For the Love of Poetry
“Work is love made visible.
And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gates of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.
For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man’s hunger.”
~Kahlil Gibran
The Prophet (pg 28)
I absolutely love to write poetry. Nothing fills my world with joy more than grabbing my favorite pen, a notebook, some quiet time and sitting down to give birth to a new poem. I liken it to giving birth since it is often a painstaking process and can take up more than a few hours of my time. The end result is my “baby.” Most of my babies end up here at writing.com waiting for precious feedback from you, the reader.
In regards to the quote above by Kahlil Gibran, he is speaking of cooking which can, again, be compared to writing a poem. Poems cannot be written with indifference, for if they are they leave your reader hungry for more. They can also leave{i}you{/i} hungry for more. They must be written with love. People who don’t love to write poetry often make poor poets leaving us, their readers, not satiated and wondering why they bother to write at all.
To love poetry, you must love words, sounds, and rhythm and it helps if you have an affinity for similes, metaphors, allusions, personification and even some rhyme. (There are many other items but these are just the basics.) Without these tools poems often come out trite and bland. Most of these tools can be found on the web so I won’t go into detail, but will give you some brief definitions (from dictionary.com).
Words and Sounds: you all know what words and sounds are so I won’t bore your with definitions
Rhythm (I used definition seven as I felt it fit poetry the best): the pattern of recurrent strong and weak accents, vocalization and silence, and the distribution and combination of these elements in speech.
Simile: a figure of speech in which two unlike things are explicitly compared, as in “she is like a rose.”
Metaphor: a figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance, as in “A mighty fortress is our God.”
Allusion: a passing or casual reference; an incidental mention of something, either directly or by implication
Personification: the attribution of a personal nature or character to inanimate objects or abstract notions, esp. as a rhetorical figure.
Rhyme: identity in sound of some part, esp. the end, of words or lines of verse.*
*Note that rhyme doesn’t have to be at the end, it can be internal rhyme as well.{/i}
So, if you love poetry as much as I do, go out there and show us by using all the tools you can to make a beautiful work of art that can be enjoyed for many years to come! Let your love of poetry shine through!
Terry J. Coyier is a 37-year-old college student studying for an Associates of Applied Sciences degree. She is also a freelance writer who writes about a varietry of topics. She lives with her son in the Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex. Terry is an author on http://www.Writing.Com/ which is a site for Writers and her personal portfolio can be viewed here.
Tags: allusion, metaphor, personification, Poetry, rhyme, rhythm, simile, writing
