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Don't mind me, I'm an English major who despises literature and literary theory; I tend to say to Hell with the rules more often than not, and if some elitist academic in an ivory tower has a problem with it, to Hell with them too. >_>
*ahem* Sorry. Anyway, not offended, though if you want people to comment on your own poetry, it would be a good idea to make your own topic rather than post it in someone else's, you're likely to get more attention that way. |
My own poetry? Oh, that poem isn't mine, I would put who it is by but I don't know. I thought it was a good example though.
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Oh, my mistake. I'm sorry for that.
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Not your mistake, I actually forgot to put that the author was unknown at the end. *head desk*
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Curiously, it was the creative writing majors at my university that were the rules sticklers. Most of us Lit majors didn't really care. Watch literature shift over a few hundred years and rules and norms start to seem less important.
I still do capitalize my poetry lines though, even my free verse poems. ;) |
You should try not-capitalizing sometime. The rebelliousness is addictive. :p
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I have on a couple of occasions. It feels somewhat irritating to me, breaks up the flow I have in mind ;).
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Madness! It's your conformist capitalization that breaks up the flow!
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Not, I say! Your fiddling with capital letters only adds another element to consider and detract from the actual writing process! If they are all capped there is nothing extra to dwell on!
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Both of you are correct in some ways. The changing of caps to no caps isn't all that distracting but sometimes people will look for a meaning were there is none. I have read several poems that are done in both styles and I can say my personal preference lies with all the caps, but saying all line in poetry should be capitalized is like saying all line in a paragraph should be. (Kind of like what Sheol said before) My nee-chan does poetry in every style included text chat and some people hate it some people love it. I asked my Lit. teacher and she said that all caps is for only formal poetry and schools normally only teach formal. She then proceded to rant about not using 'you' or text chat in poems so...yeah.
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(For the record, we're not actually arguing, me and Quiet, just seem to have forgone emotes.)
And I'm curious about this not using "you" business you mention. Can you elaborate? I've never heard that before. |
It a thing for formal writing you can never address the reader. It is okay in coversation because pretty much anything goes in conversation.
The 'you' thing is in the main text of the book, appatently breaking the fourth wall isn't allowed even if the book is written in first or second person. It is supposedly an archanic grammmar rule so, of course, most Americans forgo it. My teacher also said something about interactive books not being real books because they use you in the main text. I personally aften ingore this rule if writing in first person even if I'm normally a stickler for the rules. |
Hmm. And do the language police come to arrest you if you break the 4th wall? :p
Really, though, in poetry I don't see how that's even remotely applicable. "You" in a poem has as much to do with the reader as "I" does with the poet (i.e. very little). |
The language police? Never heard of them. I do however know quite a few Grammar Patrolers. The just hound you about the smallest of grammatical errors.
I know about the 'you' not meaning much but I can't change the rules of formal writing though I can say "Screw 'em". My 8th grade grammer teacher would always say that "Yinz(Penslyvianian for Y'all) can do as ye wish in speach. But when you write it must be in proper grammatical structure." She was very linient on poems saying that poems were emotions in word form and if emotions aren't restricted to proper grammar then why should poems? And in poems I do agree that pretty much all tipical grammer rules can be scraped. |
I've truly never heard that in the plethora of English courses I've taken.
And, really, the bottom line for me is: if something makes for effective writing, do it. If a rule is holding you back, ignore it. Really, it's called "creative" writing for a reason. Shackling yourself into archaic forms is no good if its repressing your ability to creatively express yourself. (Do note the impersonal "you" in that paragraph. :D) |
I'm agreeing with that statement.
You have never heard of the 'you' rule? I'm majoring in theatre and I've heard of it. This might be because I keep all my notes and every day in 6th through 9th grade it was the same basic grammar rules for formal writing: 1)Grammar (Caps/puncuation/verb tenses) 2) No slang 3)Word Choice 4) No contractions 5) Do not start a sentance with then, well, and 6)Do not use you 7)Do not use the same adjectives in the same paragraphs 8) Indent 9) Never use alot 10) Also never use 'in my opinion' or 'I think' I occasionally scrap number 1 though. I start writing in past tense, shift to present tense, and end in futer tense. One of my Literature teachers loved it the others have hated it. |
Is that formal writing for academic essays and the like? Because that's completely different. :p
I'm wholly in favor of obeying the rules there. And the "you" thing makes perfect sense in that context. You don't address your audience in that sort of writing, as a rule. Second-person prose is very difficult to write in effectively, and I certainly wouldn't recommend it, but I do think it could potentially be done well in the right context, though I think it would have to be limited to shorter pieces. On the other hand, I'm not really convinced that the essay structure really is the best way of organizing and conveying information. The literary theory essays I'm reading right now come off as complete gibberish and I can think of far, far easier ways to write the same information that would be more accessible to someone reading them. >_< |
I think they apply to essays but that particular Liturature teacher had us write stories and books. She said they were the rules for all formal writing. All the prose we did were either first or third person. And I completly agree that it may not be the best wasy to organize certain ideas.
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Those do sound more like rules for academic writing. Looking back I think I must have had a lot of very liberal English teachers given I've heard of some of those rules but only within certain contexts. My grade 12 teacher had us write in a number of different styles to cover basics, like descriptive, exposition, instructive (which was written in second person) persuasive, etc.
On the academic end, "but" was another word that was typically improper to start a sentence with, but that has changed over time. One of my college professors even brought it up. Same with "I." It's becoming more acceptable to make personal statements in papers because it is acknowledged that people have their own thoughts and material to add to topics in question. The paper, however, should not be flooded with them. There are rules, and there are areas where certain rules don't apply. Writing wouldn't evolve if people weren't in the habit of messing around with it on occasion. |
Yeah, if people did not play with writing we would still be using thee and thou. Not that some of us still don't but a vast majority have moved onto 'you'.
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Those two forms of address weren't exclusive. If you you know any French, they're similar to "tu" and "vous", with "thou" being a casual form of reference, and "you" being a respectful one. That probably seems backwards, and you can blame the King James Bible for that, since they thought it was best to address God as a friend, not as a superior (why?) and it's since been memetically accepted by our culture that "thou" is the formal form of address.
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I was not aware of that, probably because I can't speak any French. This conversation makes me want to look up different rules for formal writing in different languages even though I can't speak or write them with out butchering them.
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That came up a lot in War and Peace actually, how a character would use the formal "you" rather than the personal "thou" and that was Russian. ;)
It could reflect on how a person felt about the person they were talking to at the time. For instance, one character always adressed his beloved cousin as "thou" but after the potential marriage they both wanted became obvious it wouldn't happen, he started using "you" in a potential effort to detach himself. |
Yeah, it's a feature in several languages. I'm pretty sure Latin has it, too.
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I don't speak Latin but I remeber in one of my Spanish classes the teacher showing us the difference between tu and usted. Apparently when doing reports you should use the formal 'usted' instead of the informal 'tu' because you aren't familiar with the reader. The plural she did not currect us on though, we all used the informal 'vosotros' instead of the formal 'ustedes' in writing.
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That sounds like the same concept. I would have been surprised if Spanish didn't have a structure like that.
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Beyond Recall is a nice one! It's like something I think I would make!
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I'm really not proud of that poem at all -- it's something I wrote in five minutes in creative writing while I was supposed to writing a poem about how I felt about leaving my classmates behind. Which, I suppose, is what it's about in a way, but the whole experience meant nothing to me, so I'm not really attached to it at all.
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"The best poetry is only written once, in one moment in time."-8th grade Lit. teacher.
She always told us that when we though out poems were bad. The funny thing was everyone though everyone's elses poem was better then their own, so there were many arguments about whose poems were worse. |
It also follows that my poems that I like the best tend to get a "meh" from everyone who reads them. :p
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I don't much like writing poems for class assignments. Only had to do it a few times though all through my education. Three precisely.
2 in English 12 mimicing the styles of Sylvia Plath in "Mushrooms" and A.E. Hausman in "Is My Team Ploughing?" and then one in second year English in college, writing a poem about the romantic poets using the "Byronic Stanza." I actually spent more time and effort on my high school poems. I forgot about the other assignment until the night before and I wrote the whole thing at 2am over maybe half an hour, blak page to finished poem. It went over well actually. I went heavy on the alliteration and assonance and accidentally used a particular poetic rhyming device (can't recall the name - using a series of small words to rhyme with a large one) which my teacher complimented me on. I'm okay with most of the poem but the last two lines bother me. Not sure if I ever got around to fixing them. It was a poem about how Coleridge may have written "Kublai Khan." |
I've had to do several for school, though my teacher had KK before me so she was used to KK's style which is much different then mine. Hers has this wierd flow that uses old English with current slang, while mine is metered and ryming all without intent.
I've always found it harder to write stuff in school then at home especially poems. |
Not sure what you mean by KK there DFL.
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Oh, KK= Kakushigo, my second cousin three times or something close to that. We met online as Deviant and Fanfiction author then met in real life at a family reunion. We look really similar and have been mistaken for the other on multiple occasion. She is good at many things including drawing and poetry. I'm kinda bad at both most of the time. We went to the same school three years apart. I wondered why people called me the wrong name all the time.
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Not very happy with this. It kind of fell apart around the middle, I think. I do like the first three stanzas, though. May go back and try re-writing it from there.
Demogorgon |
I liek this new one. It is emotional and detacted at the same time you try to capture the human and the nothing together is great.
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Well, I suppose that was the intention. It's obviously not literally about Demogorgon the Demiurge/Sovereign of Night/etc, but rather about the nature of change, how the only change from change itself can be a return to stagnation and the death of change. Blah, I still don't think it came out very well. :p
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To each his own. It is one of my favorites of yours, you don't have to like it. What is considered to be Beethoven's greatest work was actually hated by Beethoven himself.:p
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Didn't we establish above I have an inverse liking-relationship with my poems compared to other people? :p
I am glad you like it, though, thank you. And I appreciate you reading and commenting. |
I like it, but you're right, there's some glitchyness about the middle, I'd say at the end of the fourth stanza. There are bits and pieces that I think could be editted out, and it's more those pieces that are causing the issues I think, rather than anying important being missing. I feel the poem is all there but has some loose threads that need trimming. :)
And being someone who often edits her poems three or four times over, writing evry rendition down, I say have at it. :D |
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