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Column Writers - Fiction

Poetry Writer

THE EYES OF A POET
by Karen Wiesner
(Sept 2000)

It comes in many different forms. It's been around since the beginning of time, and it evolves with each new generation. It can be said as unequivocal fact that there's no longer a right and wrong way to do it. The only thing that has never changed is that every poem ever written shows us the eyes of the poet.

LOOKING WITHOUT.
As love mirrors the heart, poetry mirrors personality. Many poets choose to write about things outside of themselves-nature, God, events. This mirrors their personal character and the way they look at the world.

LOOKING WITHIN.
Other poets take the outside world into themselves and use the intimate emotions to reveal their own hearts.

Unlike any other form of literature, poetry is a unique combination of conventional form and individual style.

"To rhyme or not to rhyme."
Whether classical or modern, most all forms of poetry fall into one of these types of poetry:

-Rhyming Verse.
Rhyming verse is as old as time. It set a standard that relies on metrics to convey meaning or emotion. Metrics are syllables, monosyllabic words, stresses and length that create a pattern in the verse. Below is an example of modern rhyming verse. Read it first for its content, then we'll pinpoint exactly what makes it rhyming verse.

I am Love.
I can touch those who believe.
I am the feelings you are made of.
I am a song that will make you grieve.
I take your heart
and I make it bleed.
I leave you with promises
you take because you need.
I bring the rain
that darkens the sky.
I am Love, I am Pain.

Turn your eyes on me.
I can bring you joy;
I can set you free.
I can tear your world apart
if you open up
and let me into your heart.
I will steal your soul,
and when you turn your eyes on me
you'll no longer be whole.

If you look deeper,
you'll find I'm just a feeling you will never see.
I am the Reaper
and they all fear me.
You pray for what I can give you;
you dream every fantasy.
You look to my dying skull
and sell all that you have
only to realize that Love is invisible.(1)

Rhythm is achieved here through couplets, a triplet in the last stanza, consonance (similarity in consonants) in the very last rhyme, and in the length of the verses. You see a definite pattern that moves the words in regular succession.

-Free Verse.
Free verse came about in the 19th century, when French poets wanted to shake the confining structure of rhyming verse. While free verse may or may not rhyme, its purpose is the intensity of "sound" rather than pattern. In the following example of free verse, again read for content then go back and compare its form to rhyming verse.
I'd often thought, and smiled to myself,
Of how much I cared for a lost and hurting world.
I was walking with Jesus,
I was the salt of the earth,
a child of the King,
On my way to glory.
With a world decaying around me,
I thought I had no reason to be sorry.

A child behind the door,
my neighbor, my friend.
Though we'd never met before,
my Lord had said to love everyone.
But when I heard the cries,
I did what the world would have done.
My sin wasn't so much what I did.
It was what I
DIDN'T.

And when you needed shelter
I suggested just the inn.
And when your stomach was empty,
I let you go through my trash bin.
And when you needed to be rebuked,
I was the first to find fault.
But what good were my words
when cement was mixed with my salt?
What help to you was my insight
when Christ couldn't be seen in my own radiant light?

Out of foolishness, I left you hopeless.
Your innocence had to die because I closed my eyes to your cry.
And I didn't feed your needs.
And I didn't invite you to clothe your nakedness
With the Father's forgiveness.
And I didn't visit you when you were in pain.
Walking righteous and filled with spiritual pride,
I saw you lying by the roadside
With fresh wounds bleeding inside.
I saw you, and I just walked on by.

Now, when I look back,
I see you, the victim,
chained in hopeless bands,
dark and lost without Jesus,
no light from my lamp.
I see you
and your blood is all over my hands.(2)

I underlined the rhymes in this poem too, but notice that despite couplets, triplets, even assonance (similarity of vowel sounds) in one area, this poem has little pattern. Despite the lack of apparent structure, the poem has as much flow as the rhyming verse did.

-Blank Verse.
Derived in the mid-16th century, this form of unrhymed poetry came about as a means to convey speech rhythms and their emotional overtones. It has a definite cadence that doesn't depend on rhyme or even patterns to bring it alive. In the following example, notice the haunting quality of the words, how personal speech is conveyed, how it SEEMS to rhyme despite the lack.
There's a lonely chill
on these black and endless streets,
where innocence dies,
shame thrives
and calls my name.

I know these streets.
I know 'em like a familiar heartache
that won't ever go away.
Like a need so deep it echoes
because dreams and reality can never meet.

You say you wanna understand,
but you don't wanna feel the cold rain.
You don't wanna scream so the wind
carries the pain far away.
What's gone comes alive again
and haunts me on these streets.
It's what I always need but can never have.
So deep it echoes
because heartbreak and forgiveness
can never meet.(3)

Whether it rhymes, doesn't rhyme or just seems to, true poetry should make you laugh, make you cry, send a chilldown your spine or arouse warm or strong emotions. True poetry takes you outside the world you're in and into theeyes of the poet.

1 Love is invisible
2 excerpt from Ye did it not
3 Streets
All poems written by Karen S. Wiesner

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Karen Wiesner is the best-selling author of three, popular on-going fiction series' available from Hard Shell Word Factory http://www.hardshell.com. Her Hard Shell novels have been nominated for Romantic Times' 1999 E-Book of the Year, the Frankfurt Award and an EPPIE http://www.eclectics.com/epic. She is also the author of ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING The Definitive Guide {The Most Complete Reference to Non-Subsidy E-Publishing}, a best-selling, Frankfurt and EPPIE nominated writer's reference. The 2000 Edition is published by Avid Press, LLC http://www.avidpress.com She contributed a story to the Mistletoe Marriages Anthology, published by DiskUs Publishing http://www.diskuspublishing.com , which has also been nominated for the Frankfurt Award. Her award-winning Inkspot column titled Electronic Publishing Q&A (Link not available at this time) is published monthly. Currently, she's sold another nonfiction writer's reference to Avid Press, LLC titled THE PRODUCTIVE WRITER {or how to avoid carpal tunnel with all those revisions} (no release date set), 3 more fiction novels scheduled for 2000 release, as well as a children's story, THE CODY KNOWS CHRONICLES (no release date set.) .

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