Module Wrap-Up and Look Ahead

Wrap-up

In looking at poetry, beginning with free-verse, we've started to see how imagery, symbolism, and allusion work. Next, we'll be looking at ways to trick our mind into thinking in a nonlinear fashion (meaning, tricking it into creating art), to surprise the reader (and ourselves!). For now, I'll keep you posted about what to read, but I'd suggest reading as much free verse poetry as you can: a quick Googling can yield a lot of great authors to love and emulate, and here's a start:

https://bookriot.com/best-free-verse-poems/ Links to an external site.

Read, and read, and read again until you find what you love! Then, read everything that author has, and see how you can try to incorporate their style into your own!

 

Looking Ahead

Since poetry simply cannot be a vocabulary-bank of terms to learn then plop into a formula, we have to look at some other nuanced ways authors use these, and many other terms, to better get at the heart of art: saying the most impactful thing to the largest audience in the least space possible. We'll be looking at haiku, metered poetry, a few lyrical odes, some humorous writing, and then we'll revise our own poems involving some classical ideas stolen from old, dead poets.

As you note the vocabulary, the word to the wise is to begin revising what you write. We'll discuss more in the weeks to come about the semester project which is a portfolio of your work, revised 2-3 times. You'll get to select your best stuff, but the revision is the tricky part: use what we've done in class to help as you condense, play with tone and voice, apply a meter (or not!), add in rhyme (or not!), add stanza and line breaks to enjamb (break the lines up) to help meaning...the sky's the limit, just save all your work!