form to write an original poem.

Or your poem about two lovers making an original from their blue prints.

Thank you for your contribution Sf. I enjoy anything that makes me think. Or laugh.

 

[42BelowsBack]

WARNING skip parts 1&2 Go directly to part A.

Part Two: In argument of originality.

People have discovered entire Countries already discovered by others. And we discover new things and places endlessly.

If I were a Neanderthal ignorantly blowing a C minor on a hollow tube of wood, in my cave, that I had never heard before, and nobody would ever hear me blowing: How could I or another be accused of copying it? The first human, to blow a C minor in another time would equally be the originator of a C minor.

If we consider a wheel as though it were a poem. Do we say a wheeling Airplane wheels the same way as the Stars wheel through the sky?

Interpretation is an individual perspective. A youth writing a poem quietly in a note book might consider this. Without any outside input.
This youthful poet, might consider when the wheel was created; if it had many different inventors. And theorize a multipoint origin of the wheel. All this while they write their own entirely original composition.

They may consider the vast possibility of human wheel inventors in different times, in different places, in different languages for vastly different purposes. They might see the many wheel inventors’ wheels weren't the same. For example, a water wheel may have been invented to measure time or harness and transmit the force of a moving liquid.

A wheel is a disc as is potentially a pebble. A pebble placed under a heavy beam allows for said beam to be easily wheeled around like the hands on a clock.

All of these manifestations of a wheel are different. It is as likely as not that they all had different points and reasons for their individual creations; poems can be original constructions. To steal reasoning from an afore-linked Sf poem, an orgasm is an orgasm when in impregnation no two orgasms produce the same child.

“You know you’re crazy when you don’t know you’re crazy.” (Anon)

Now to wheel comes full circle, why would I post any of the above on a Porn site? Simple, there be mad poets and kinky thinking poetical lovers here in multiple booths.

All over the world, through time and in all history, to compose a Poem is to give one’s experiential, cultural, intellectual creative DNA. Poems have lives of their own, they go out and find homes in space and time, in publications, in peoples hearts or minds. Still other poems ride off with the poet.

 

[42BelowsBack]

Part A, in love with composing free verse poems:

1. Incoherently. Throw out all the nuts and bolts before assembly.

I like to feel for a poem, chase the shadow of a thought down, losing sight of written rationality through the woods and trees i.e. I feel while I dive into my free think tank.

1. I go back over it looking at language selections and language opportunities.

I listen to sounds, try to see words moving. There’s a bit more to it, but one must keep some work ons secret.

1. I walk with the poem while it finds its identity. It’s my method, and not a very good one.

In search of voice, when writing seriously, I sometimes use existing forms to inspire style. And have started listening to Jazz for its unique poetry.

When writing for fun and as a free write exercise, I draw on Pop Culture. I grew up in the here and now. My heroes were, SF Guys, Bruce Lee, Ali, Sci-fi Super heroes and villains. And Quentin Tarantino's creative absurdities, his brilliant dialogue and cinematography. And gunslingers like Clint Western Harry Eastwood “make my day punk.”

The critical element missing in my poetry writing technique is outlined in Tzara’s co/opted post above. Grrrrrrr Conan need a nap.

 

[Angeline]

Okay I do agree with Sperm Factory that there's nothing new out there. I also think everyone copies when they write. I'm not talking plagiarism (yes that's copying, too, but that's another topic), but we imitate what we admire and aspire to achieve. That's how we learn and if we keep reading and writing and learning eventually a unique style can develop. There are poets who've influenced the way I write. I've tried to write like them or write on the same topics out of admiration or as hommage. And maybe I've failed more than succeeded but along the way I've learned to adapt what I like in ways that work for me.

I'm not saying I'm as good as so and so. God knows I'm not lol. But that's the road I'm on and I'm always trying to learn and grow.

I think you, 42, are very good at making sound and visual impact work in your poetry. And I know you've read poets or listened to music that helps you find your way in those efforts. Is that copying? Yes and no. Imo it's more about learning and adapting to find a voice that suits you.

 

[_Land]

Okay I do agree with Sperm Factory that there's nothing new out there. I also think everyone copies when they write. I'm not talking plagiarism (yes that's copying, too, but that's another topic), but we imitate what we admire and aspire to achieve. That's how we learn and if we keep reading and writing and learning eventually a unique style can develop. There are poets who've influenced the way I write. I've tried to write like them or write on the same topics out of admiration or as hommage. And maybe I've failed more than succeeded but along the way I've learned to adapt what I like in ways that work for me.

I'm not saying I'm as good as so and so. God knows I'm not lol. But that's the road I'm on and I'm always trying to learn and grow.

I think you, 42, are very good at making sound and visual impact work in your poetry. And I know you've read poets or listened to music that helps you find your way in those efforts. Is that copying? Yes and no. Imo it's more about learning and adapting to find a voice that suits you.

https://www.literotica.com/p/new-york-tendaberry

Inspiration comes from many things

https://www.literotica.com/p/i-am-new-york-tendaberry

One could claim that I stole Angeline's idea!

Or a little bit of Truth, I recognized the photo on her profile, rembered her poem from decades ago and wrote that plus one more for my found appreciation of Laura Nyro..... and long time appreciation of Angeline

That then inspired Angeline to write a new one with Laura in mind.

https://forum.literotica.com/threads/non-erotic-poetry-that-is-poetry.1633414/post-101205974

It's the circle of life.....

Our voices are all different our perspectives are different that's one of the coolest aspects of the same title challenge.


You can take a single title and get hundreds of poems that all have relevance.

My 2 cents not that it's worth much now that they are being pulled from circulation

_Land

 

[Angeline]

Don't want to derail your thread 42, but I bumped a Same Title Challenge from 2013 so folks can see how they work. The main point is that we wrote independent of each other so as not to influence anyone else's poem.

Intermission over.

 

[MrMrsMrsMr]

When I write a poem,

I dance with the honey bees
honeycombed in memories I,
my, mind flowing somewhere
I’ve been. A forbidden nectar
imbibed. Bee like the poems
are a singular sting posted in
escaping my hive-mind they
die regrettably reflecting on
how my poems are little bees
flown far away from my home.

What I think I can’t always imagine. I think poems should have meanings.

 

[42BelowsBack]

Good poems don’t need poets to explain them.

If you are reading this, I am not telling anyone what to do. You are crazy. This is where. I am, talking to myself.

My Language, word selections could be intentional. Every part of a poem, the length of sentences, semantics, the size of a stanza should put in layering that works.

Question: Who reads a poem for any of that? Come on really?? The poet, a labor of love, the pursuit of voice. Take your pick.

In, decision, participles are treated with suspicion. Punctuation is dynamic. A comma for example is used as a separation or pause. The same way the end of a line can signal something.

In, decision, participles are treated with suspicion.
In this sentence, to garner meaning the comma causes a reflective double read. The comma is intentional subversive. Indecision becomes In, decision, (participles are treated with suspicion). The repetition is intentional.

Loss of traction.

Traffic lights. In, decision, Traffic lights. In, decision,
red green goes orange red greenOrangeRed green
separated from indecision there is a rev counter in
my head -loss, of, —traction into bumper to bumper
Traffic lights. In, decision, there is a red light burning
in my head.

Compare possible titles: Loss of Traction vs Loss of Traction with my life vs Loss of Traction in my head.

(In the posted version lines run in to twos).(In the posted version the second line gets a comma after green).(green follows goes, in my mind, this aids the initial slow wording to speed up into collision, into a jumble, then slow mo separate out as green light decision is reached at the end of line).(In the posted version separation separates the couplets. In, decision, becomes In. Decision, ).(The red light in the second to end line is critical to understanding what is happening. The final decision). Of course all of this is only in my head. Most readers won’t see or even give a flying fart about it ().

My voice is writing. Another poem.

My ice cream fell
well it floated down stream
cream slipping away

In this poem movement is particular: fell, floated, down, stream, slipping, away
The dearth of participles is an intentional loss. The questions becomes, how do I move the poem in between stanzas? Remembering movement is King, cliche can go get f….kd.

Well, I’m working on it.

 

[SpermFactory]

Good poems don’t need poets to explain them.

A prose (poem) by @melimelissa. Every word puts in work. And needs no explanation. Very good use of repetition. Movement is King. The punctuation is dynamic, adds impact. The poem also avoids unnecessary participles. An inspiring piece.

Oh! Daddy! Yes Daddy! Go Daddy!
Fuck Daddy! Mmm Daddy! Love Daddy!
Quick Daddy! Thick Daddy! Hard Daddy!
More Daddy! Yours Daddy! Deep Daddy!
Right Daddy! Tight Daddy! Sighs Daddy!
Fun Daddy! Yum Daddy! Cum Daddy! Yesssss!

Méli

 

[SpermFactory]

I write what ever comes to mind. Results are variable. Sample below.

The discovery
of a back door.

“ Uh? ”
“ ugh! ugh! “
“ Oo! Oo! Oo!”
“ Erm, sperm… umm?”
“Oops!?”

 

[Angeline]

A prose (poem) by @melimelissa. Every word puts in work. And needs no explanation. Very good use of repetition. Movement is King. The punctuation is dynamic, adds impact. The poem also avoids unnecessary participles. An inspiring piece.

Oh! Daddy! Yes Daddy! Go Daddy!
Fuck Daddy! Mmm Daddy! Love Daddy!
Quick Daddy! Thick Daddy! Hard Daddy!
More Daddy! Yours Daddy! Deep Daddy!
Right Daddy! Tight Daddy! Sighs Daddy!
Fun Daddy! Yum Daddy! Cum Daddy! Yesssss!

Méli

Wow! That is so good. Sexy as hell, urgent and like you said every word counts!

 

[_Land]

A prose (poem) by @melimelissa. Every word puts in work. And needs no explanation. Very good use of repetition. Movement is King. The punctuation is dynamic, adds impact. The poem also avoids unnecessary participles. An inspiring piece.

Oh! Daddy! Yes Daddy! Go Daddy!
Fuck Daddy! Mmm Daddy! Love Daddy!
Quick Daddy! Thick Daddy! Hard Daddy!
More Daddy! Yours Daddy! Deep Daddy!
Right Daddy! Tight Daddy! Sighs Daddy!
Fun Daddy! Yum Daddy! Cum Daddy! Yesssss!

Méli

Maybe you can sell this to go Daddy for a super bowl commercial.....

 

[SpermFactory]

Wow! That is so good. Sexy as hell, urgent and like you said every word counts!

Isn’t it just magnificent! I love how Méli leaves visualization to the reader.

 

[42BelowsBack]

A prose (poem) by @melimelissa. Every word puts in work. And needs no explanation. Very good use of repetition. Movement is King. The punctuation is dynamic, adds impact. The poem also avoids unnecessary participles. An inspiring piece.

Oh! Daddy! Yes Daddy! Go Daddy!
Fuck Daddy! Mmm Daddy! Love Daddy!
Quick Daddy! Thick Daddy! Hard Daddy!
More Daddy! Yours Daddy! Deep Daddy!
Right Daddy! Tight Daddy! Sighs Daddy!
Fun Daddy! Yum Daddy! Cum Daddy! Yesssss!

Méli

Brilliant energy in this @melimelissa poem. Although two very different poems, it reminds me of Orange Water by Eric Baus. She also illustrates my point better than I have

@SpermFactory thank you for sharing your pants-ah? writing technique. Given your variability, I’d like to say; there is a lot going on in your mind. (We already realized that you write poems without your pants on).

 

[_Land]

QUOTE="42BelowsBack, post: 101265270, member: 6978518"]
Hey Red, thinking of you.

Time was. There we were. Two walls.
In silence. Our shadows turned away.

Between us a wide stone floor. In our
sunset corridor. We stood with so much

opposition. All we could do was embrace
silence. That cuts. Two lives in bits. We

walked in our shadows down that corridor.
Two walls departed. In roof falls. In this our

corridor. Ghosts come now at night. Where
you wore the shadow of the hourglass. And

I wish you heaven wherever you are.

11 out of, maybe a stretch of imagination 52
[/QUOTE]











This got me to thinking about cadence and Rhythm..... So I tried something.. I probably have the punctuation all fucked...




He rises slow, with purpose
remembering how. She pours

coffee without glancing, cups half
empty just because. He sips slow,

dancing his morning
to be present in the daylight jazz. She creates

rhythm and grace in
cast iron sizzle
love plated, a benefit. He appreciates

the subtle curves, faded
but memory holds the time. She lasts,

her perseverance and patience
a reward to loyalty and faith that. He is

everything she dreamed of, hoped for
beauty, rugged, hardened by years. She is

still in moments like this the one
he fell in love with and still. He is