What is English poetry?

[Linh]

what is "better" here? I think it belong to the individual opinion. Sure that Ralf has chosen the best way for himself. For example, may be with you, Molly, the best way to answer a question is another question or a suggest. With Ralf, may be the best way to answer a question is clearly explanation and encourage another one. With me, it is my opinion only. How about you prince.charms? By the way, can you tell me about your poem?

[Prezbucky]

"Budget Deliberations on a Rainy Sidewalk"

"By golly!" rasped Molly
As she splish-splashed through the rain
"Next time I'll defer this folly
Buy a ticket for the trolley,
To hell with my piggy bank!"

:)
_________________
Billie Jean is not my lover. Hee.

[Ewa Alina]

Hi, I found this forum very interesting. When I was taking some English classes years ago, one of my teacher gave us the "strange" homework. She asked us to write haikus, giving us just one word as a theme, like: waterfall, eagles, sun,dragonfly.I remember my pain, sitting with a pan, looking at the blank page of paper and trying to close any thought in strict order of haiku scheme.Here is the result of a good few days of thinking and caunting sylabs. Just please, don't laugh. It was just English exercise.
"Dancing in the Air"
Dragonfly's dancing
flirting with fresh breeze and sun
secret code of moves.

"The Spring"
Sparkling spring water
crashes in shinning diamonds
the riches from sun.

"Kingdom"
High in the mountain
inaccesible kingdom
for eagles only.

"Private Waterfall"
The brain in fire
lonely night can't lull me bye
Waterfall of thoughts.
From this time on, sometimes I make this kind of exercises for myself.And my collection of English haikus is growing.It doesn't mean I think I am poet, but it helps a lot with learning. what do you think? Maybe you will try, too?

[Molly]

Prezbucky
Unlucky
Who wants to be from Nashville?

[Ralf]

[Molly]

[Skrej]

Pfft. 95 percent of Haiku is just grossly overdone syllable counting exercises, same as Tankas.

Nothing against the form itself, if done well, but it's often treated like beginner's poetry because of its deceptively simple format, with the results predictably being little better than the spawn of random haiku generators .

It's made all the more difficult for its brevity, not simpler. Sadly, it's a master's form used by the masses, all of whom are completely confident their content is just as meaningful, because, look-syllable for syllable by gawd it's the same!
_________________
Plan to be spontaneous tomorrow.
***
Did you hear they arrested the Energizer Bunny on battery charges?
***

[Prezbucky]

Molly said, drolly,
"Who wants to be from Nashville?"
Um, err,em...
Nothing rhymes with "Nashville"

hehe

We were forced (torture!), in our 8th grade English class, to write a poetry book. We were given white, blank, 20ish-page hardcover books in which to record our brilliance.

We were given a list of types of poems to include -- clerihew, haiku, etc. These had to be written by us. At the end of these blank books were reserved a few pages for our favorite poems by other poets.

So... I'll give you a few of the original poetic attempts in "Icy Star's Legendary Poems". There us a quiz element to this: please tell us the types of poems they are (aside from "sophomoric/amateur/retarded/crappy"). Cut me some slack... I was a sheltered 13-year-old.

Evander Holyfield
Emits
Excruciating Pain
Even on Mike Tyson

--
Dan Quayle
One day he barfed in a pail
The odor was so bad
That it killed a young lad
--
Changing of the guard
In a period of sight
Is finally done
--

There once was a man from San Fran
Who loved to hang out with Nan
But she didn't like him
She put him out on a limb
And now he is starting to like Ann

--

One more... this assignment was titled "The Wild Kingdom of Words". I think our teacher made it up.

Joy is a fat duck
That waddles through the sky
Lower than the clouds
The laughter of many
_________________
Billie Jean is not my lover. Hee.

[Molly]

[Molly]

[Ewa Alina]

[Ewa Alina]

Hi, Ralf, I am glad you found this idea about writing haiku interesting.And the poem of your student is really nice. I like haikus a lot. Writing it is just exercise with finding words, just learning game. But I really like to read haikus written by great poets. You have to be master to close in such a short and strict form some big ideas, bright thoughts, dip into observation of nature.

[Prezbucky]

Not both syllables though, Molly! I'm not going to make up a word like bashville, smashville or cashville.

Though it's not as bad as trying to rhyme with "orange".
_________________
Billie Jean is not my lover. Hee.

[Molly]

[Ralf]

'tis those who google
and dig and load
the finest corpi
dotted with rhymes of gnashville
that find the secrets of trifletown
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