I'm not looking for poet recommendations, but are there any books on HOW to write poetry...

I'm not looking for poet recommendations, but are there any books on HOW to write poetry? I missed out in college since I didn't take any poetry classes. Now that I have time, I want to learn.

Share any books that helped you/a good starting point.

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If you need a book you'll never know, simple as that. It's not something you are thought

Ok.

If you can't learn from reading poetry then why bother? You'll never get good. Just read and try to copy what you like.

certainly
for instance ode less traveled

This helped me, and I DID take classes, they aren't that necessary

1-Although rhythm, assonance, alliteration (the whole question of musicality, and even rhyme, when it comes to rhyming poetry) are important, and although the feeling or idea that the poem communicates is a valid and significant thing, it is the metaphor and the imagery the greatest aspect of poetry. Young poet, above all other things, work on your imagery.

2- Having in mind the rule nº 1, it must be said that you can produce good poems without using metaphors, but if you do not master this tool and use it frequently in your literature your work will lack much of what is most beautiful in poetry, and therefore you will be a minor poet.

3-Only poets who bet everything in the musicality of their verses will actually lose all their value in the translation. Poets who make use of an inventive, effervescent, strange and original language: poets who use metaphors and new ways of seeing the world (who see strange combinations of things that were alien before): such poets will be valued and read and cause brain amazements and chills in the marrow even in translation.

4-The story-teller poet, the one who writes epic poems, or plays (in short, the poet who creates characters and plots) will always be celebrated and valued and read much more than the lyric poet.

5-A poet that can only be appreciated in its original language and lose everything in translation is undoubtedly a minor poet. An example: Pushkin (even if the Russians insist on his god-like powers).

6-Ideas, philosophies, beliefs, messages: all these things are inferior to language when it comes to poetry. A poet who mastered the language (and especially metaphor and imagery) that writes a poem about a flea would have produced a more meaningful poem than a mediocre poet who produces a poem about freedom, universal love, or a poem proposing a new philosophy.

thank you very much, user.

what are your thoughts on prose poems?

>Only poets who bet everything in the musicality of their verses will actually lose all their value in the translation.

oh, it's the modern english school of butchered translation when they don't even try to keep the meter and the rhyme nowadays

a poem without some sort of musicality worths literally nothing, it's better to read a short story or something instead

>poets who use metaphors and new ways of seeing the world (who see strange combinations of things that were alien before)

You might as well be writing prose.

Yes. Lots of them.

A Poet's Guide to Poetry is pretty good.
amazon.com/Poetry-Chicago-Writing-Editing-Publishing/dp/0226923061/

>A poet that can only be appreciated in its original language and lose everything in translation is undoubtedly a minor poet. An example: Pushkin (even if the Russians insist on his god-like powers).

it's pretty much like to claim chaucer a minor poet

they are both known for the very same thing - popularizing the usage of their native vernacular languages in the literature

>It's not something you are thought

This is beyond stupid. Poetry is a derivative art form. You are building on thousands of years of language and technique. Reading widely and learning how poets work is part of becoming a poet.

Each subsequent painter does not need to invent basic painting techniques like brush work and how to mix colors. They learn these things from past painters. Books are a good way to transmit knowledge across time.

So yes you can learn to write poetry from a book. It's how almost everyone in human history learned to write poetry.

Fuck this idea that writers and artists just pop into the world. People take classes. You can learn a fuck ton from other artists and even from teachers who are not great artists.

Michael Phelps has a coach who will never be 1/10th of the swimmer he is. It's foolish to just say, "Jump in the pool and figure it out."

Art technique, writing technique, can all be taught.

misquoted, was to

Keep telling yourself that, no great poet every needed to read a book on how to write poetry, it's an impressionistic artform. You learn from the past by reading the works of the past and taking from it intuitively
It's only mediocre people who look towards this nonsense

>Fuck this idea that writers and artists just pop into the world. People take classes

Except you know, at least 99.9% of writers in the canon.
"creative writing" is just a juvenile dream selling fraud that begun in recent times.

>Keep telling yourself that, no great poet every needed to read a book on how to write poetry

i believe some of them studied metres and rhymes in the university which is basically what these books which were suggested in the thread are about

top kek want to know how I know you don't know shit about poetry?

I don't know why these insecure idiots are so common on Veeky Forums.

op, this guy's a faggot 4chanlit.wikia.com/poetry
there
now dont ask lit for help with poetry ever again, this place is poisonous.

How cynical. If you want to keep yourself at a low level of existence, that's fine. But don't try to bring others down with you.

Fuck off with that nonsense, what I'm saying is that if you want to write good poetry it requires engagement with works of the past and your own interior drives towards expression that has an innate and particular quality that can not be encapsulated in "craft" advice which seeks to prescribe exteriorily imposed assumptions on what you are going to do.
Good writing demands its own creation from you, all you can do is cultivate your own ability to respond to that demand.

No, hardly anybody has the linguistic ability to write good poetry anymore.

We just have people like this assfuck
who I imagine writes
poetry like this where
it is essentially but a sentence
in prose
with a few high-falutin' vocabulations
and cut
into lines

>it requires engagement with works of the past and your own interior drives towards expression that has an innate and particular quality that can >not be encapsulated in "craft" advice which >seeks to prescribe exteriorily imposed >assumptions on what you are going to do.

But studying prosody can't help. None of these works of the past were ever created by people who understood the elements of meter, rhyme, and verse.

Musicians learn to play instruments before setting off on their "own interior drives toward expression." Writers of all genres should do the same.

step 1: read poetry
step 2: read the prose essays of poets about poetry
step 3: read other books about poetry
step 4: try writing poetry (it sucks)
step 5: continue trying even though everything you write is embarrassingly bad
step 6: meet other people who are trying to write poetry. befriend these people
step 7: keep writing that poetry
step 8: talk about poetry with these new friends and ask them for input on your own poems
step 9: remember to read poetry
step 10: do this for a long fucking time
step 11: realize you have no talent, everything you've ever written or will write is doggerel, and the only thing you're cut out for is hack work
step 12: become a moderately successful hack writer. or give up on the writing profession, or kill self

>1-Although rhythm, assonance, alliteration (the whole question of musicality, and even rhyme, when it comes to rhyming poetry) are important, and although the feeling or idea that the poem communicates is a valid and significant thing, it is the metaphor and the imagery the greatest aspect of poetry. Young poet, above all other things, work on your imagery.

Other way around. The only way for poets to become fluent in meter is to practice meter. You learn more by writing rigidly metrical triplets than you do by "working on your imagery". You know why? Because writing in meter is fucking hard. Every time you do it, you have to rack your brain for solutions that fit both the subject and the meter. You have to fight to be concise and dignified when the rhyme is tempting you towards filler, towards going off-topic, towards sounding corny, towards rhyming 'mountain' with 'fountain'. It's a more demanding mental work-out which doesn't reward you for laziness. You can't just break the line where your intuition tells you, you can't just squeeze the extra word in where it won't hurt, you can't just ditch the rhyming because it's hard.

When you've learned how to write couplets that aren't disgusting, then you can take off the leg weights and try writing in blank verse, or you can try on a different challenge, like terza rima or rhyme royal, which will feel different—in some ways easier, in some ways more difficult.

The young poet suffers most by not having a set of rules. Rules will give you focus. If you say to yourself, "I will write ten stanzas in iambic pentameter couplets for the centenary of the surrender of the British army at Kut" (though you'd be a bit too late for that one), you have given yourself a plan for a poem which will be difficult but possible to write. You have a definite topic which you can research, a start and an end which will dictate your pace, and an inflexible form that you must work within. All that's left is to make poetry.

but, how can you tell if your poetry is shit?

poetry is kind of impossible to translate though

horace suggested to wait for 9 years and to re-read then :3

that's before publishing ofc

Western Wind by Nims
this is the book we used in my poetry classes. it goes through different techniques and has lots of good poems as examples. it is expensive because it's used as a textbook but i'm sure you can get earlier editions used on the cheap

Try to have something to talk about besides your feelings and how cruel that hot girl who won't fuck you is

Start with Mayakovsky, both his poetry and his writings on poetry and from their you can contribute.

So, write poetry about objects and landscapes?

don't 'try' to write poetry

Right.

In the meantime, I will think without thinking, and walk without walking, YOU FUCKINGOKJDKF:LJSLDF:

I have been a judge in over 15 poetry contests, and while I don't possess the absolute truth on poetry, i have read a fairly good amount of bad one so here's a couple of things to avoid:
1) Don't try to make me feel what you don't feel. In other words try to be sincere. Mourne the loss of your father, hell mourne the loss of david bowie, don't try to convince me that your little girlfriend who's left has burned your soul.
2) Don't try to tell me what love is or isn't. Chances are I'm older than you and I have been in longer, more meaningful relationships. Don't try unless you're a phenomenal poet. but if you were, you wouldn't be here asking for advice...
3) don't tell how blue and beatiful both the sea and the sky are. We kind of figured that part out.
Should I continue?

Continue

4)Don't think that you have to be "inspired" to write or that you have to follow your feelings. Poetry is a craft as much as it an and art.
5) Don't try to write a poem in one day. Even the italian Ermetici, whose poems sometimes were four or eight words long - "mi illumino d'immenso" - all started out as 5 pages of work.
6) if you're generally bad at writing, a coherent rhyme scheme will show that you at least have put in the effort. I'll take a good free verse over a good rhymed one, but I'll take bad rhymes over no rimes at all anytime

Hey OP. Aspiring poet here who is taking classes at university. The way to get good is to read as much as possible and to write often. But reading won't do jack shit for you if you don't understand what you're reading.

My suggestion is (if you're starting from nothing):
1) read an idiot's guide to poetry or something on a similar level to that
2) read John Hollander's Ryhme's Reason
3) get a nice compilation of English poems with good annotations
4) read the poets you like from the compilation in great depth
5) move on to whatever you want

Also some more tips:
- make sure you fully understand meter and stresses and the technical stuff
- utilize online sources like Poetry Foundation and the like for references
- when buying translations or certain authors like Dickinson, do research on the editors/editions you're buying; some translations are shit and some poets get slightly edited (be very weary online)
- read prose too
- don't necessarily dismiss modern poetry until you've given it a real chance
- DO NOT post your work here or take most people's advise too seriously
- write today bits every single moment you can even if they're shit, this is how to get better
- keep a journal or notebook

Some people will say that poets are born that way and I think there is some truth to it but not to the degree that you can't compensate with hard work. For some it comes naturally and for others it takes some learning. Good luck!

Kill yourself

Can you post a poem that was first place from any of the 15 competitions you've judged.

you are ridiculous on so many levels

What's the best route for truly understanding metre / poetic form? Will the books you suggested cover it? Or will I need something more in-depth?

Thanks for this post!

1. Learn prosody (there are websites for this).

2. Read a lot of good poetry, and also bad poetry sometimes (try to discover why bad is bad, and why good is good).

3. Read opinions of poets over other poets (what are their favourite lines and why, etc.) to get a feel of what's superior... also try to find "first versions" of famous poems to see what corrections the poet made.
>I learned a lot just by watching how Baudelaire corrected his poems.

4. Do not write like other poets.

5. Do not engage in "creative writing" courses.

6. Keep on writing your stuff.

i'm currently reading a book called Writing Metrical Poetry by William Bauer. I had minimal knowledge of meter going into it and now I have a fairly thorough understanding. It also has 'assignments' to help you write different poetic forms. It's helped me out quite a bit.

>writing metrical poetry in 2012
jej