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I may never come back, and I just want someone to know. This article contains text from a former Shadow Academy course. It is no longer in use, and is preserved here for historical purposes only and should not be used/referenced.
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Deneba Campus: Advanced Poetry
Introduction
Welcome to the advanced poetry course. It will be assumed that you have already taken the basic course (or gained the relevant knowledge otherwise), and have therefore covered the structures and rhyming patterns that poems can take. You will also have been introduced to some of the more common forms of poetry.
In this course, you’ll be introduced to some literary techniques that will hopefully make your poems more interesting and vivid, and which will help you to convey your ideas to greater effect. The goal of the course is to help you improve your poetry so that it becomes more than a random jumble of words!
Description
When you’re writing poetry, you often want to try and put across ideas of places, feelings and objects. Rather than blandly stating what you mean, try to give some comparisons and guidance to your readers as to how they should visualize your writing. This will also improve your poetry and other writing by making your descriptions more vivid and 'alive.'
Simile: A comparison of two things, where the comparison is acknowledged, usually by the words 'as' or 'like'. Example: His smile was as bright as the sun.
Metaphor: A comparison of two things, where the writer simply states that one is the other. Example: His smile was a ray of light.
Metonymy: Where a word or phrase is substituted for another, based on their close association. Example: 'Washington' for 'United States government'; 'of the sword' for 'military power'.
Emphasis
You will often find that you want to emphasis certain words or phrases of your writing. When this is the case, you might want to try one or two of the tricks suggested below.
Alliteration
When a series of words (or stressed syllables) begin with the same sound, especially the same consonant sound. Example: Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
NB
The repetition of vowel sounds is often distinguished from alliteration, and is called assonance.
Consonance
A kind of alliteration in which consonant sounds are repeated in a short sequence of words, not necessarily at the beginning of the words. Example: Her brown curly hair.
Juxtaposition
Placing two words or ideas next to each other for emphasis.
Oxymoron
The juxtaposition of two contradictory ideas. Example: Deafening silence, Bitter sweet.
Onomatopoeia
A word that sounds like what it’s describing. Example: Buzz, click.
Choice of Words
Try not to use the same words over and over again when you can choose synonyms and thereby make your text more interesting. Also note how useful antonyms can be when attempting to add emphasis or contrast two different lines of a poem.
Synonym
Words with similar meanings. (Can be nouns, verbs or adjectives as long as both members of the pair are the same part of speech). Examples: 'Student' and 'pupil', 'near' and 'close'.
Antonym
An opposite pair. Example: 'Dead' and 'alive'. 'Long'/'Tall' and 'Short'
A Warning
You don't need to use any tricks in your poetry. If your poem 'works', and you're happy with it as is, it would be unwise to try to force any of the techniques that we have covered into your already polished lines.
These techniques are simply tools that you can choose to use to allow you to express yourself more vividly and more colourfully. Use them as and when appropriate, for emphasis or to jolt your readers. Don't use them simply because you feel you should.
Additional Forms
Some basic poetic forms were covered in the first course, some of which included Haiku, Limericks and the "simple" poem. This course will also introduce you to some other styles that were not covered in the original course, some of them more difficult, others just different.
This part of the course assumes that you understand the concepts of Iambic Pentameter, rhyme scheme and others that were covered in the first course.
The English (Shakespearean) Sonnet
The word "sonnet" is derived from Italian, from the word "sonnetto" translated as "little song" or "small song." They were originally popularized by the famous Italian poet Petrarch. His sonnets differ from the English or Shakespearean sonnet in rhyme scheme and how the poem can be broken down.
English sonnets have a sort of lilting, song-like quality to them, due to the use of iambic pentameter. They are made up of three quatrains and a final rhyming couplet (also known as a "heroic couplet."). The original sonnet (Italian) is made up of two quatrains with a rhyme scheme of ABBA ABBA and then two tercets (groups of three lines) with a variety of C, D, and E rhyming combinations.
The rhyme scheme for an English sonnet is as follows:
1st Quatrain A B A B
2nd Quatrain C D C D
3rd Quatrain E F E F
Concluding Couplet G G
The following example is Sonnet #18, one of over 150 different sonnets written by Shakespeare and one of his most famous.
Sonnet 18 By William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
Diamante
A diamante is a non-rhyming poem that describes two opposite nouns (kudos if you can remember the technical term). These are fairly simple to write, but can also be sophisticated and complex, mostly dependent on your word choice.
It has seven lines with differing numbers of words per line. It goes as follows:
Number of words per line: L1: 1 L2: 2 L3: 3 L4: 4 L5: 3 L6: 2 L7: 1
This is a diamante I (Dark Sabre) wrote a few years ago, and is admittedly rather anti-Dark Jedi, but it will suffice as an example:
Light Beautiful, Bright Beaming, Shining, Enfolding Happiness, Joy, Anger, Subterfuge Tricking, Confusing, Touching Endless, Isolated Darkness
As you can see from the example, the words create a "diamond" shape.
The first and last words are antonyms, or, if you're writing about something such as color or an element, they can be related but still different. The second and second to last lines contain adjectives describing the noun that's closest to them spatially.
The next two lines up and down are verbs in the present progressive tense (which is just a fancy way of saying they end in "–ing"). The first two in the middle line are other nouns describing or related to the first noun; the second two correspond to the second noun.
Poetry Interpretation
The third and final part of this course will teach you about interpreting poetry, finding themes and "true meanings" in other poems. This will also hopefully help you embed such things in your own poetry, making it more interesting and effective. Looking for the tiny patterns, such as word choice, word placement and tone is what has immortalized poets such as Shakespeare, Homer and Lord Byron.
Here is a simple procedure for interpreting poetry (you will be asked to do give your thoughts on a poem for the practical part of your exam).
The first thing to do, obviously, is read the title and the poem. Your first run through should be simply to enjoy the language and think about how this relates to you and life in general. Reflect on what it's saying on the surface, you don't need to get deep and enlightened yet, and look for the "story" or general idea. Everything should be viewed literally first.
Next, look at the poem or stanza (it may be easier to go through a poem if you look at it stanza by stanza) again. This time look for and define what it's talking about without actually saying it, listing both themes and details. For example: if the poem is implying death or an end to life, then this would fall under this next category on the steps to poetic Nirvana.
The third and final meanings are inferred by the reader which means you're going to need to use your brain a bit here. When reading the poem, you'll need to extract from the text a symbolic meaning and literary details. What does the rose in this poem stand for? How does this stanza relate to the next? Does the way that "water" is placed next to "flowing" make the poem different? Why did they use "pitiless" instead of "merciless"? Sometimes this may be pointless, other times you'll understand the poem better.
A lot of the time, when reading the works of famous or professional poets, there'll be another meaning to what they're writing or several meanings that should all be connected in a conclusion. Now you understand some basics of interpreting poetry.
Conclusion
Hopefully now you know and understand several techniques to improve your poetry and two new forms to use for some variety. Go test it out on the exam, there'll be some practical questions. Or you could just go and write something and submit to the poetry KMT for this month or whatnot.
Just wait until you're in the mood, remember what we've taught you, write something that you like. But even if you don't like it, remember you are your own worst critic. Show it off to people in real life, the IRC channels and the Message Boards. There are usually at least a few people online willing to give you some tips or at least an opinion.
And don't forget, almost all of the works created by the great writers took a long time to perfect, so don't get frustrated. Most of all have fun writing poetry, if you don't enjoy it, it won't be as good.
If you have any questions bother us all you want.
Good luck!