How do people write poetry?

[Anonymous No.16505106]

Do people always write poetry (good poetry, not free verse faggoty) around metrics or do they sometimes just write something and see how it comes? I know that, for instance, some authors made their works around iambic pentameter but do author always make their work around a certain type of verse? Obviously I'm asking this because I'm very new with poetry.

[Anonymous No.16505139]

>>16505106
Generally speaking beginning poets will consciously try to write in a particular meter and more experienced ones will write with less conscious attention to verse form. Things like counting syllables become second nature as they write more, and poets gain more confidence in "breaking" metrical "rules" when the needs of the poem require it. Meter is just a basis. The interesting things happen when meter are varied (sometimes radically) to produce changes in sound and meaning. Languages also tend towards certain meters- English supposedly favors iambs, and pentameter gives you a nice length to write in, so that's become our default. It's hard to English language poets to avoid writing in it, both because of the language itself and because so many great poems of the past are in base iambic pentameter

[Anonymous No.16505209]

>>16505106
>good poetry, not free verse faggoty
brainlet, you'll never make it

[Anonymous No.16505220]

>>16505209
seethe

[Anonymous No.16505230]

>>16505106
>>16505220
repent heathen

[Anonymous No.16505236]

>>16505230

[Anonymous No.16505240]

>>16505220
Meter and rhymes are crutches. It's fine to use them when you're starting out but at some point you will have to outgrow them and stop them from limiting your thoughts

[Anonymous No.16505251]

>>16505240
If you abandone metrics why not write in prose then?

[Anonymous No.16505267]

What books do I get to understand meter?

[Anonymous No.16505271]

>>16505267
True chads learn metrics in Wikipedia reading every article about the type of verses.

[Anonymous No.16505274]

>>16505240
> limiting your thoughts
You don't really have any, you dumb NPC.

[Anonymous No.16505278]

>>16505106
They do both. When you start out, you either write "what you feel" or you write so as to fit a particular form (e.g. you practice "writing a sonnet"). Gradually these two things come together, so when a good poet writes "from the heart", he instinctively thinks in the form that will work for whatever thought or emotion he has.

If you want to get more specific, obviously it depends on the writer.

Philip Larkin said when he was starting a new poem he usually came up with a particular phrase or line - very often the last line - and he thought "what would lead up to this?" and just that one little phrase would dictate what the form had to be.

Usually when we see poets' successive drafts (like Wilfred Owen's notebooks) they fix the basic form pretty quickly, (i.e. in the first draft) and all the subsequent drafts are just polishing and reworking particular small-scale elements. I can't think off-hand of any really famous poem that was conceived in one form and then changed to another form late in its development (though there probably have been some).

[Anonymous No.16505321]

>>16505274
>You don't really have any, you dumb NPC.

[Anonymous No.16505341]

Reminder that
this is
free verse
wow
look how I'm
defying
the rules of meter and
,
poetry

[Anonymous No.16505344]

>>16505106
Read Eliot you fucking retard.

[Anonymous No.16506178]

>>16505344
Ugh, trashy free verse

[Anonymous No.16506185]

>>16505267
i bought a book for it, and i have to say that unless you're actually going to invest time into it, don't do it anon, poetry is tough stuff unless you've got talent

[Anonymous No.16506195]

>>16505267
Mary Oliver's poetry handbook
the Ode less Travelled

[Anonymous No.16506204]

>>16505106
just write songs instead

[Anonymous No.16506241]

>>16505106
>how do I write poetry?
>anything but free verse
>. . . But do I have to pay attention to meter?
This is a very frustrating post and it tells me that you just need to read poetry. Yeah if you want to be be able to write well with strong meter you should try to write in iambic pentameter or something as much as possible. Try to scan any text you find for it's own meter (i.e. oh, "of mice and men" is two iambs). Learn to just have meter in the back of your head all the time I think.
But, I think the one thing every poet agrees on w/r/t to writing poems, is that you have to read poems. You should be reading at least 10 times as much poetry as you write, and you should try to read from the canon.

[Anonymous No.16506260]

>>16505106
to write a good poem, or so i've been told
you take a fat shit, and wrap it in gold
cook it for an hour in an oven so hot
then take that gold shit and shove it right back up your butt

[Anonymous No.16506279]

>>16506241
>. . . But do I have to pay attention to meter?
I never said that man, I just asked if I had to write around certain type of verse from the beginning or write something "X" and then mold it around meter.

[Anonymous No.16506283]

>>16506260
Anapestic meter is for drunkard irishmen and their dirty limericks, silly. This is a thread about poetry

[Anonymous No.16506296]

>>16506279
Ah sorry for my misreading. Thatd be a very strange way to write. Itd be extraordinarily difficult. Just write nonsense sonnets until you can write ones that make sense

[Anonymous No.16506315]

>>16506283
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QruPDs9i24I

[Anonymous No.16506376]

>>16506315
Thank you for sharing this I do not actually dislike anapestic meter I just wanted to say something needlessly hostile about a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables while also identifying the dominant meter in the shit poem to make myself look smart

[Anonymous No.16506515]

>>16505106
You decided to chide free verse so here I am defending it. Free verse has considerations for form and flow that are distinct from metered verse. Metered verse is lyrically very rigid and blocked into sections; free verse places rhythms and phonetic compliments where it seems appropriate in improvisation or editing. You can literally say more with free verse once you lift the bars of metered rhyme. This is a double-edged sword, of course, as more =/= better or "good", but it does still stand as a useful novelty. People like free verse. Try publishing to any poetry syndication that doesn't dabble in this oh-so-terrible free verse. You can't. It is dominating the field and good stuff is coming out of it.

If I was to be harsher, I'd say: stop romanticizing metered poetry as some connection to superior art and just read more. If you want to be published or "make it", take a survey of what is getting published and negotiate it with your work (not sacrifice, negotiate).

[Anonymous No.16506569]

>>16506515
>I'd say: stop romanticizing metered poetry as some connection to superior art
Never.

[Anonymous No.16506580]

>>16506569
ding ding, hit the nerve

[Anonymous No.16506597]

>>16506376
You're the reason this board is awful, you are a piece of shit and will die feeling horrified at how much of a worthless spastic you were.

[Anonymous No.16506610]

>>16505106
Nice pic choice, he is one of the biggest chads in Spanish poetry.

[Anonymous No.16506620]

>>16506597
This is the fruit of sincerity posting.

[Anonymous No.16506623]

>>16506515
>People like free verse.
Most people don't like poetry at all and those who do primarily read hack frauds like Rupi Kaur. I don't object to unmetered poetry on principle, but using popular tastes as a defense of free verse is a mistake.

[Anonymous No.16506635]

>>16506623
Dude pick up any literary mag. They ain't filling em up with poems people dont like. Poetry was just completely chopped down after the 19th century and it is a much more niche interest

[Anonymous No.16506654]

>>16506610
I like him a lot but despite his look he was actually... Well, a cuck anon. He was rejected by his first two platonic loves, I personally think that the first one could be the most impactful woman in his life. Then he just got married with some chick and she cheated on him later, it's even rumored that their third child was fruit of that cheating.

[Anonymous No.16506670]

>>16506654
In the realm of poetry cucks are Chad's. This has unironically made me feel better about being an over emotional idiot. To think and feel is living and the rest is just breathing.

[Anonymous No.16506671]

>>16506635
Using your logic I could affirm that reggaeton and trap are the best music genres because "dood, look at spotify playlists and utube!!11!11!1" or "Dude, Twilight is acshually a literary masterpiece, just look how many copies were sold".

[Anonymous No.16506696]

>>16506671
Understandable, but free verse is popular within the 'high culture' sect of literature. I think that's what I was getting at. Rupi Kaur isn't really popular in the academic crowd lol

[Anonymous No.16506708]

>>16506654
He may have been fucked in life, but he used his experiences and his love of life to produce beauty. He is the embodiment of Romanticism, a true vitalist.

[Anonymous No.16506711]

>>16506696
>but free verse is popular within the 'high culture' sect of literature.
Well... No? Is very common to see people complaining about how free verse is killing poetry in circles of "high literature".

[Anonymous No.16506737]

>>16506708
Yes, he came a little late to the Romanticism party but he ended up being the epitome of the movement.

[Anonymous No.16506939]

>>16506711
doubt

[Anonymous No.16506989]

>>16506711
I see this but I think it is far from the dominant opinion. it seems to me like it's mostly people who've spent 20 yrs studying the renaissance