Young Writers Society

How to work in a Structure

Understand how Structure works

First, what is structure? Everyone is going to have their own thoughts about this, but I see structure as the picture frame of the poem, it is what holds it all together. If you look more deeply - it is the roadmap to the reader. How is the reader going to read this poem so that he/she can achieve meaning from it? That is structure.There are so many different poetry forms out there, so many different rules and broken rules, the reader is going to need some kind of consistency to be able to make it through to the end with a clear vision.

Aley, you said you were playing with what I call line breaks - and how two lines can complete a thought. Understand that the reason that you can have 1. lines where the idea ends at the end, and 2. lines where the thought/idea continues onto the next line, the reason for this is a measure of consistency of grammar, punctuation, and where to break the line.

So for example, for your first stanza:

Tell me not your tale of woe,
for I have no time to see
that tale my ears will never know.

I only did two things here. First, I changed the semicolon to a comma (it's not a complete thought yet). The second was I uncapitalize the "f" in for, because when you have a capitalized line - what you're saying to the reader is that this is a new thought. Just like how we capitalize our sentences to differentiate between thoughts.

The tree is green.
Green is the tree.

as opposed to:

the tree is
green is the
tree

Do you see that by capitalizing and breaking, the thought stops, and a new thought begins a new line? Whereas, by not capitalizing - the thought continues on to the next line?

So the first order of business for you is to look over your punctuation and capitalization and see where the thought begins and ends. Does it end at the end of the line? Or does it continue on to the next line - because if so, then I wouldn't capitalize your lines. Normal grammar rules will apply. I think that your readers get confused if you have a mixture of all these things - the roadmap becomes too hard to read.

Understand the Villanelle

I think that free-writing in poetry is great, because only by doing can you really learn. Only by writing a villanelle were you able to begin this discussion and come across all of these little roadbumps in trying to write a successful one. The best way to learn is to overcome those roadbumps, and you can read villanelles and you can read about villanelles or have someone tell you what the purpose of a villanelle is, but I'm someone who believes that you learn best through experience.

So, yes. I'm a supporter of free writing poetry! But I think that freewriting alone isn't going to get you "there" yet, if you want to write well and if you want to write successfully then any poem, even the villanelle, is going to call for a lot of thought behind it. So it's about freewriting first, then noticing the roadbumps - which you did! and then trying to overcome them, which you're doing. So, I don't want you to be frustrated! This is all just part of the process.

That being said, the reason that a villanelle works so well in my opinion (others are going to have their own thoughts, I'm sure) is that it is going to naturally have all of those poetic elements (the refrains and rhymes make it lyrical, lyrical is pleasing), and the repetitions are normally important - or have an importance in meaning that by the end becomes cyclical. And like you noticed, Aley, when you read a villanelle and you get to the end - it's like you have a dual meaning, or a dual understanding of the work. Part of that is ambiguity, like you mentioned. By constructing a villanelle, you get to play with the meanings of words/phrases.

Part of that is that the structure is intricately designed to weave ideas together, almost like a braid, and then it unravels or combines together to allow for that important revelation that we love in endings. We like endings that are 1) powerful (so that they leave an impact, and we remember the poem) 2) moves us -- that is not to say that all endings need to inspire/move us or have some kind of moral, but it has to have this effect where by the time we reach the end (we, as in reader, author, speakers, characters and all) there is a shared understanding, for the first time, of how the whole poem/story fits together)

So I think by understanding that, first, why a structure works/how it works, and what effects it achieves, it might help you figure out where you're falling short.

@ Aley

I was most inspired by the origin of the form. I wonder if you thought about that at all while constructing your villanelle. Did you think of the singers -- the group and the soloist -- while you were writing at all? It may help you in rewrites? Especially if you're going with a more pastoral theme by changing it all to the doe's vantage point, since that fits well with the farmers that apparently original used the form.

Structure
@ Audy: While I can see what you are saying, that capitalization and punctuation are important to help create the idea of line breaks, I would like to disagree with you.

The tree is green.
Green is the tree.

as opposed to:

the tree is
green is the
tree

I think having:
the tree is
Green is the
tree

Works well because it allows emphasis on the main point in the line/stanza. Capitals can also be used to show respect considering it creates a proper noun, and that can add meaning and hint that the thing is a heavy symbol. Obviously this is still using capitalization, but it is using it in a different manner.
-Yes, I know that how I capitalized the poem was stoic and unhelpful.
I understand that you don't think I did my job with punctuation. With that said, as you know, I have been working on it.

I think the key things in your long monolog is that we have to use what wiggle room we have in the structure in order to create something uniquely our own. For instance, even if we are writing in Iambic Pentameter, we still have to look at punctuation and consider where we should have pauses to indicate thoughts.

For me the villanelle structure is strong because it provides with the interesting challenge of connecting a new meaning with the same words in a simplistic forum and only two sets of rhyming words. This strength for me helps draw the sing-song quality of the poem out without beating the structure into their heads. I'm, by far, no master of this, (nor did I read everything about villanelles under the sun. I was using the Wiki blog to kind of show the structure I was using with the rhyme scheme and line set up. -@ Hannah) but I think we can learn a lot about doing these things from people that other poets think are great. For example, Susan Browne with Buddah's Dogs is very inspirational to me to keep sentences going passed the stanza, and passed, the line, or allow the stanzas to box off important thoughts all alone, and show time.

For me, I used the stanzas to show time. and to put things nice and organized for the reader, meaning together, while I wanted them to explore exactly what that last line had to do with the two new lines. I'm still working on it gradually, but I think I'm getting somewhere better.

So what do you two think is your most influential poem that appears to be in a structure, even if it is not a named structure? What is influential about it?

(Also I have my response to the other discussions up on page 1 above my poem.)

Haha, that's cool that you didn't read it, but I was suggesting for you to do so, not trying to say you were lacking for not having done it in the first place, Aley.

on Writer v. Self
re: Aley

I like what you said about just saying, "Hey, that's the speaker, not me", because we were totally required to do that in workshops at my college, even if it was clear that the person in the classroom had written it from their own heart. For one, it was more helpful to applying criticism to more worked-on pieces, because we treated it as a work instead of a journal. For another, it helped to shoot embarrassing questions off to the side instead of straight at the writer.

I think it's a technique that could help a lot with fears of censorship -- the ultimate shield -- and could throw anyone off their rant of how "you are doing this".

Yo, man. This can't be dead.

So, I have been recently thinking a little more about the idea of bringing poetry into my elementary school ESL classroom, and I was wondering what you guys thought would be, potentially, the most basic bridge for a child into poetry?

But beyond that, what does your choice say about the way you view poetry?


For me, I've been really taken by the idea of starting with compound words. First, it has practical value because there are plenty of compound words in English. But I was editing a high school girl's essay one night and she said she'd gotten plenty of "love money" from volunteering at a nursing home, saying her teacher had encouraged her to use compound words to express her point.

And I thought it was brilliant because of how accessible it was, and how poetic it was in nature. It's playing with the way words interact, which is really the point of poetry. We put words together to see what they make. Like some crazy cooking or chemical experiment. We sometimes come up with less effective combinations, like "love money", which comes off sounding awkward because of different connotations, but sometimes we find the perfect words that we get ANGRY at because they don't exist in everyday English, so they might be balked at all the same.

My two cents~ What's yours?

It seems acceptable to jump in here - especially if someone else revived it, because that's hard.

@Hannah
I feel that early poetry is done well when provided simple structure.
Shel Silverstein is an example of a relatively simple, easily introduced poet.
Emulation is key to any written work. One must have foundations before one can build "bridges."

In case you aren't about to TL;DR: your compound word approach seems suited to a more advanced poetic discourse. It is good to form compound words in order to express something where one's vocabulary does not readily suffice, but there's just no substitute for good diction. And good diction comes from reading and emulating. So those are my two (American "get 'er done") cents.

ALSO:

Also, maybe we can try to bring back some previous chamber members: @Aley @Audy

I was sayin' the words would be balked at, that people would balk at the words, but I'm not going to go up and defend my twisted and less-than-efficient mind-drain sentences. I teach in English, but don't have many extended conversations in it these days, aside from writing here, so please excuse any oddness you encounter, and I'll endeavor to be more aware of it!


So, I completely accept what you said about good diction coming from reading and emulating, because that's definitely how native speakers learn. I probably should have been more clear about my bias. Native speakers are surrounded by the language with copious opportunities to read and emulate and soak it all in for a large amount of time. But the kids in my class speak English in their class at school and then my after school hour-a-week, basically. I teach ESL. Obviously there's a big difference between teaching poetry to young students in their native language and teaching poetry to young students in a foreign language.

Which means I was thinking of a way to engage and interest them, encourage them to see this second language as a sort of playground and give them more confidence in using and shaping it, instead of discouraging them with MORE memorization and translation like their Korean teachers give them to prep for tests.

EEP. I will try to remember kids from a country that speaks English natively.

In that case, yeah, we learn compound word really early on. We probably learn a lot naturally before we even identify what they are, and at that point we're already ready for a more regular introduction to basic poetry like Shel Silverstein. Compound words are chump change to people who can make sentences like old pros.

What do you think of the value of rhyme?
For younger native students, they can still play with that kind of sound. It makes memorization easier and stretches their minds into accessing the right vocabulary from their vocab bank (which would be considerably smaller for an ESL student?). I hate rhyming poems on this site, but what makes rhyming poems so valuable for children?

@Hannah
I want to let this balk thing go, but I really can't. I'm just that nitpicky sometimes. Sorry if that's irritating!

Balk stuff:


While attempting to understand the ESL situation, my diction ditty still applies.

Diction is not simply vocabulary, but more so how one uses it.

For instance, "as would be, as were I'd have it" is very complex, but uses simple words to say a simple thing: "I will take as I can get".

And originality, if one can muster it, can be applied to any language (with a little prompting) - and it will bring that someone to make mistakes, which is the surest sign of learning I know. When I took Chinese (sorry to liken it to Korean, I know they are different), I would make things up and try them on my teacher (often saying ludicrous things, I'm sure).

Encouraging that particular activity doesn't require memorization necessarily, requires careful diction, and might help to stretch their brains (without necessarily providing the complicated layer of rhyme-schemes/poetic syntax, but still providing an introduction to the idea of wording things differently/originally/playfully).

In my opinion, rhyming poems are valuable for children... (boring)

Just my two cents, of course - if it doesn't jibe, feel free to yell at it.

RE: the most basic bridge for a child into poetry?

I don't think children read poetry for the love/innovation in language. At the same time, I never really sat down with a child to ask if he/she loved language. xD As a child, I would have said I loved reading, drawing, writing. I think children read poems for the pleasure of it, as they read stories for the pleasure of it.

Thus, you see rhyme in children's poetry. Because pleasing sounds and all that. We don't normally speak in rhyme during every day conversations, so poetry (as a medium that so often means to revive language) is something like a luxury to our ears. Like having desert and just so happens children love sweets ^-^ When I think back to all the poems I loved as a kid, they all rhymed.

Probably also narratives/storytelling/ all those folktales, storytales, picture books all in some way appeal to children. So introducing them to like a folktale poem, or a narrative/rhyming poem may catch a child's attention. This is probably why we remember Dr. Seuss and Silverstein among the poets we read as children, for their combination of these elements, and possibly their kookyness.

That being said though Hannah, word combos/word games/puns/riddles and all of that are pleasing -- so any use of them in a poem is always enjoyable to all age groups, I think.

If you're writing poetry for children -- important elements are going to be your sparkle dazzle eye popper. Something fun and to the point/enjoyable. I think when you're writing for an older audience, we crave that originality/newness so often we really love these experimental/complex forms -- but as a child, everything is new, even such cliches as talking animals, so there's less to worry about that front ^_^;

So an interesting question -> How would you go about writing poems for children?

And what's the line to draw between simple, easy-to read poems and boring/bland poems?