Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Oh yeah, this is theoretically a poetry blog
Brent tagged me do to a fun do-and-don't list for beginning poets. Here are some from me.
Do:
1. Read as much contemporary poetry as you can. Canonical poetry is important as well for a grounding, of course, but know what people are doing now so you don't reinvent the wheel and so you can get a better handle on what you like and why. Use anthologies and journals to find individual poets you enjoy, then get their books.
2. Learn all the tools of the craft (diction, syntax, rhetoric, rhythm, rhyme, line, figurative language, image, etc.) no matter what kind of poet you think you want to be. Develop a sense of how they work together in the poetry of others, then in your poetry.
3. Read your poems aloud as you write them. It's the fundamental basis of poetry, it helps a ton in finding weak spots, and it'll also start you down the road of being able to read your poetry instead of sounding like you're strangling or dying of boredom onstage.
4. Find someone you can trust to look at your early drafts and provide feedback, both positive and negative. It's important to be able to run things past a knowledgeable eye other than your own. And your first drafts definitely need revision.
Don't:
1. Waste your time trying to work out a "voice" or a "poetics." Those things, for what they're worth, will find you as you learn to write what you want to write and are good at writing.
2. Start trying to publish your work shortly after you start writing. Wait at least 50 poems. And when you start sending out work, have some standards about where you send.
3. Neglect the better aspects of living for the sake of poetry. First of all, poetry's not worth wasting your life for, and second, you can get lots of material from the actual life part of life.
4. Believe the hype from anyone, including yourself.
I don't tag people for things like this, but if you read it, I'd probably be interested in seeing yours.
Do:
1. Read as much contemporary poetry as you can. Canonical poetry is important as well for a grounding, of course, but know what people are doing now so you don't reinvent the wheel and so you can get a better handle on what you like and why. Use anthologies and journals to find individual poets you enjoy, then get their books.
2. Learn all the tools of the craft (diction, syntax, rhetoric, rhythm, rhyme, line, figurative language, image, etc.) no matter what kind of poet you think you want to be. Develop a sense of how they work together in the poetry of others, then in your poetry.
3. Read your poems aloud as you write them. It's the fundamental basis of poetry, it helps a ton in finding weak spots, and it'll also start you down the road of being able to read your poetry instead of sounding like you're strangling or dying of boredom onstage.
4. Find someone you can trust to look at your early drafts and provide feedback, both positive and negative. It's important to be able to run things past a knowledgeable eye other than your own. And your first drafts definitely need revision.
Don't:
1. Waste your time trying to work out a "voice" or a "poetics." Those things, for what they're worth, will find you as you learn to write what you want to write and are good at writing.
2. Start trying to publish your work shortly after you start writing. Wait at least 50 poems. And when you start sending out work, have some standards about where you send.
3. Neglect the better aspects of living for the sake of poetry. First of all, poetry's not worth wasting your life for, and second, you can get lots of material from the actual life part of life.
4. Believe the hype from anyone, including yourself.
I don't tag people for things like this, but if you read it, I'd probably be interested in seeing yours.
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Steve - this is some great advice! However...
I'm super surprised to hear that you think new poets should wait "at least 50 poems" to start submitting. If I'd waited for 50 poems, I'd be doing my first round of submissions right about now. (Okay, I'm up to 65 or so...) Is this advice coming from your experience as an editor or a writer? Maybe my early submissions were a waste of postage, but they were valuable practice that I needed by the time the quality of my work was good enough to get more than form rejections back.
Curious. Very curious.
Signed,
A Newbie
I'm super surprised to hear that you think new poets should wait "at least 50 poems" to start submitting. If I'd waited for 50 poems, I'd be doing my first round of submissions right about now. (Okay, I'm up to 65 or so...) Is this advice coming from your experience as an editor or a writer? Maybe my early submissions were a waste of postage, but they were valuable practice that I needed by the time the quality of my work was good enough to get more than form rejections back.
Curious. Very curious.
Signed,
A Newbie
I dig it.
I like the 50 poem advice abstractly. It sounds about right. Why the rush to submit?
Like Do #2 abstractly, too, but I don't think anyone should sit down and read poems with the explicit aim of dissecting craft. I'd rather the insight came at length and second nature to complete inundation.
And why not believe the hype? Aren't Poets the narcissists of the word world? :-) I react similarly to Brent's Don't #3.
I like the 50 poem advice abstractly. It sounds about right. Why the rush to submit?
Like Do #2 abstractly, too, but I don't think anyone should sit down and read poems with the explicit aim of dissecting craft. I'd rather the insight came at length and second nature to complete inundation.
And why not believe the hype? Aren't Poets the narcissists of the word world? :-) I react similarly to Brent's Don't #3.
Sara, that piece of advice comes from both my writer and editor sides, but it's primarily something I wish I had been told (or more likely that I had been willing to listen to) 4-5 years ago when I started sending out work.
Counting the poems I wrote in college and the poems I wrote between college and when I really got serious, I was probably around 20-25 poems when I started sending work out in 2003, and I probably should have waited at least twice as long. If I had, I wouldn't have had some lesser poems picked up for publication by lesser outlets--I could have brought some of the poems up to par and realized that some of them weren't worth keeping at all.
I understand the number may be different for someone who picks things up faster, who starts from a more knowledgeable position, who needs to publish for teaching career reasons, etc. But since this is advice for beginning poets, I think the general principle is an important one.
Counting the poems I wrote in college and the poems I wrote between college and when I really got serious, I was probably around 20-25 poems when I started sending work out in 2003, and I probably should have waited at least twice as long. If I had, I wouldn't have had some lesser poems picked up for publication by lesser outlets--I could have brought some of the poems up to par and realized that some of them weren't worth keeping at all.
I understand the number may be different for someone who picks things up faster, who starts from a more knowledgeable position, who needs to publish for teaching career reasons, etc. But since this is advice for beginning poets, I think the general principle is an important one.
A.D.: I certainly agree that your first read of a poem shouldn't be a dissecting one. After that, I have no problem with reading for craft, but pure enjoyment is fine too.
1. Drink good beer.
2. Fall in love.
3. Get your heart trampled.
4. Live a life; don't look back and realize all you've done is sit behind a computer and type *words.*
5. Find poets you admire and work with them--either formally or informally.
2. Fall in love.
3. Get your heart trampled.
4. Live a life; don't look back and realize all you've done is sit behind a computer and type *words.*
5. Find poets you admire and work with them--either formally or informally.
All right, that makes more sense than I thought at first reaction, but still, I don't think I could stop myself (if I could go back to the beginning) from sending out the first five poems I wrote and loved. Sure, I stopped rotating those five poems when I wrote five that were better, but the motion, and the habit of sending things out was good for me.
Maybe I'm just having a hard time getting my head around this because I've been publishing for less than a year, so I don't really have any hindsight, and haven't started regretting any of my "early" poems yet.
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Maybe I'm just having a hard time getting my head around this because I've been publishing for less than a year, so I don't really have any hindsight, and haven't started regretting any of my "early" poems yet.
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