I love the English language. While some people majored in English for literature and some for writing, I majored in English because I love the language: the history, the idiosyncrasies, the sounds, the plays on words and the shear poetry of it. Studying literature, I was attracted to poetry because it is English at its finest with each word carefully chosen.
Beginning with nursery rhymes, I've always enjoyed poetry. I even wrote a piece about friends while at Girl Scout Camp "Everyone has friends, The butcher, the baker, The candlestick maker. Everyone has friends." Sounds a little like a nursery rhyme doesn't it?
While in high school I read poetry in Speech and Drama Tournaments. Reading and analyzing William Blake's "The Tyger" took me to State where I won 2nd place. After re-reading it,today, I kind of wonder what I said about it that got me to State. I did give it a very dramatic reading which was more points than the analysis, I guess.
Later while in college I studied Victorian and Romantic Poets, but I never attempted to write poetry again until I was an adult. I first began writing humorous rhyming pieces for invitations or for greeting cards. One year I decided to write Haiku to accompany art my daughters' made for Christmas cards .Click here
When I taught English, of course I taught poetry. The Harlem Renaissance poets really caught my eye. I also enjoy Maya Angelou and lately Amanda Gorman. I loved their terse style and vivid imagery in addition to the "blues" Click here
Of course a message or a story is important. To achieve that a poet uses metaphors, similes, alliteration, form, personification, sound, repetition, rhythm, rhyme, symbolism and imagery. Not all poems have them all and rhyme is just one element which I choose not to use.
Rhyming is not important to me----rhymes are often forced. And. .. ..what rhymes for a person in 18th century England doesn't rhyme in 21st century America. So, I don't see rhymes as being universal for all English speaking people. However, rhymes don't have to be at the end of a line. I aspire to rhyme like Amanda Gorman with her internal rhyming:
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour,
but within it, we found the power to author a new chapter, to offer hope and laughter to ourselves."
Words in the Wind
Words, images, ideas whirl in my head like leaves in the wind.
I try to catch them in the breeze, but they have their own mind.
I sit and watch and wait.
The wind slows,
the leaves drift down---
Fluttering to the ground,
settling in the grass:
Poetry on a page.
Whittling Words
