Story Craft Forum Story Crafting Poetry - open d..

This thread is to be an open discussion regarding the art of story crafting in poetic form. No opinion or perspective is wrong. They are just different.

If you have read my other threads and essays on writing, then you have a good idea on my perspective. I will hold off initially on commentary ... actually, I need to 'puzzle' my way through the thought processes a bit more. I do want your perspectives. So, please openly discuss....

 

Cheers!
Doc.

I go in and out of poetry moods, and I'm probably out of one at the moment.

Saying that, I think about poetry differently than prose, although many aspects of construction are similar.  I like to see a clear form, as well as a hook in the first stanza.  By a clear form, I don't mean a traditional one.  That's been done before - by people that are better than me.  I would rather see someone create their own form or pattern, a pattern that makes sense either in its meter or grouping.  I'm not really into modern rhyming poetry, where people ignore the meter; that's like song lyrics - a mere ghost of a resemblance to poetry.  They ignore meter and squeeze words into music beats, rather than creating music with the stress of the syllables.

Devising my own forms, no two poems are alike in structure.  I like to use structure, pacing or cadence to amplify the "story" of it.  I do that in some of my experimental prose, too.  Perhaps, that means unusual repetition, or a pattern in the grouping of the stanzas or even the internal structure of the stanzas.  As an example, I think my most tightly-structured poem is The Rite of Spring (you may wish to read it before continuing):



And for the musos out there, yes, it was inspired by Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, which I've loved since I first heard it (back in 1979).  My story is different, and completely made up, but it's is essentially the same: a virgin dances herself to death to please the harvest god in a Spring ritual.

I divided the "story" into three parts, each with differing structures.  The first section has three four line stanzas.  They all begin with a declamation, i.e. "The nightingale calls."  That initiates the action of each stanza, which together form a preparation for the ritual, the second section.  That is also in four parts, each comprising 3 and 4 line stanzas surrounded by "beats" of increasing number.  While she spurns four ritual suitors, the 3-line stanzas act as the running commentary - the overview.  The 4-line groups describe the ritual elements.  As the beat lines lengthen, the girl gets closer to her suitors, and their punishment becomes more severe.

The 13 beats signals the end of the main portion of the ritual.  She is in a drugged ecstasy, and she has a vision of her god, in three, three-line stanzas.  In the last, she plunges herself into the flames: her god-lover's arms.  All that remains is a single statement that commends her sacrifice for her people rather than the barbarism of the ritual.

The form built itself.  The beats were my key to unlocking it.  That was my starting point, and I wanted to end with 13 beats (unlike Stravinsky's 11). I wanted to build gradually.  Having 13 suitors didn't work.  Four seemed like a good number - it's important in numerology (as is three), and could represent the four seasons.  The beats increase 1 - 3 - 7 - 11 - 13.  They were picked randomly, except that the first had to be one, and last 13 (i.e. the first month of a new annual cycle).  I put 11 in for the Stravinsky, and just picked the others in between.  I wanted odd numbers for the feel of the rhythm, so 4, 6 and 8 weren't possible.  They would have made it more gradual, and I'm not totally convinced by my final selection.  Actually, the palindromic (2, 4, 4, 2) differences weren't really important, but they did cross my mind at the time, and that may have influenced my final selection.  I do like the pattern of 4 lines at the beginning and 3 lines at the end with 7's (3+4) in the middle.  It closes quicker than it begins and that just feels right to me: preparation=anticipation, ritual, resolution, "moral."

I hope that it is clear.  My structure is almost as important as the words themselves.  I'm not great at choosing big words to convey meaning, so I try to find that in other ways.  To me, everything is important, the structure, feel, the symbolism, and my word choice.  First it is just a dance, then it becomes lewd, then bawdy, and finally lascivious.  That's another internal progression, all of which acted on several levels and were carefully controlled to create a crescendo to her immolation.

This is perhaps an extreme example, but I consider every word important in poetry, whereas in prose, sometimes it's just functional, getting you from A-B.  Even my simpler forms maintain this as a rule, because I don't find anything satisfying in poetry that cuts corners or relies only on the text (or story) for its meaning.