Secrets of Poetry part 2

Greetings and welcome to part two of the Secrets of Poetry! Since last time we looked at the mechanics of poetry, all the easy, technical things you can check off on a list to write a poem, this time we'll look at the gritty stuff. The gritty stuff, for lack of a better phrase, is all the artistic stuff, the stuff that's harder to quantify. But really, is usually the gritty stuff (the content of the poem) that makes a poem good. You can follow all the mechanics of poetry and make a nice rhythmic, rhyming poem, but it's the harder things like telling a story and conveying emotion that make poems stand out.

The Gritty Stuff

Telling a Story

One thing you can do to add more meaning and depth to your poem is to tell a story. As each liner stanza goes by, you take the reader through a sequence of events or on a journey. It's a pretty easy concept to understand, especially since books, movies, and songs almost if not always tell some kind of story. It's just easier to understand. There is even a whole kind of poem (ballads) that are just one long story, and was the way that people used to learn history when reading and writing was only for the elite. Often, ballads were set to music to make it even easier to remember.

Take Your Stand

Before the silver rocks and golden hills

Are slain by grey - the shadow of evil

Please follow me into the brighter day

And take up arms, the ancient darkness slay

Take up your sword, the blade of truth to wield

And from on high, the gift of faith, your shield

Put on your breastplate, clothed in righteousness

Put shoes and belt and helmet to the test

Now take your stand against the evil dark

Come see the line 'twixt good and evil stark

Now hearken to the mighty battle call

And charge with joy: "Our God is Lord of All!"

And when the battle has been fought and won

Come kneel and bow before the Christ, God's Son

And lay your battle trophies at His feet

Come taste the joy of Jesus' true love sweet

This is one of my favorite poems of the ones that I've written. Each of the four stanzas focus on a different scene in the story, starting from the call to begin a quest all the way to its completion. Of course, since there are only four stanzas, there's a lot of blanks along the way that could be filled in, either by writing more of the poem or turning it into an actual story. When you're telling a story in your poem, you can add as few or as many details as you like – just keep in mind how long you want your poem to be.

Conveying Emotion

If you're an aspiring writer like me, you probably know that there's quite a lot of overlap in between novel and poetry writing, especially in the gritty stuff. This is especially true if the meaning of your poem is to tell a story! But other than actually telling a sequence of events, another key thing in writing a good story or poem is to convey emotion. In novels, conveying emotion helps you connect with the character and fall in love with them so that you want to see how the story ends.

Poems are usually shorter, but the importance of emotion still stands – why should I care about the poem you've written unless it connects with me in some way? Then again, getting the emotions across can be a really hard thing, especially if you're not feeling them.

How Long

The tears of my heart and the cries of my soul

Are held by the One who will never let go

I'm broken and trampled by wandering feet

A crushed, fading flower with fragrance yet sweet

I've waited in darkness for conquering light

But all I have found are the terrors of night

How long must I wait until Jesus will come?

How long in the dark till the rise of the sun?

My enemies mock and my friends turn away

I'm losing the hope that there will be a day

When suffering ends and all wrongs are made right -

How long must it be till my faith is made sight?

Oh, God, I have waited and bled for Your name

But all my rewards are these ashes of shame

You promised me joy in the midst of the night

How long must it be till You look on my plight?

My sorrows pile up and are weighing me down

Repeated betrayals and scars are my wounds

I've nothing but tears and the bones in the dust

How long, oh my God, must I hold out my trust?

As Jesus once said in the garden of old

Lord, please take this cup, yet not my will but Yours

I'll sing in the silence, I'll pray through the rain

For I know that my pain will bring praise to Your name

It's obvious how the speaker of this poem is wrestling with pain, doubt, and despair, but how exactly? To borrow a maxim from the novel writing world, show, don't tell. Describe how the person is feeling and what they are doing rather than saying what or how they feel directly. In poems, this is especially easy because you can just use a lot of similes and metaphors. You could also personify their emotions, like making pain a smothering blanket or fear an ever-present monster, or even just change the way you word things. Someone who is sad and feeling down is more likely to see dark and dull colors and use sad and hopeless metaphors. Someone who is super excited probably won't be speaking in fancy, archaic English (with exceptions, of course).

For example, the speaker in this poem talks about being broken, trampled, and crushed; he's waiting, bleeding, and clearly suffering; and he compares himself to a fading flower in the darkness. All these similes, metaphors, and poignant imagery us connect with him and sympathize with his pain and despair. Without ever really directly saying it, we know just how the speaker is feeling.

Another important thing is how you and your poem, though that's not really related to conveying emotion. But, finishing where you started or going on a journey through different emotions can add a sense of completion and/or satisfaction to your poem. For this poem, the speaker starts with relative faith and trust in the goodness of God, goes through pain, hopelessness, and anger, and finally finishes with the declaration of stronger faith and resolve to trust and praise the goodness of God.

One final thing: just because you don't feel your poem conveys emotion well doesn't mean that it won't connect with others. Several times I've been told that something I've written is very emotional when I thought it was hardly emotional at all. 

Adding Meaning (Symbolism)

Adding meaning, or sneaking in hidden symbols, is often the best and most satisfying part of both reading and writing godly poems. A lot of the time, our message gets across easier when we don't say it directly, which can be both good and bad thing. At least from what I've seen, most of poetry analysis is trying to dig up the hidden symbolism and meaning behind the poem rather than the actual language itself (e.g. "this poem talks about how art, truth, and beauty are intertwined" rather than "this poem is written in iambic pentameter with alliteration on such a such a line…"). Sometimes the symbolism more obvious, and sometimes it isn't. The Pathway is a more obvious poem:

The Pathway

On a hill far away

Is a broken stone path

A path that many trod before

A small, narrow road

That leads to my home

Yet often, is easily ignored

It rises o'er mountains

Runs straight through the valleys

Through thick and through thin it runs true

Thornbush and bramble

Pitfall and trap snare

The road leads to life made anew

The path doesn't wander

As others e'er do

Forever the only straight way

First stop at the cross

Face up to your loss

The punishment - death - must be paid

Jesus died on that cross

He took our punishment

Into death and the grave He went

And three days later

He rose, our Savior

The power of sin fully spent

The old way is rocky

Stained red with martyrs' blood

The way is not easy or safe

But look to the end

When all things will mend

Run hard through it all, keep the faith

And when I cross the gap

The chasm of my death

Following the only true Way

I'll enter the gates

See God's smiling face

Rejoice, for in Heaven we'll stay

The path in this poem symbolizes the Christian's journey, like in Pilgrim's Progress. It builds on ideas mentioned in the Bible, like heaven being home, the road being straight and narrow, following Jesus has a price, and finally, a focus on the Gospel and getting to be with God at the end.

Dawn Watch, on the other hand, has subtler symbolism and meaning:

Dawn Watch

Hold on, my child, until the night is past

Remember there will one day be a dawn

For e'en within the night the shadows cast

They flicker in the fire and are gone

The wind blows cold and ice is in the land

So many lights have flickered and gone out

Fear not, my child, and hold on to my hand

Take courage, He has said we must not doubt

The darkness screams with cries of dying souls

Unending pains of loss strike hearts again

We must stand fast, my child, we must keep hold

And keep our fire alight until the end

No matter how our suffering goes on

We keep our weary watch until the dawn

So in this poem a mother is talking to her child, comforting him or her as they huddle beside their fire, keeping watch until the dawn. It's a beautiful picture, but what does it mean? Well, when I was writing this poem, I was thinking of a kind of allegory: so the Prince, King, or leader has gone away, and He has told His subjects or His following to light watch fires and stay awake through the night until He comes back. This mother and her child are one of them. It's winter and it's a land of eternal night, but they are watching and waiting for the promised dawn.

They've stayed awake, watching, for hours and years, but the King has still not returned. The wild creatures in the shadows have attacked watchfires, and some people have given up, fallen asleep, and let their fires go out, and so this mother and child have had to watch their companion watchfires go out one by one. The mother is encouraging herself as much as her child, reminding them of the King's promise: Dawn will be coming soon. Of course, you probably wouldn't get that from just the poem. But, ideas and symbolism of watching for Jesus and holding on until the dawn are clear enough – and the cost of holding on as well.

It's your choice whether you want to add symbolism, and how obvious you want to make it, but symbolism is a great way to send a message and add deeper meaning to your poem.

Creating a Picture

Imagery, or creating a picture in the reader's head, is on the fuzzy line between the mechanics in the gritty stuff. Imagery is technically listed as a literary device (e.g. mechanics), but the actual art of making a good description makes it really belong the gritty stuff in my opinion. Creating a picture is closely tied with all the other gritty things I've talked about, especially telling a story. It's kind of hard to like and follow story if you can't imagine the scene looks like.

On the Other Side

Awake! Come quickly, death is close at hand

The soldiers black are knocking on the door

Get out of bed and run, just like we planned

They've found us and they've come to settle scores

They smash the door and drag you through the street

They throw your precious treasures on the ground

They lash us for each friendly eye we meet

The secret of our story has been found

And now we stand before the blazing fire

To take the mark or to the fire fall

I'll make my stand and set my love up higher

But will you bear the trial to which we're called?

God give you strength and in His peace abide

And soon I'll see you on the other side

The easiest, but not necessarily the best, way to create a picture is to use a bunch of adjectives and adverbs – you know, the describing words like black, friendly, precious, blazing, higher, and quickly. The problem is, if you use too many adjectives in a row, it gets boring and makes your writing sound bad. That's not to say that adjectives and adverbs are bad, just use them wisely and have a purpose for putting them in.

Instead of filling your poem with adjectives to create a picture, especially if you're also trying to tell a story, is to make your verbs (action words) more descriptive. There is exceptions to this rule, like when your syllable count or rhyme scheme constrains you or the speaker of the poem just wouldn't use that word (more on that later). In this poem, the speaker is under stress and in a hurry, so he uses a lot of simple verbs like come, run, stand, and throw. However, "they lash us" rather than "they hit us".

Onomatopoeias can also make the story more vivid, because they sound like what they're describing. If you're also describing what is happening, the picture you're painting can quickly become very vivid.

How you present poems

The last thing you want to think about is how you present your poems. This could totally be a mechanical thing depending on whether you're talking about the font, stanza arrangement, etc. or not. However, the sneakier part of writing poems would be the voice, the specific way you arrange or omit your poem's punctuation, and the specific words you use to write your poem.

Breaking up a poem into the regular stanzas can make it seem unplanned or spontaneous, writing a poem in a humorous accent can help underline your point, adding italics or different punctuation can signal irony or clarify your thought, and using a handwritten writing font can make your poem seem more believable as a story or a letter. But most of all, the little changes in your wording can affect or completely change the meaning or tone of your poem. It might not be obvious, but the effects are there; it's all the little wording choices put together that makes the voice in the poem.

That's all for this post; next time I'll talk about different kinds of poems you can write!

The Secrets of Poetry by Grace

Hi! Mom has given me the blog for a while, and I thought I'd do a series on writing poems. This is the first part of four, about the mechanics and easy parts of writing poetry.

The Mechanics of Poetry

Basic Patterns, Rhyme & Meter

Poetry isn't strictly based on patterns, rhyme, and meter, but pretty much every poem excluding free verse has some sort of structure. Most poems generally rhyme, and a lot of them have some sort of  meter (rhythm), and almost all poems have a pattern of some sort.

Poetry patterns can be anything from repeating a certain line to an overall structure. For example, each stanza (poetic paragraph) could start with the same line, or it could focus on a different angle of the overall theme. Hiding little patterns inside your poems can be the most fun part of writing poems, wondering if other people will notice what you did.

The most common type of meter is iambic, which means the words go ba-bum. If you think about it, a lot of our everyday speech is actually iambic. Shakespeare wrote his plays in blank verse, which is a poem in iambic pentameter (five iambs, or ten  iambic syllables) that doesn't rhyme. You don't have to stick to one strict rhythm, but I suggest you pick one kind of meter for a stanza or theme and keep it mostly intact throughout the poem. It makes your poem a lot easier to read.

Rhyme is something we all should know and is probably the most famous part of poetry. A whole lot of poems use some sort of rhyme, though it's not strictly necessary. There's many kinds of rhyming you can choose from, including near rhyme, eye rhyme, internal rhyme, and end rhyme. Basically, two rhyming words sound similar (or the same), and you can put them at the end of different rhymes (end rhyme) or within the same line (internal rhyme). Sometimes the words only look similar and don't sound the same, and those are called eye rhymes. At least for me, rhyme comes naturally when writing poetry and is a major part of how I write my poems.

Make sense? Let's see an example:

Take Me To Renago

Take me to Renago

That fair land far away

Take me to Renago

Where night melts into day

With fairest flourish of silvery light

The garment of day and the emblem of night

Take me to Renago

To lands of deepest gold

The rivers in the valleys

So small that I may hold

The clearest crystal of silvery dew

As old as the hills, and yet suddenly new

Take me to Renago

With cloud-embroidered lace

Descending on the hilltops

Caressing broken face

The shattered Shiloh restored, healed anew

Renewed in the healing, restored by the truth

Take me to Renago

Away from this world

Of sorrows and sighings,

Of hope crushed and furled

From rueful regrets to the land of pure life

The morning of dawning that bringeth delight

Take me to Renago

The land that stayeth pure

The beauty out of ashes

The love that stayeth sure

The golden world's reflection that yet remains unstained

The echo of true homeland that calls out across the plains

The obvious pattern here is that each stanza has six lines, and the first line is always "Take me to Renago." Some subtler patterns include how the last two lines of every stanza are connected to each other but are different from the previous four lines, like a mini stanza; and how each stanza concentrates on describing Renago rather than pleading with the hearer or telling them how to get there.

As for rhyme and meter, the second and fourth lines of each stanza always rhyme, and so do the fifth and six, but the first and third lines don't. (The fast way of expressing this is ABCBDD.) The meter stays the same across stanzas, but it changes depending on the line. The first four lines are iambic  trimeter (three ba-bums, iambs, per line), and the last two vary, depending on the stanza. Sometimes they are dactylic (bum-bum-bum), but mostly they're a mix of different meters.

Stanzas, Syllable Count, & Symmetry

Another essential thing to think about when you are writing poems is how you are going to divide the stanzas. Depending on the kind of poem you're writing, stanzas can be either long or short, regular or irregular. Generally, it's a good idea to to keep your stanzas regular especially if you are making a structured poem. People find it easier to read short blocks of text rather than long ones.

If you find making a consistent rhyme or meter difficult you can try experimenting with  syllable count. For example, you could make one line of every stanza ten syllables, or make each successive line one syllable longer. I'll take more about shape poems, which use syllable counts, in a later post.

Symmetry is another way to think about patterns. Symmetry can be having the same rhyme scheme, meter, or structure, but generally when I think about symmetry I think more about the pattern of meaning between stanzas. For example, this one:

Before the Gates

Before the gates of pearl gleaming

City of the golden land

To see the world so healed and perfect

Through the end I long to stand

Before the walls like jasper shining

Now at last I've come to rest

The road so straight and narrow trodden

Coming to complete my quest

Before the golden streets of Zion

God shall wipe my tears away

Enrobed in white, declared as righteous

In the Temple I shall stay

Before the flowing crystal river

On the streets as clear as glass

The leaves bring healing for the nations

When the end has come to pass

Within the brightest city's limits

Never more shall there be night

The name of God upon our foreheads

For the Lamb shall be our light

The symmetry here is pretty clear: each stanza has four lines, and again, the beginning of each stanza starts with a similar line. Each stanza takes a different angle describing the new Jerusalem beginning with "Before the..." The last stanza is the exception, where it is "Within the brightest city's limits," which highlights the ending. As for syllable count, the consistent meter kind of automatically makes it the same from stanza to stanza, since meter is also based on syllables, it only makes sense.

Personification

Personification is a word that gets thrown around a lot in poetry and creative writing in general. It just means that you're giving human qualities to a non-human object or animal It actually happens a lt more often than you think. "The cat meowed at me, begging for food" is an obvious one, but "The shelf leaned precariously against the wall" isn't.  This poem is absolutely full of personification:

The Land of Light

The sea rolls, the sky waves

The clouds fly, the moon paves

A silver path o'er silent sea

That leads to distant lands of peace

The wind screams, the bird cries

The storm cracks, the world sighs

A long-forgotten song of hope

In broken lands that merely cope

The hills rise, the plains run

The mountains stand, the beasts lunge

Still reaching for that broken path

That goes beyond the world of wrath

The trees breathe, the land waits

The leaves bend, the city gates

Are open wide for coming King

Returning to renew all things

The child sings, the girls dance

The men redeemed, the second chance

Extended through the darkest night

It brings us to this land of light

I don't need to explain this one, do I?

Simile & Metaphor

Similes and metaphors often get mixed up but they are probably the most essential tools to use in poetry. (That is, if you don't count rhyme, meter, imagery..) Similes are comparisons that admit they are comparisons, so they use comparison words like 'like' or 'as.' Metaphors are sneakier and don't use comparing words. When you are writing poetry, you want to be descriptive, so of course you are going to need to use some form of comparison. It is also a lot nicer and less messy than "the big, bright, hot, yellow, scorching sun."

The Paradox of Humanity

It was as soft as silk, but hard as stone

Blackened crystal covered in velvet

Bleeding flesh behind steel doors

Completely helpless, wholly self-sufficient

This is the paradox of a broken heart

It was as strong as steel, but weak as water

Polluted smoke within silver coverings

Lonely tears surrounded by angry thorns

Aimless wandering, crushing purpose

This is the paradox of a wounded soul

It was as sure as a mountain, but fleeting as dust

Inner strength concealed in tattered canvas

Aching weakness hidden behind smiles

Ever breaking, always healing

This is the paradox of a bleeding body

It was as tough as obsidian, but brittle as glass

Fleeting whisper held together by string

Indestructible substance broken in pieces

Callous barriers, too tender to touch

This is the paradox of a shattered spirit

It was as clear as crystal, but dark as the night

Open doors to endless mazes

Flashing weapons in peacemaking gestures

Innocent naïvety, war-torn cunning

This is the paradox of a twisted mind

It's as simple as dirt but complex as creation

Perfect purity in endless malice

Dying dust reaching for eternal glory

Searching for hope, spurning the truth

This is the paradox of fallen humanity

This poem is all about stark paradoxical contrasts showing the fallen human condition, so it is stuffed with both similes and metaphors, like  "It was as soft as silk, but hard as stone." The key thing to look .for when you are trying to find similes is "like" or "as," like the beginning of each stanza. Most of the other lines are metaphors, since they don't use any comparing words but just state things as a fact.

The comparisons paint a beautiful picture, no?

More Literary Devices

Of course there are many other literary devices (things you can use in poems) than the ones I've talked about. Some of them include:

• Alliteration: using words that stat with the same letter (like "fairest flourish").
• Allusion: referencing something without mentioning it directly (Before the Gates is a poem about the New Jerusalem).
• Assonance: using words with the same vowel sound. It's a kind of rhyming, but it came be inside the words rather than the beginning or the end. Often, assonance are spread out so there are several words in between (like "the trees breathe" or "That leads to distant lands of peace").
• Consonance: using words with the same consonants instead of vowels (like "world of wrath").
• Onomatopoeia: words that sound like the sounds they're describing (like "crack").

Well, thanks for reading this (really) long post! I'll talk more about the gritty stuff in poems next week.

Rock Climbing by Grace

 Last Saturday we had a long-awaited treat: a free Climbing For All event at the rock gym! Jasmin and I were eager to go and this time, we could bring Aiden as well. Although we had to get up early and take an hour-long Mula drive to get there and we had to wear masks the whole time because of COVID restrictions, everyone had good fun!

Aiden quickly took to rock climbing and spent most of his time climbing every route he possibly could. Jasmin and I didn't see him most of the time. This is us bouldering on the short section of the walls, which you can climb without a safety harness (there's mats below):

The real challenge, though, is the tall wall, where you have a belayer (a person who holds the rope you're fastened to) to hold you while you climb to the top. I spent most of my time on the tall wall and tried to climb various harder routes. (It's Jasmin and Aiden on the wall here, though)

At first, you can just climb the wall, using any handhold available, but when you're used to it, you can start to climb using handholds of only one color. On the tall wall, I managed to do a level 1 and almost a level 2 (at the top I couldn't quite make it and used some other handholds). On the bouldering walls, Aiden and I managed to complete a level 2 but not quite a level 3. According to the poster, that means we're still rock climbing babies, unfortunately, but there's only six levels to begin with. We got stuck on level three because we couldn't figure out how to get to the small, sparse handholds.

We climbed for several hours and had lots of fun. Unfortunately Jasmin has been having the beginnings of carpal tunnel syndrome from too much typing and drawing, and her arms hurt so she couldn't climb as much. At the end, the leaders announced that there would be a competition: whoever could climb to the top of the tall wall, using any hand- or foothold, in under a minute and thirty seconds would get a free ice cream. Jasmin decided to make a go for it despite her arms, and so did Aiden and I. Mom did get a video of each of us. Here's mine:

The file size is too big to show Jasmin's or Aiden's too.

I reached the top in 36 seconds. Jasmin would have climbed faster than me if her arms weren't hurting, — usually she's much faster than me — but she took 52 seconds since her arms couldn't pull her up. Despite being significantly smaller and shorter (harder to reach the handholds!), Aiden managed to finish in 49 seconds. Most of the others who tried took forty seconds or longer, but one tall blond guy got to the top in less than 16 seconds! Later he told me he was aiming for 9.

After the competition, we went to claim our ice cream and eat our provided lunch. It was soy ice cream and not as good as I'd hoped, but the point for me was to climb anyway, not get the prize. The ride home was very quiet as we were all exhausted (maybe we're out of shape), but the fun was worth it!

Random tidbits

 We discovered that our "just in case" rain ponchos don't survive the many days of sun in our bike baskets very well. Dad left a trail of yellow coat pieces as the wind and rain slowly shredded the sun damaged poncho! There wasn't much left by the time we got home and I don't think he was very much dryer for having tried to wear it either.

Our balcony plants are enjoying the more consistent rainy days though!

Easter Sunday was unconventional celebrations for us! We all got to go to church together (though not sit together), the girls participated in a flash mob during the service, and it was the best worship service for Easter we've had here because it was not a big production.  After church we went out to eat at the nearest outdoor food court to wait for the rain to stop. Then we went on to hike at the Youth Park - taking a longer route than necessary because the GPS had a mind of it's own. It was really hot and humid, but it was s nice family time - and the breezy view from the lookout was amazing. 

The heart archway made of flower pots

A few more beach suppers have happened. We had Aiden's friend with us for one and he roasted hotdogs and marshmallows for the first time! 

We also did a breakfast on the beach for Easter Monday, roasting fish. We needed the down time - we stayed right until 1pm! It was nice because the beach was empty and it was overcast so not too hot.

Elusive dreamy evening sky meditations and attempts to capture their beauty

One beach trip we had a lizard friend join us. It was very placid and allowed Jasmin to have it on her hand for quite a while.