Brian Strand Biography

ENGLISH OPEN  FORM POET

1.INTRO

2.EMPERICAL POETIC

READING ALOUD Reading a poem silently ( as  compared to aloud)is the difference between staring at sheet music and playing the music on an instrument.Recitation  equates poetry to the experience of viewing a painting or touching a sculpture...each time the viewer / reciter brings a uniqueness of the moment to the 'happening' & thus the experience can differ each time . ..a byproduct of reading aloud can also be a useful learning /editing technique to use before finalising/publishing[posting] the poem

POETRY A VISUAL FORM
Poetry as a  written artform naturally has a visual aspect thereto.We read with our eyes so line length&line breaks become key limiting factors to both our enjoyment&ease
understanding.Fomat helping to distingush&separate poetry as an artform in its purest sense from the rival written art of prose&thereby puts poetry closer to art than literature.
CADENCE&PUNCTUATION to punctuate or not that is the radical question  we poets must decide as we pick up our stylus&follow traditions .As Black Mountain poet Olson put it.. can syntax be shaped by sound.
Cadence is a poetic 'must have'  for our art & traditions of capitalisation (&emphasis inherent therein) too often can be ' a technique too far' inhibiting expression & visually stilting the reading flow..e e cumings lower case poetry style showed valid alternative poetics .The 'one breath length' limitation being intuitive is perhaps a better cadence in any event .
Admittedly grammar&punctuation are exercises to learn&understand before omitting&as such are a proven  flexiblity  to enhance our poetic art that can vary understanding ,&if omitted be safely left to the reader 

PROCESS The 'process' (itch to write),as with art forms like gestural abstracts action painting,so often is more significant than the content...a process within that desires satisfaction ...with enunciation .."the medium (that) is the message
POETRY HISTORY a creative- written & verbal art evolves naturally as the past century has revealed commencing with the Imagists in the early 1900's who 'freed up' traditional poetic thinking, along with the English  language  translators of Japanese haiku forms who thereby stimulated the interest & innovations in English short form poetics.
Recited rhymes,commonly known by all, was stimulated into wider-spread interest  in  all poetry  by the invention of the  typewriter,soon  followed by digital devices linked to the internet faciltated the process whereby poetry became a common art practised daily  by  thousands worldwide.The result being sites like PS in the early 21st century which continued & widened the evolution of poetry.

hence my style

OPEN VERSE using spaces&breaks/no grammatical symbols /relying on 'the one breath limitation'/thus intuitive cadence permits the 'reader' (reciter)to respond in an interpretative-interplay unique** to the ' happening moment' 

also see  - my google blogs @ 4 below

Sample my poetry book reviews https://www.poetrysoup.com/forum/book-reviews

 

 

3.MY ART PHILOSOPHY  I use in making my art ,similar to  my poetics

 
I prefer  bold  expressive applied spontaneity of visceral feelings unpredictable & evolving organically.A physical engagement of energy & emotions in & of the moment processed in a sense of chaotic immediacy
 
whilst apprecicating the skill in figuarative art and my spontaneous 'one-off' reaction thereto

GESTURAL ABSTRACTION my art style

 

more gestural art of mine here https://gesturalart.blogspot.com/

& sculptured poetic fusion https://sculptureguide.blogspot.com/ o

Coloured hand print
2 Crushed paper presse
3 Sculpture paper mache (front)
4 Coloured cut-outs
5 String installation
6 Sculpture paper mache (back)
7 Dada style safety pins
8 Hanging found object trouve

4.GOOGLE BLOGS as BELOW ON MY GOOGLE PROFILE 

https://www.blogger.com/profile/02166493604739619406

CHOOSE & CLICK beow link to read poetry,art etc etc

 

FORMED or FREE which will it be?

Blog Posted by Brian Strand: 4/6/2017 3:06:00 AM

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Date: 4/14/2017 8:50:00 PM
I'm not established enough of a writer to lump myself in one way or the other. I try to use forms, but usually screw up the meter. I try to use free-verse, but then find myself rhyming here and there. The good thing is that I don't really try hard to be one or the other. When I'm writing for myself, I just do whatever...unless I'm challenging myself to use a specific form just for the sake of doing it (or for a contest). -G
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Grahamburglar Avatar
The Grahamburglar
Date: 4/14/2017 8:51:00 PM
I guess I could add, that of my writings, it seems my personal favorites tend to be more free verse(but with occasional, or sporadic rhymes/internal rhymes etc).
Date: 4/8/2017 12:35:00 PM
I love both form and free but even in free verse there are some requirements. It's not all willy-nilly for example staggered lines, uneven stanzas, metaphors, similes, etc, it is not a narrative, well anyways that's what I think, could be totally wrong!
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Date: 4/8/2017 12:21:00 AM
I write in both, though admittedly I am much better when they are formed. Within free verse however, it is much easier to pour your heart out.
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Date: 4/7/2017 7:55:00 AM
I think I am free verse, therefore I must be, I am unable to participate in form writing, my thingy will not allow me to wait for the words to catch up...I don't even know if I employ devices...woe is the novice in me
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Vinson Avatar
Doug Vinson
Date: 4/7/2017 11:32:00 AM
"my thingy will not allow me to wait for the words to catch up" Ha! Exactly, Anthony - roll as best and as fast as you can, in that case. : )
Date: 4/7/2017 3:39:00 AM
Formed or free ,content is key!
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Dietrich Avatar
Andrea Dietrich
Date: 4/7/2017 9:14:00 AM
content and how that content is presented. FOR SURE.
Date: 4/6/2017 11:42:00 PM
Great blog thoughts and questions, Brian. : ) I think rhyme and free verse are equally fulfilling, though most of us will have an instinctive predilection one way or the other. Neither is really "easy to do," in my opinion - free verse can fail to carry the reader or turn the wrong way; rhyme can be heavy, strained, intrusive, etc. Perhaps it is foolishly romantic of me, but regardless of the form in which I write, I think inspiration has to come, a line or two, the germ of the main thrust of the poem, a kernel or two of substance, around which the rest will form. Yes, things can be crafted in tradesperson-like manner, yet IMO the result will rarely be as good.
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Date: 4/6/2017 1:07:00 PM
Everyone leans one way or the other. It's like left handers and right handers. Right handers I would compare to the rhymers because most of us prefer it, so it predominates it. GOOD free verse for ME is "outside the box" and involves a different mentality. One must be focused more on other literary devices other than the standard ones of meter and rhyme. I love it when I am able to do an amazing free verse, but I find it much more natural to use metered forms. That is why I adore them.
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Dietrich Avatar
Andrea Dietrich
Date: 4/6/2017 1:09:00 PM
Wish I were totally Poetically ambidextrous!
Date: 4/6/2017 1:07:00 PM
Everyone leans one way or the other. It's like left handers and right handers. Right handers I would compare to the rhymers because most of us prefer it, so it predominates . GOOD free verse for ME is "outside the box" and involves a different mentality. One must be focused more on other literary devices other than the standard ones of meter and rhyme. I love it when I am able to do an amazing free verse, but I find it much more natural to use metered forms. That is why I adore them.
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Vinson Avatar
Doug Vinson
Date: 4/7/2017 11:31:00 AM
Hey, nothing at all wrong with meter, per se. IMO, free verse works best when the pacing itself communicates things from writer to reader. It can greatly harm a poem or raise it high.
Dietrich Avatar
Andrea Dietrich
Date: 4/7/2017 9:16:00 AM
thanks,Doug. Blank verse is iambic meter without the rhyme. Did you ever read my Iambic Skates? This is what I was born to do, skate on the ice of iambics. Even my dang free verse has meter in it. Crap.
Vinson Avatar
Doug Vinson
Date: 4/6/2017 11:36:00 PM
Andrea, was going to say that one of my all-time favorite poems in all the world - your 'And Sweet Is Her Demise' - is free verse, but in checking I see it's blank verse. Well, it would work sublimely well as free verse too. : )
Dietrich Avatar
Andrea Dietrich
Date: 4/6/2017 9:38:00 PM
Suz, Of course I remember our KOOKY Kookamonga days. That was where I got a LOT of inspiration that put me on the path to writing a lot more than I did in 2001. Thanks for what you told me. I always felt you were so much better than I at the free verse stuff. Wish I had that ability you have!!
Delaney Avatar
Suzanne Delaney
Date: 4/6/2017 1:32:00 PM
You are a natural at metered forms. It never seems forced and you are able to write entertainingly on so many topics. A born storyteller and I am one of your biggest fans, although I don't often have the time to tell you. Do you remember the days when you were WordWarrior & I was Pixordia? On Kookamonga Square ....LOL
Date: 4/6/2017 1:02:00 PM
Well, I have always encouraged my children to "color outside the lines" lest they be trapped by conformity to arbitrary norms....heheheee
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Date: 4/6/2017 11:27:00 AM
My experience is somewhat limited, and my writing is definitely growing and changing now that I am spending more time on it. I tend to prefer the structure and framework of forms. I am a sucker for strong meter and rhythm. It forces me to think a lot more about what I am trying to say and how I say it. I do get a sense of satisfaction when things finally fit together and seem right, That being said, I have to admit I am rather awed by some of the things I read on here that seem to be written so freely yet are so rich and full and complete without any obvious structure to hold them together.
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Date: 4/6/2017 7:06:00 AM
Great question. As a classical singer, I have always felt drawn to metered and rhymed forms, because this comes naturally to me. But I also love writing free verse, and I wrestle with the nagging thought that I am taking the "easy way out" ( thinking of Robert Frost's "writing free verse is like playing tennis without the net"). Sometimes, rhyme and meter simply happen, and sometimes, a poem won't work in metered form and insists on being free verse. As a math lover, I also find joy in the puzzle aspect of working within the form - it forces me to think more. So I do both and have not settled on one particular style.
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Dietrich Avatar
Andrea Dietrich
Date: 4/6/2017 1:05:00 PM
Agnes, I love Frost but i think his quote on free verse is not a very good one. FORM comes very natural for many of us but not for others. When people write free verse really WELL (which I do not see a lot of the time) they ROCK IT. I can write it, but I rarely feel like I hit a home run with it like I can do with my own metered style!
Date: 4/6/2017 6:37:00 AM
Robert Hass in comparing metered poems with Free Verse states:……the metrical poem begins with an assumption of human life which takes place in a pattern of orderly recurrence with which the poet must come to terms- Meter organizes accents into an overall pattern and more or less evenly times the lines bringing an organizing influence that allows the story to unfold. The Free verse poem…begins with an assumption of openness or chaos in which an order must be discovered. The basic fact of free verse: each poem is shaped from within. You’ll often hear a poet say they didn’t know where the poem would end when they began writing it but that it comes to them as a natural act of writing.”
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Delaney Avatar
Suzanne Delaney
Date: 4/7/2017 9:54:00 PM
As poets, we never stop learning and discussions like this help to clarify and re-inforce the poetic tools we are discovering. Will read this thread again tomorrow. Thanks Brian for an interesting blog and to Andrea, Doug and Chris for your input.
Delaney Avatar
Suzanne Delaney
Date: 4/7/2017 9:53:00 PM
I really enjoyed reading all your responses and have at different times came to many of the same conclusions the same conclusions on my writing journey.
Dietrich Avatar
Andrea Dietrich
Date: 4/7/2017 9:19:00 AM
The sense I am getting from comments here is that free verse is not totally free, like so many assume. It is difficult to do if one wants to perfect it. It is an ART and it may come quickly to a few,but I think just like a rhyme, it can be honed because for me, the best free verse actually have a type of organization or pattern to them. Best of all, a magic with words.
Dietrich Avatar
Andrea Dietrich
Date: 4/7/2017 9:17:00 AM
LOve how you think, Doug.
Vinson Avatar
Doug Vinson
Date: 4/6/2017 11:30:00 PM
For the reader of free verse - that order must be discovered, or there must be a time (whether all the way through, or at some time within, or at the end) when they really "get" the poem, and the beauty is revealed. Can happen in many ways, this handing-over from writer to reader.
Vinson Avatar
Doug Vinson
Date: 4/6/2017 11:27:00 PM
Great comment, Suzanne. Wise man Chris, too, below. Agreed that we may begin writing without knowing where we are going, and that along the way we find out, i.e. in some unconscious/mystical manner that way was there all along.
Delaney Avatar
Suzanne Delaney
Date: 4/6/2017 6:42:00 AM
For me I find I write mostly free verse but I find, using a form draws different responses from me. In looking for the right words I am distracted and suddenly thoughts are organized by following the form.
Date: 4/6/2017 3:59:00 AM
oh, free verse for me every time! when i write in form i feel as if i'm writing in a straitjacket, constricted...i find it frustrating; for example, if i'm writing in a syllabic form, i think to myself "oh f***, i want to use this word, but the syllable count won't let me!" i wrote free verse right from the start, but that's probably because i read mainly free verse; i only started experimenting with forms when i came here...having said all that, i do like some forms, but they have to have a very modern slant...i can see why some people like writing in form, because it's like painting inside a frame, but i like to daub the colours over the edge of the frame! lol
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Vinson Avatar
Doug Vinson
Date: 4/6/2017 11:19:00 PM
Charlotte, I hope you not only so daub, I hope you slather it on, clear to the other side of existence. :P : )
Date: 4/6/2017 3:09:00 AM
Apparently the thought behind the 'art' version of the quote is that mistakes are easier hidden with oils
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