In a recent survey for Tweetspeak Poetry (please take our main survey if you haven’t yet; we’re listening), one reader suggested we create a place for you to ask us anything about poetry. So we did.
Now, we certainly don’t claim to have all the answers. But we’re happy to use our collective experience as award-winning poets and reviewers to answer your questions, or at least point you in the direction of getting your questions answered through another excellent resource.
If we find that a particular question stirs so much interest in our discussion today that it suggests a post of its own, we’ll add it to a later “Ask Us Anything” focusing just on that question.
Alright, the Poet is in. Ask us anything about poetry.
Photo by pslee999. Creative Commons, via Flickr.
* * *
About One of Our Resident Poets
Tania Runyan has served as an editor for Every Day Poems and is the author of four books of poetry, including A Thousand Vessels and Simple Weight. Her poems have appeared in many publications, including Poetry, Atlanta Review, Nimrod, and Southern Poetry Review. She received an NEA Literature fellowship in 2011.
In Tania’s latest title, from T. S. Poetry Press, she secured permission to work with the Billy Collins poem Introduction to Poetry. Enjoy her teamwork with Collins in How to Read a Poem…
- Poetry Prompt: In the Wild Secret Place - January 6, 2025
- Journeys: What We Hold in Common - November 4, 2024
- Poetry Prompt: My Poem is an Oasis - August 26, 2024
Elizabeth Marshall says
Dear Poet,
Knowing that poetry is art, not science, I am growing increasingly interested in poetry word count and number of lines. And the most powerful and engaging size, if you will, for a poem.
It is almost as if the mind, heart, soul and head hold their collective attention best around poetry that is x in length. Like bites of food, or cups of tea, or sips of soup. There is almost some abstract measurement for a well written poem length.
Reading Dave Malone’s book, O, many of his poems appear to maintain a similar word count. Not exact. I am enjoying his poetry btw.
Dear poet, what is x?
Inquiring for a friend, wink,
Elizabeth
Richard Maxson says
Elizabeth, I think your question is, in part, a poem.
It is almost
as if the mind,
heart, soul and head
hold their collective attention
best around poetry that is x in length.
Like bites of food,
or cups of tea,
or sips of soup.
L. L. Barkat says
Maybe all good poems must ask a question?
L. L. Barkat says
Many of the best poems rely on a rhythm that is like breath or natural speech. I know that those who love form poems can speak to this more specifically as to how it’s accomplished, but I do know that Robert Frost, for instance, purposely modeled his poetry on human speech and some people have argued that English speakers tend to speak in haiku (and that, for instance, Emily Dickinson’s poems often contain haiku).
As to optimal length, what length were you thinking?
Laura Brown says
Elizabeth, do you find this in your own reading, that you are most engaged by poems of similar length? Is it both line length and poem length?
Kay Ryan is one of my favorite poets, and her poems are consistently skinny and short, yet dense, because of her wordplay and internal rhyme. I also am very fond of some poems that take a few pages and have some lines so long they can’t fit on the page without wrapping.
I think maybe those poems strike at first reading and stick in memory because the poet has found her own consistent voice or has found a form that is perfect to carry that poem’s content. That one has to solve for x in each individual poem, and that a poet has to solve for her own x in her body of work. In other words, content dictates form.
For some of these poems, it may also be that they’ve found a good visual representation for their thinking process.
Emily Dickinson’s poems also, often, can be sung to the tune of “The Yellow Rose of Texas,” because of their 4-line stanzas of 4 beats, 3 beats, 4 beats, 3 beats.
Laura Brown says
Oh, I meant to put that Dickinson sentence as a reply to L.L.’s comment.
Maureen Doallas says
Have you seen Dana Gioia’s essay on Ryan? I like very much how he describes reading her work.
http://www.danagioia.net/essays/eryan.htm
I also like Ryan’s 2008 interview with ‘The Paris Review’. She talks there about her initial style, rhymes, and lack of “gift” for writing “in form”. She also says she only writes about a dozen poems a year that she would call “keepers”. The interview’s definitely worth reading. She’s quite feisty.
Here’s what she says about writing short lines: “Edges are the most powerful parts of the poem. The more edges you have the more power you have. They make the poem more permeable, more exposed.”
Your comment “content dictates form” interests me because in revision, a poem can take on a form (perhaps structure is better word) than it had in the original.
Maureen Doallas says
I mangled that last sentence. It should read:
. . . because in revision, a poem can take on a form (perhaps structure is better word) that differs from what it had in the original.
Laura Brown says
I had read it, but it was worth rereading. Thanks for the link.
I suppose content doesn’t always dictate form (or structure). Sometimes one begins with form, sets out to write a sonnet or a villanelle or a sestina. Probably more accurate to say that in non-formal poetry, content often dictates structure.
Maureen Doallas says
My answer, Elizabeth, is that you leave “x” to the poem. It will know when to stop.
There is no magic number of words. One has only to read Basho’s haiku to know how so few lines and words spell into images that enchant or move one.
There may be a specific set of lines required if you are attempting formal forms, such as sonnets, and those forms also may require a rhyming pattern (ABAB, for example). Try practicing those forms, without worrying about result. Some forms are very difficult; all teach you something about poetry you might not kow.
Free verse is non metrical, though the best free verse has its own cadence and its appearance (how many stanzas, how many lines, internal rhyme, wordplays, etc.) tends to be dictated by what the poem requires. To read a poem aloud is to understand how the poet hears it in her ear. To copy it out also is a practice that can be revealing.
Maureen Doallas says
“…might not know.” Still hoping for a edit feature here.
The recently deceased Philip Levine is a more contemporary example of one who wrote poetry using natural speech as a guide. His Paris Review interview from long ago is a good read.
Jody Lee Collins says
Re-visiting this quiet place and doing a bit of eavesdropping. No questions for now–just enjoying the conversation.
Thank you, LL.
HoskingPoet says
When following a strict poetic form, there is a lot of science to poetry. How to follow rules –
Strict poetic form
Bug me. Rules made to be broke
-n. See what I did?
I just learned about the paradelle created by Billy Collins to parody the villanelle. Break some eggs and get messy to experience the art in poetry.
Maureen Doallas says
Yes but Billy breaks the rules
knowing what they are. It’s his
solo act that makes him a star.
Collins is very funny in describing the “paradelle”; he gave the form its own rules, which he described as “an absurd mix of the dead easy and the nearly impossible”. (Read and laugh at his remarks about it in his ‘Paris Review’ interview.
Any poet who can bring in 800+ listeners to a reading can do anything he wants in poetry.
HoskingPoet says
I agree he can do anything he wants but so can amateur poets. If you’re not enjoying the experience where is the fun or the art. Simply following a formula is too scientific. Everyone should be able to get messy to see what works well for him. In other words, I don’t subscribe to good poetry has to follow x. Sometimes bad poetry leads to good.
Elizabeth Marshall says
Poor x.
So misunderstood
Now y
that’s a variable we can all
debate
Wait
let’s start back at square one
while this is humorous to me
The answer is zero
poetry lengths and lines and syllables
and all that
from Collins to Barkat
Anything goes
HoskingPoet says
Great poem. I saw a meme about the dress. What if this was a common core math question and the answer isn’t white and gold or blue and black but 17. Anyone else here as confused with common core math as me? Reminds me of a poem I wrote last April.
https://vhosking.wordpress.com/tag/curtal-sonnet/
Dave Malone says
Elizabeth, I love this question. 🙂
And I’m loving these subsequent poems. 🙂
My two cents will match up with Laura Brown’s great feedback re “content dictates form.” I think it is a very symbiotic relationship, so the equation might look like: a=b and b=a. I like to use the analogy of a football (a basketball or soccer ball will do as well). The air that goes in dictates the form and shape of the ball. If we throw in x/length, perhaps that is the entire shape of the skin–or the wonderful stripes on a football.
Well, I can’t wait to sing some Dickinson verses to Yellow Rose of Texas. What a hoot!
Thank you, Maureen, for this link to the Gioia essay. I’ve not read it, and I can’t wait!
Dave
Maureen Doallas says
The following is from poet Meg Kearney, whose craft tip appeared in a recent Diane Lockward newsletter:
“These days I urge all poets, not just students, to consider writing in form more regularly. Form is very freeing, especially when tackling difficult emotional subjects, as focus on the structure of the poem tends to shut up that internal editor saying “You can’t write that” or “What a horrible line!” Form enables the imagination to make leaps and associations it wouldn’t otherwise make. . . .”
Trying to write within a form doesn’t mean you can’t have fun, and it doesn’t equate with formulaic writing. Instead, as I think Kearney makes clear, it “might surprise” you and “You just might write your best poem yet.”
Elizabeth (and others), you might find interesting the 10-line poems of Maya Stein (she features a new one at 10-Line Tuesday). It’s part of her poetry practice.
http://www.mayastein.com/10-line-tuesday/
Tania Runyan says
Hi, friends. Sorry to be gone so long; was at (you guessed it!) a writing conference with How to Read a Poem!
Here is my answer to what to do about x. A poem written to serve x will belly flop. X used to serve a poem will make it soar.
X can be a form. X can be free verse. Both should be hard. Both should be exhilarating. Both should be honest. Both should be personal.
Sometimes you need to try both to see what a poem wants.
Bethany Rohde says
I find these topics fascinating. Elizabeth, about certain lengths or shapes of poems being most engaging to you, I find I’m often drawn to the ones that I can see on page (in general).
I find that I tend to write poems with four stresses per line. I don’t know why that is, except that it feels right in my bones. I don’t precount them out, they just naturally fall into that step.
I am trying to stretch myself by working with forms in some of my poetry. So far it seems like if I start out with a strong idea of what I want to say, forms are a little easier to integrate. If I’m searching and roaming as I go, free verse is more natural (but still challenging) to express myself in. So far my favorite of the forms is the pantoum. That is the only one where I feel like it elevates the poem to something that is possibly “soaring,” as Tania mentioned. My sonnets seem to sprint toward the pool and– belly flop.
Maureen, I’m going to Maya Stein’s site now. I love the idea of a constraint (like 10-lines) that still allows for quite a bit of flexibility.
Bethany Rohde says
(see on *one page)
Maureen Doallas says
Bethany, let me know what you think of Maya’s 10-line poems. I’ve been following her work for some time now. She conducts workshops and comes up with some great poetry projects (as does Nicelle Davis).
The pantoum is a favorite of mine, too.
Bethany Rohde says
Maureen!
I just finished reading several of Maya’s poems–thank you for the recommendation. Wow, what a fresh voice. And her form gives me hope.
Rhys Cassisy says
I’m a teacher in Brisbane Australia and wondered if you could help me with a question. Is there a term for when the consonant sounds in two words are ‘alliterated’ on the page but not when they’re spoken? E.g. Thai and thing.
Your help would be greatly appreciated.
L. L. Barkat says
Rhys, we’re glad you asked. One of our community members, Laura Brown, says this:
“It’s called eye rhyme, though that is not specific to consonants. Also visual or sight rhyme.”
And I would refer you to this further explanation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_rhyme
L. L. Barkat says
Community member Maureen Doallas adds this reference, about “eye alliteration” — https://books.google.com/books?id=Mq1o9pzwKq8C&pg=PA251&lpg=PA251&dq=eye%20alliteration&source=bl&ots=-IDdmlUwd_&sig=vjSKtSglpWpWxrNFk18W6MS-2mY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CEYQ6AEwBmoVChMI95fzqciVxwIVSx8eCh1uIAE4#v=onepage&q=eye%20alliteration&f=false
L. L. Barkat says
Another possible reference from the college Irish grammar:
https://books.google.com/books?id=0fAIAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA240&lpg=PA240&dq=eye%20alliteration&source=bl&ots=ceQD2DU2fi&sig=_stVSjE9rYM4P1lTRTQpjD4lAy0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CEkQ6AEwB2oVChMI95fzqciVxwIVSx8eCh1uIAE4#v=onepage&q=eye%20alliteration&f=false
L. L. Barkat says
And this again from Maureen Doallas:
“”Modern Language Notes” of 1915, in a piece titled “Vowel Alliteration in Modern Poetry”, quotes Classen’s “Vowel Aliteration in the Old Germanic Languages”: “…in modern English, vowel alliteration appears to have reached the stage of alliteration for the eye, as in such phrases as ‘Apt alliteration’s artful aid’.”
Kirsten Malmkjaeer uses the term ‘chiming’ to describe the relationship between “two words by similarity of sound so that you are made to think of their possible connections” and then references the term ‘eye alliteration’. “