ancestral voices prophesying war

[melannen]

Just back from first writing workshop. I forgot I'd signed up for the poetry rather than prose one, which is good, because I think poetry works better in that sort of workshopping environment.

Watched an old video of poets on poetry. I swear some of them sounded *exactly* like Daniel Pinkwater doing Jonathan Quicksilver. Except at least Quicksilver's poems are *short*. It was painful.

Also she has banned full rhyme because we need to, like, y'know, connect to the modern world, which is, like, too complex and multicultral for simple forms to be relevant anymore. This will be a cause of conflict as I believe that A) anyone who thinks the modern world is particularly complex has not studied enough history, and B) one needs to master strict forms before experimenting with free ones. But I will have fun, anyway.


Off to Dean-for-president rally. If I survive, will report back after.

Comments

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

A) anyone who thinks the modern world is particularly complex has not studied enough history, and B) one needs to master strict forms before experimenting with free ones.

I hear you. I was the only one in my intermediate creative writing class who liked form poetry--and that included the teacher. Everyone else thought it was outdated and restrictive and artificial (my protests that only bad form poetry was artificial were in vain). I had this uncontrollable urge to tie them all to chairs and read Shakespeare's sonnets aloud to them until they gave in and admitted that rhyme could be good.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Yes. I have been in that situation.

The silliest part of this, though, is that we actually *are* spending most of the class studying form poetry. Our first assignment is to read a collection of classic villanelles and write a poem. Only it's not allowed to be a villanelle; see, we're only reading the forms for historical background, because they no longer work in a modern context.