Jun 18 2009
A Poem by Any Other Name…
There was a day when poetry was confined to very rigid rules of form. The epic poems and prose legends of classic times were ruled by meter and rhyme and one knew exactly what to expect when sitting down to read a poem (you sat because you knew that it would take a while to read such an epic work, so you wanted to be comfortable). In the times of The Illiad and Beowulf, a poem told a story and there was no mystery about it. There was no guessing at the author’s intentions and the poem was as long as was required to get the story out, which usually led to poetry of great length. In the east, poetry developed a little differently. Chinese tradition began with lyric poetry. The Book of Songs is a collection of 305 poems representing the heritage of the Chou people. Confucian wisdom, Tao and Buddhist beliefs were all expressed in poetry that was shorter, but still structured, following specific patterns.
Modern poetry is not so structured and not always as easily recognizable. I remember reading a poem I had written to my mother-in-law, who is probably my number one fan. It was a line poem, pretty much free verse, that didn’t use end rhyme or alliteration, but carried its impact in the words used. Halfway through, she stopped me, “This is prose, right?” I hadn’t really thought about labeling the form of the poem when I had written it. I had been more concerned with its content. I supposed that one could classify it as prose if one chose to do so. I met a gentleman one day at the local hospital where I was working, sitting with a difficult patient that didn’t want to stay in bed. I had stepped out for a break while the nurse was there to relieve me, and I had left the small volume of poetry I had been reading sitting on my chair. When I returned, the gentleman, who was employed there as a respiratory therapist had picked up my volume and as I was searching the room, trying to figure out what had happened to my book, he returned it, commenting, “I enjoy poetry, so I was interested, but that is not poetry. None of it rhymes.”
Indeed, I too, am more comfortable with rhyming verse, and more often than not my poetry utilizes end rhyme, but I can also see the poetic value in other forms of poetry and I have experimented with many of them. I think that formal structured poetry is more difficult to write in many ways. It has always amazed me that to introduce elementary students to poetry, structured forms with all of their formal rules to follow is what educators choose to use. I think the first poetry I ever wrote was a Haiku in the fourth grade, and I really struggled not only to think of what I wanted to write about and what it was I wanted to say, but also with how to say it in the correct amount of syllables. I remember walking away from the teacher’s desk after turning it feeling very dissatisfied, like I had missed the point, and maybe I had.
I think that for beginning students, it would be better to start with free style poetry, because it allows the authors to express themselves in any manner that suits them. After all, creative self-expression is what poetry is all about. Once a person is comfortable expressing himself creatively, he can then move on to the challenge of fitting his self-expression into pre-determined molded forms. I have at times, thoroughly enjoyed attempting to write in one of the many formal styles of poetry. I once sat down and purposefully wrote a limerick, just to see if I could do it. The result was a silly little story that is guaranteed to raise a chuckle, which I thought was fitting, because the limerick form just seems well fitted to humor in my mind, and I was quite pleased with what I had done. Another time, I had written a freestyle (or prose) poem about a cherry tree in response to a challenge in one of my online writing communities, that took the reader from the seed stage into the full grown tree. I kept rereading it, over and over again, thinking that it was okay, but yet feeling there was something missing. Sid Sheldon came to mind and I began playing with the words on the screen, until the end result came to be a poem about a cherry tree that was shaped like a cherry tree, which was exactly what my mediocre poem had needed to turn it into a more meaningful poem, simply by changing its form.
I don’t believe that one form of poetry is any better than another, but that each form has a purpose and a place, and one form may fit with certain content than it does with another. For example, the poem that I wrote about my husband and my love for him (see below), was written as a line poem without end rhyme. As you read it, I’m sure you will see why to try and fit this poem into the end rhyming quatrains that seems to be my preference, would have been to totally ruin it. In this case, the form chosen was the only form that could express the feelings that I wished to portray adequately. No matter what form of poetry one chooses, it is still poetry.
After Twenty-Six Years
You still have bubble gum kisses.
Hershey’s with almonds melt pleasingly in your mouth
Although your toys are more expensive,
Your eyes still sparkle with anticipation of a new one.
You still pout if something goes wrong and ruins your plans.
You still make up silly songs and always know
Just what to say to make me laugh.
You’ve quieted and mellowed some over the years,
But you still like to have things your way.
Even though I’ve long since lost my girlish figure,
You still make me feel good with your compliments.
Best of all, after all these years,
I still see your belief in me when I look into your eyes.
Please don’t ever grow up.
I love you just the way you are.
Copyright ©2009 Kaye Lynne Booth
