You Can Write Poetry - Jeff Mock [23]
Run-on sentence. A run-on sentence is similar to a comma splice except no comma appears between the sentences: They went downtown to see a movie it started at eight. The sentences are run together. The correction is the same: a period after movie, and it begins a new sentence.
These are common errors, and each is easily corrected. All it takes is an understanding of the conventions of grammar and punctuation to achieve "the sweet and correct formalities of language." Proper grammar and punctuation keep your poems clean and readable. They keep the reader on track. They don't hinder the imagination; on the contrary, they allow it to shine in all its grace and glory.
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FURNISHING
THE HOUSE:
THE ART OF POETRY, PART TWO
A poem must have emotional and intellectual qualities that compel the reader from first line to last. But a poem needn't be on an epic subject. It needn't make grand, sweeping statements. It needn't—and generally shouldn't—be melodramatic, fraught with high emotion. The more true to life the poem's subject, the better the poem. It can be about putting a child to bed, mowing the lawn or shopping for groceries—common, everyday subjects. More important is how the poem expresses its subject. The English poet A.E. Housman said, "Poetry is not the thing said but a way of saying it." There lies the art of poetry: in the manner, style and grace of its expression. Imagery is part of the how, as are figures of speech, the devices of sound, rhyme and meter. They contribute to the grace of poetic expression. They are the furnishings that make the poetic house a place to live.
Furniture That Fits: Figures of Speech
One way a poem expresses its subject is through figures of speech, phrases that evoke images and lay a figurative level of meaning onto the literal level. Sometimes ornate, sometimes startlingly simple, they accent a poem, as well as express it. They create a sense of vigor and originality. They reveal the imagination at work and at play. They create emphasis, present memorable images and describe through association. And because figures of speech work through implication, they allow poems to say much in only a few words. Remember, economy and resonance are the hallmarks of poetry: a few words that say much.
Good poems involve the reader. While an artfully rendered direct statement can swell with passion ("Christ, that my love were in my arms, / And I in my bed again!"), direct statements are usually informative and dull. They treat the reader as a passive bystander. Figures of speech draw the reader into the poem. By their nature, they make images that appeal to the senses and invite the reader to make associations. They imply, the reader infers, and thus the reader becomes a participant in the poem.
The most common figures of speech are simile and metaphor. A simile shows similarity between two things that are otherwise not similar. (The term simile comes from the Latin similis, which means "of the same kind.") Similes work by explicitly comparing one thing to another through the words like or as. The Scottish poet Robert Burns, for example, begins his poem "A Red, Red Rose" with two similes:
O my Luve's like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June:
O my Luve's like the melodie
That's sweetly play'd in tune.
Immediately, the reader has two comparisons to think about and enjoy: The speaker's love is like a rose and like a melody. Notice that similes employ images. The rose involves visual, olfactory and tactile images: A rose looks beautiful, smells fragrant, and its petals feel velvety. The melody involves an auditory image, music, and a tactile image, if you consider that melody may lead to dancing cheek to cheek. These similes are more descriptive and enjoyable than the speaker simply saying his love is pretty, smells good, has soft skin and a sweet voice. That's all nice, but it isn't interesting and doesn't make for good poetry.