anyone interested in a virtual poetry workshop?

[noiretextatique]

exploring forms, respectful critiques and other stuff? i find i am more productive when working with others. i do spoken word, so my work tends to be more prose than poetry, but i am interested in developing my poetic skills. anyone interested?

[oneighty]

1. Spoken word is great

I think. Seems you and I have met before noiretblu?

180

[noiretextatique]

2. but of course

:hi: we have met in several poetry/love story threads. spoken word is great, but i aspire to be a better poet :7

[oneighty]

4. Yes

Affairs of the heart. I just finished another one (sigh). I am going to try to make it into a mini opera with the High School a local Church or the local library.

Long ago we had a players group in the village. That was interesting and a perfect vehicle for amateur talent of all sorts.

Next month or so we are having the writers group at the library back in business for the summer. I am the only male in the group. Hee hee hee!

180

[noiretextatique]

14. me too

just finished an affair, that is...at least i write more when my heart is broken. good luck with your opera...sounds exciting. i am hosting a monthly poetry event now, so i need to start working on some new material.

[EFerrari]

3. I'm in. Deadlines really help me. (n/p)

[oneighty]

5. Would you

open a special DU Group for poetry? That would be a good start.

180

[EFerrari]

6. Do you think there are enough of us?

I don't know how much work this would be for the admins or -- whatever else a new group or forum would entail?

[oneighty]

8. Yes

This forum seems full of frustrated poets. (As is all of DU) I expect.

180

[EFerrari]

9. (Smile) Of course. What a question. I'll keep checking to see

what you decide.

I know I could really use a shop.

Beth

[noiretextatique]

16. i suppose we can do that

if there is enough interest.

[EFerrari]

7. Here's my 1st sestina. (aka, fair warning for you all)

It's been a while since I was connected to a poetry community, and I've no experience with spoken word. One day, for the hell of it and because sore from not working out, tried the sestina form. I'm not satisfied but, lol, that doesn't happen very often :)


Black triangle in light


While the others sleep, the black cat
Sits on the sill in a rectangle of light,
The only one in the dark kitchen, still
As an unwatched sculpture. This morning,
A quiet waiting wedge, the cat eyes
Some gulls ferry between sky and sand.

Perhaps knowing how near the sand
Dunes are, across the highway only, the cat
Presses the glass, paws her reflection, eyes
Never leaving the gulls just beyond the light
Warming her screened perch. Slowly, it’s morning
In that window. She sits, watching, still.

And she might stay all day, watching still.
The smell of the sea, the ping of blown sand
Tease her to the glass, testing her each morning.
Ancient patience meets disregard in the cat
Who measures the gulls’ flight in the cold light,
Noting the ravens’ clatter too, with great green eyes.

So much unsaid by those wide eyes.
Yet something about her suggests, “Be still,
Or, come closer, I will jump into the light
You play in. You’re playing, I know. The sand
Smells like a beach a grain at a time.” The cat
Stretches gently, jumps, finished for this morning.

I’d thought to paint her, there, some morning.
How to give the motion of her stillness to other eyes?
Or, show color condensing around this small monochrome cat?
An early sketch shows promise but still
It’s only promise, not salt, flight or sand.
Here: A small black triangle on a pale plane of light.

She draws us there, summoning beach light
Slowly into the room. Brightest at mid morning,
But not bright now. The bunch grasses wave, trapping sand
Blown across the highway, and the surfers’ eyes
Narrow against the wind, the ones still
Too young for shades, as they pass by window and cat.

As if you could out walk the light world of her eyes,
Or the day’s flight from morning, sweeping over the sand.
Or, forgive the still capture of this small black cat.

[oneighty]

10. Interesting sestina is

I had to google it. Sestina seems a challenge similar to a cross word puzzle.

Is the poetry in the form or in the words?

I say damn the rules scribe away.

Nevertheless your poem might have been written in a house I know of on Sullivans Island SC where in the east window there a cat would act as you describe. It is good.

180

[EFerrari]

11. I think the form gets half of your brain off of your back

but then, I've never done much with trad forms except sonnets.

It's about the cats :)

[noiretextatique]

12. wow...i am impressed that you even tried

perhaps this is why i've avoided all form, except those i create. i loved it, btw. i think i should try something simplier to start.

[EFerrari]

13. Thanks. What I find is

"rules" sort of help free me up. Some part of the brain gets concerned with "rules" and allows the other part to just say.

I've never been quite successful with sonnets or in other forms, but in general, it helped me stretch. fwiw.

[noiretextatique]

15. i understand that completely

form can free you. i will post my tanka tomorrow.

[EFerrari]

17. Look forward to it! Thank you. (n/P)

[EFerrari]

18. Sorry to stutter, not a linear thinker

Try sonnets,

You can do three verses and a coda, you can do two, it's an extremely flexible form. And the workout is just amazing.

Don't know how it is for the rest of you but for me, if I don't work it, the poetry becomes a discomfort because not said.

Up thread, the question was asked, "where is the poetry". I don't know. Poetry expresses experience in the most condensed way; it elicits responses from people that other forms don't.

I've no idea what poetry is, beyond these two ideas. But, there it is.

/typo

[noiretextatique]

19. my dad was hospitalized today

and it sounds serious, so i will check in later in the week.

[EFerrari]

20. So sorry to hear that.

(I'm sort of waiting for the same every day.)

We'll be here. Take care of yourself.
B.