Are there any poets out there?

[Guest]

Not so-called Blank Verse, which to me is simply prose written in short lines but poems with a set meter and with rhyming ends to the lines.
Ranging from Shakespearean and Miltonic Sonnets to rhyming Limericks, is poetry a forgotten art?

For me, poetry, like music can be a very good way of expressing strong feelings - of agony, prejudice, frustration, delight or love - to release them in a way that prose can rarely achieve.

I feel sure that there must be a few message boarders who have gained relief from emotion by reading poetry; or even writing for one's eyes alone.

There used to be quite a large section on the old BBC message boards concerning poetic writing. Should we have one on Platform 3?

HS

[kernelbogey]

Not so-called Blank Verse, which to me is simply prose written in short lines but poems with a set meter and with rhyming ends to the lines.[...] I feel sure that there must be a few message boarders who have gained relief from emotion by reading poetry; or even writing for one's eyes alone.[...]

Yes, I fall into your category. Let's see if there's enough interest to warrant a sub-section. But do you really mean blank verse - in which Shakespeare wrote most of all of his plays? I hope you mean something else....

But your definition does rather exclude a lot of poetry. For some reason Haiku leapt to my mind. I'd say the emotion or acute observation are more important considerations than the strict limits of form.

[amateur51]

Yes, I fall into your category. Let's see if there's enough interest to warrant a sub-section. But do you really mean blank verse - in which Shakespeare wrote most of all of his plays? I hope you mean something else....

But your definition does rather exclude a lot of poetry. For some reason Haiku leapt to my mind. I'd say the emotion or acute observation are more important considerations than the strict limits of form.

I agree kernel - the OP's restrictions do seem to be very limiting

Let a thousand blossoms bloom

[french frank]

There used to be quite a large section on the old BBC message boards concerning poetic writing. Should we have one on Platform 3?

This forum has followed the BBC messageboard practice in having a special board devoted to drama, literature, poetry. It's Radio 3 Arts: Arts programmes, drama, poetry and literary topics. If this thread develops I suggest it should be moved there?

[John Skelton]

"THE Measure is English Heroic Verse without Rime, as that of Homer in Greek, and Virgil in Latin; Rhime being no necessary Adjunct or true Ornament of Poem or good Verse, in longer Works especially, but the Invention of a barbarous Age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meeter; grac't indeed since by the use of some famous modern Poets, carried away by Custom, but much to thir own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse then else they would have exprest them. Not without cause therefore some both Italian, and Spanish Poets of prime note have rejected Rhime both in longer and shorter Works, as have also long since our best English Tragedies, as a thing of itself, to all judicious ears, triveal, and of no true musical delight; which consists onely in apt Numbers, fit quantity of Syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one Verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoyded by the learned Ancients both in Poetry and all good Oratory. This neglect then of Rhime so little is to be taken for a defect, though it may seem so perhaps to vulgar Readers, that it rather is to be esteem'd an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recover'd to heroic Poem from the troublesom and modern bondage of Rimeing." Milton's note on the verse to Paradise Lost.

Perhaps Hornspieler means vers libre?

[Hornspieler]

This forum has followed the BBC messageboard practice in having a special board devoted to drama, literature, poetry. It's Radio 3 Arts: Arts programmes, drama, poetry and literary topics. If this thread develops I suggest it should be moved there?

Thanks FF. I couldn't find anything like that on the Platform 3 forum, so I thought I would start a new thread.
Has that Radio 3 Arts forum been used recently, or is it now defunct, to all extents and purposes?

HS

[Globaltruth]

Thanks FF. I couldn't find anything like that on the Platform 3 forum, so I thought I would start a new thread.
Has that Radio 3 Arts forum been used recently, or is it now defunct, to all extents and purposes?

HS

Think I managed to bring it to a standstill with my last 2 vibrant and innovative posts...

http://www.for3.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?43-Arts-amp-Ideas

[agingjb]

As a comprehensively failed poet, I can say that mostly I've stuck to traditional, or at least tightly defined, forms. (My one exception has a very complex underlying structure - far too complicated I fear.)

Yes, free verse often seems to me to be heightened prose, but there is a lot of it about - some of it very highly thought of. I should be reluctant to dismiss all of it.

But for light verse, especially limericks and Hudibrastics, I really do prefer strict rhyme and rhythm, and admit to some irritation when a writer reveals an indifferent ear.

[kernelbogey]

Here's a poem, One Evening, by W H Auden, a favourite of mine. (And it has rhymes. ) You can read it and hear Auden read it on the Poetry Archive, perhaps a useful link for this thread.

[salymap]

I wrote quite a lot of[bad] poetry when very young, and satirical verses about musicians of my youth, the latter with a friend.
I am in the process of shredding them to make sure they go before I do.

[gamba]

I hope ff will accept a reference to an association between music & the poetic on this thread.

Once upon a time, long ago, half awake & asleep, I heard the opening bars of De Falla's ' Nights in the Garden's of Spain. It is highly charged with warmth, perfume, eroticism etc. - I must have fallen asleep, for, on waking I had the following two lines in my head;

" Speech, in the still eloquence of night sleeps
And the soft word lies warm in the ear."

They came from nowhere & were unknown to me before that moment - however nothing equals a similar effect after watching/listening to Monteverdi's Vespers on TV on a later occasion, of which, more anon.

[kernelbogey]

[...] half awake & asleep, I heard the opening bars of De Falla's ' Nights in the Garden's of Spain. It is highly charged with warmth, perfume, eroticism etc. - I must have fallen asleep, for, on waking [...]

That hypnogogic state, between sleep and wakefulness, is powerfully creative and synergistic and a beguiling place to be. I experience it quite a lot if I wake in the middle of the night, and listen to TTN on small headphones. I find myself drifting in and out of awareness of the music.

[Mary Chambers]

Like salymap, I wrote a lot of poetry and verse when I was younger, but unlike her I don't think I'll destroy mine - though many of the more personal ones have gone! I never show it to anyone now, though in my schooldays I was proud of my ability and would show the poems to anyone. It's only as I grew older that I began to realise they weren't really very good, and gradually wrote less and less.

I've always read poetry, from the moment I could read at all. I still do, all the time, though I'm not very up-to-date about it. Philip Larkin is probably the most recent poet I've appreciated.

I'm grateful that I was given poetry books from a very early age, and also that I grew up at a time when children were expected to learn poems by heart. I still know many of them.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Yes, free verse often seems to me to be heightened prose

That rather reminds me of the story of the heckler at The Comedy Store who stood up, ouraged at a Paul Merton/Josie Lawrence event, and shouted "This isn't comedy! You're all just saying funny things and everybody is laughing at them!!"

[Forget It (U2079353)]

We are often advised that Poetry is related to Time:

The poet, through the poem, entreats time to stand still – J. Brodsky

A poem: A momentary stay against confusion – Robert Frost

Great literature/poetry: News that stays news – Ezra Pound

Worshipped language can't undo damage time has done to you – (for Brodsky) S. Heaney

Time will say nothing but I told you so - WH Auden


If I could tell you I would let you know ..
of a poem that encapsulates all of the above!