I am sitting here realizing how hard it is to ask you–a bunch of fifteen-year-old boys–to write iambic dimeter poetry, a form of poetry that is more or less ignored nowadays. I (literally) played around for a couple of hours penning these poems, which are at least minimally worth keeping. (My other attempts were horrid and insipid.
I am sure you will come up with some good stuff, but writing poetry under pressure [aka: last-minute] is like trying to eat Cocoa Kripsies while juggling on a unicycle in beach sand with the tide coming in.
Really–walk around with your phone on record. Get a beat–a rhythm–going. Start talking in iambic dimeter. Sooner or later some words that actually make sense will pop out. Settle for what feels good; otherwise, you’ve made a bad deal–but better than no deal at all.
The crazy thing is that it works. Sooner or later you will have made the world (and your life) a better place.
And then it is worth it after all.
Poems don’t flow out of the soul just because you want them to. They are pried out of the earth with pickaxes and teaspoons…
The Light Within
It’s hard to write
When asked to do
A task this night
That’s hard for you:
The mind goes still;
The light goes dim;
With time you will
Find words within
Here is a three verse one I just wrote with a different rhyme scheme and more use of words that are naturally iambic (each beat does not need to be a single word). Generally, a poem “reveals itself” in the closing stanza or closing lines. Everything else prepares the reader for this moment of insight.
The Jays Cry
The biting cold;
The drifts of snow–
Lone squawks of songs
In sounds we know.
The Jay and me
Both try to see
What’s right and wrong
With poetry.
We scream with words
(To each absurd)
And sing along
To just be heard.
These are not going to win me any poetry prize, but as a poet, at least I have won my own day.
Start with digging…
