By michael
If life were a blue bird I'd ask it to fly
To soar and to sing up there in the sky
If like were a blue bird I'd build it a nest
Because I like blue birds, I think they're the best
If life were a blue bird I'd watch it for hours
And sometimes I think they have magical powers
If life were a blue bird I'd teach it to dance
On candle-lit beaches with trust and romance
If life were a blue bird I'd sit in a tree
So that it could watch and then wonder like me
If life were a blue bird I'd let it know why
And how sometimes blue birds can just pass us by
If life were a blue bird I'd know it was true
Because only this life can sing while it's blue
By mcwhittemore
Each week HPP will be hosting a poetry challenge open to everyone. The rules are that you write a poem based on the prompt for that week. The prompts will be posted a month before the due date for submission.
To submit simply email your poem by the date listed beside the prompt to halfpoundpoetry@gmail.com. Include your name and the prompt you are responding too.
Prompts (will have own page at next site update)
Old Lady with Flowers: 5/16
Write a poem from the perspective of a lady who is older than 60 as she looks at her flowers.
Man Walking at Night: 5/23
Write a poem from the perspective of a man (about 23) who has recently secured a good job. He is walking around his home town late at night.
The Coach: 5/30
Write a poem from the perspective of a high school couch watching one of his old players play professionally.
Travel: 6/06
Write a poem about a group of friends taking a trip.
By scott
"What is the secret of life?" the poet Donald Hall once asked the eighty-year-old sculptor Henry Moore. "With anyone else," Hall commented, "the answer would have begun with an ironic laugh," but Henry Moore answered the question in straight-forward, pragmatic terms:
The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for your whole life. And the most important thing is-it must be something you cannot possibly do!"
By mcwhittemore
“[T]o write well it is entirely
necessary to read widely and deeply. Good poems are the best teachers.
Perhaps they are the only teachers. I would go so far as to say
that, if one must make a choice between reading or taking part in a
workshop, one should read.”
-Marry Oliver
[p. 10 of A Poetry Handbook:
A Prose Guide To Understanding And Writing Poetry, New York: Harcourt,
Inc., 1994]
Two of the poets here are currently reading through "A Poetry Handbook"
by Marry Oliver. So over the next while HPP will be posting quotes that
inspire or force one to think. Please tell us how each quote makes you
feel.
By mcwhittemore
“Poetry is a river; many
voices travel in it; poem after poem moves along in the exciting crests
and falls of the river waves. None is timeless; each arrives in
an historical context; almost everything, in the end, passes.
But the desire to make a poem, and the world’s willingness to receive
it—indeed the world’s need of it—these never pass.”
-Marry Oliver
[p. 9 of A Poetry Handbook:
A Prose Guide To Understanding And Writing Poetry, New York: Harcourt,
Inc., 1994]
Two of the poets here are currently reading through "A Poetry Handbook"
by Marry Oliver. So over the next while HPP will be posting quotes that
inspire or force one to think. Please tell us how each quote makes you
feel.
By mcwhittemore
"If Romeo and Juliet had made appointments to meet, in the moonlight-swept orchard, in all the peril and sweetness of conspiracy, and then more often than not failed to meet-one or the other lagging, or afraid, or busy elsewhere-there would have been no romance, no passion, none of the drama for which we remember and celebrate them. Writing a poem is not so different-it is a kind of possible lover affair between something like the heart (that courageous but also shy factory of emotion) and the learned skills of the conscious mind. They make appointments with each other, and keep them, and something begins to happen. Or, they make appointments with each other but are casual and often fail to keep them: count on it, nothing happens."
-Marry Oliver
[p. 7 of A Poetry Handbook:
A Prose Guide To Understanding And Writing Poetry, New York: Harcourt,
Inc., 1994]
Two of the poets here are currently reading through "A Poetry Handbook" by Marry Oliver. So over the next while HPP will be posting quotes that inspire or force one to think. Please tell us how each quote makes you feel.
By mcwhittemore
So I mentioned on my personal blog that I had a desire to join a group called Semenal, I have now decided that this would be a lot of work and since I am already to that limit (and past it) I said NO! But I can't help but watch two or three videos a week from it (Honestly, If I did not watch one of them, I think my friend would kill me since it is hers).
Anyway, in all my thoughts and conflicting feelings and emotional overload that comes from running my own life into the grave I asked Kerry from Last-Word (my friend) if she knew of any vloggers who make videos with poetry in them. And well, she did.
Pouring Down: a vlog run by poet (Daniel Liss) from New York City. I have watched a few of his flicks so far and found them really well down both in a poetical and film sense. My favorite so far is Riches. He also has a "First Time Here" page that will help you get to know some of the work he thinks is best.
Corma: is another vlog which tries to mix poetry with video. Though I have to say I did not find this site as interesting as Pouring Down I did enjoy a good number of the videos. My favorite is one which concentrates on people walking by a kid dancing on the sidewalk, here is the link.
As HPP is about trying new ideas I would not be against us trying to create a video that uses poetry. In the next few weeks I will be doing this for a film fest held by my college, but if anyone who reads this site (or writes for it) wants to create a video please feel free to use poem I have written for HPP (that is poems that Chase) has written for HPP. The only thing I ask is that you mention Half Pound Poetry in the video and leave us a comment dirrecting to where we can see this video.
Thanks,
Chase
By scott
This is how my Poetry Professor, Jerry Barrax at NC State introduced me to Charles Wright at a writing retreat. At the end of the retreat Charles said Jerry was right in his description of you.
That was 17 years ago and that is a title I can live with still today. The assumption that Free Verse is a childish style of writing is just unfair. To think that Free Verse needs to be defended is untrue. Nevertheless I will talk about Free Verse a bit.
I was at that same poetry reading that Matthew was talking about and I agree that while the Gentleman was expressing some very valid points it was not very poetic. Yet, that same summer Matthew and I also heard a guy read some sonnets that were also not very poetic. Sure it had the meter and the Rhyme but both were not quality poetry. A person or persons failing to produce quality poetry with a form does not void the form. To quote Paul Fussel in his excellent manual, Poetic Meter and Poetic Form, "We will use Free Verse, but we want to be aware that free has approximately the status it has in the expression Free World. That is, free, sort of.
Free verse has no set form but it is not void of form. I have been guilty of producing some below standard free verse for this site, yet I would say that none of us has put up their best work on this site because of time constraints we are publishing first drafts. My poetry develops in the revision stage. The form of the poem comes from the writing of the poem. It relies more on metaphor and imagery than on meter and rhyme. Now you may impose a form using your free verse but the form is not imposed on you. Let me share two of my favorite Poems
Winter Poem
Nikki Giovanni
once a snowflake fell
on my brow and i loved
it so much and i kissed
it and it was happy and called its cousins
and brothers and a web
of snow engulfed me then
i reached to love them all
and i squeezed them and they became
a spring rain and i stood perfectly
still and was a flower
After Reading Tu Fu, I Go Outside to the Dwarf Orchard
Charles Wright
East of me, west of me, full summer.
How deeper than elsewhere the dusk is in your own yard.
Birds fly back and forth across the lawn
looking for home
As night drifts up like a little boat.
Day after day, I become of less use to myself.
Like this mockingbird,
I flit from one thing to the next.
What do I have to look forward to at fifty-four?
Tomorrow is dark.
Day-after-tomorrow is darker still.
The sky dogs are whimpering.
Fireflies are dragging the hush of evening
up from the damp grass.
Into the world's tumult, into the chaos of every day,
Go quietly, quietly
Both poems have a form that the poets choose.
I have been trained in meter and rhyme. I really enjoy the villanelle form. Yet I express my confessional transcendentalist art best through free verse.
By mcwhittemore
So while I was lying in bed last night, thinking about everything that has been going on I was trying to understand how writing a quick little thing about why I don't like the term "Free Verse" and prefer the term "Open Forms" turned into what is has. And I realized that though one may understand that I prefer the term "Open Forms" they may not understand why I dislike the term "Free Verse". So, here, I will explain why I dislike that term. But first let it be known that (though I enjoy the "Closed Forms" a lot right now) I'm very much an "Open Form" person.
I dislike "Free Verse" because the words seem to imply that I am following no rule, or set stranded. That my verse is independent from the conversation that I do belong to. To say (I feel) that I am a "Free Verse" poet is to say that what I am doing has never been done before and knowing this is false I can not keep calling myself that. Traditional "Free Verse" has become a form of forms which I call "Open" since there is no determined meter or rhyming scheme, but still a group of rules one follows.
I remember sitting in McDonalds one day, listing to a bunch of Slam Poets read when this one guy got up and started to read his poem. In short it was prose-rant with awkward line breaks. It did not fit into the tradition of any of the "Open Forms" and was thus hard to considered poetry. Though, I must point out that if the public comes to accept his form of poetry I have no problem with understanding its right to be called a poem.
So I dislike the term "Free Verse" because it seems to say there is no form, which is a lie.
OK, so... what do you all think? Badly worded? I hope so, I think it is, please someone write an essay on their views now.
-Chase
By mcwhittemore
I have really enjoyed our recent conversation about form and poetry. And though you might all think I am an elitist, well I am as much as I think some poetry sounds better than other poetry and that some poetry conveys meaning better than others. But I hope we can all agree on that fact, since we vote twice a week on those two topics. But Mike made a very interesting comment to my last post that I feel a need to talk about today.
What is "Free Verse" and how is it different than "Open Forms"?
"Free Verse", to me, is inexperience. It's writing a poem in the most natural way. It is like children drawing with crayon when they are still infants. Sure we praise them for their work but we do this because in time we know they will start to see how color and line form to make a picture and with this knowledge they will create works which we hang in an art gallery.
"Open Forms", to me, is experience. It's being aware of what you are doing (and what you are not doing) and choosing the method which resembles "Free Verse" but is deeper still because of understanding. To take the metaphor of drawing into explaining "Open Forms" it would be something like Picasso or Jackson Pollock both artists who knew the traditional forms of drawing and painting but choice to experiment and create the great arts we have today. One thing I would really like to point out here is that with both of the aforementioned artists I am willing to accept their work because they stuck to "Their Form" for long enough that it could be understood.
e. e. cummings is probably one of the most famous "Open Form" poets. He took the rules and broke them and kept breaking them in much the same way until it was possible to understand what he was saying.
Slam Poetry is another "Open Form" that I see as well created, and unlike e. e. cummings style this "Open Form" is not just a "Personal Form" it is a form that is being used by poets all around the country.
I think we all start in "Free Verse" as few poets start writing poetry because a class taught them how to do so. In one essay by e. e. cummings he states that we can not think nor believe nor know that we our poets we must feel it (Three Statements). And because I agree with him I tend to think that the "Free Verse" is natural to all poets who are aloud to write freely at an uneducated age.
I will write a post soon about "Loose Forms", those great things we as post-modern poets should really start dealing with more, in the next week or so.
-Chase
