Poetry Forum

Michael,

I remember my first few attempts and the most important thing is courage and following one's heart. So never stop either of those. However, most important, which many forget today is the heart also has laws, just like the sun or stars or sky. The heart has musicality. The heart is not irrational. Even the most seemingly impulse and irrational feeling, one can find out, there actually lies a reason for this seemingly out of nowhere emotion. All that is just to say that you want to look at form.

If one is painting, or drawing, one of the best things they can do is copy and follow a master. Learn how to go through the same process of discovery, to undergo the same requirements of grace and beauty, where the heaviness of one's hand, the hesitation in one's stroke, all that disappears, and naught remains but the living and free idea.

Think of approaching the poem with quatrains. The best examples are those of Goethe and Heine, in terms of a simple yet grate and wonderful pieces.

Here's Heine

I don’t believe in Heaven,
Whose peace the preacher cites:
I only trust your eyes now,
They’re my heavenly lights.

I don’t believe in God above,
Who gets the preacher’s nod:
I only trust your heart now,
And have no other god.

I don’t believe in Devils,
In hell or hell’s black art:
I only trust your eyes now,
And your devil’s heart.

Here's Goethe:

The Nearness of the Belovèd
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I think of you when the gleam of sunlight
Shines upon the sea;
I think of you when the shimmer of the moon
Is painted on the fountains.

I see you when the dust is rising
From the distant path;
When in the deep of night upon the narrow way
The wanderer trembles.

I hear you when the muffled wave
Is rising there.
In the quiet grove I often go to listen
When all is silent.

I am with you. Be you yet so far away,
You are near me.
The sun declines, soon the stars will shine on me.
O! If only you were there!

In your little poem, while it lacks form, there was an idea of a turn, at the end, which is good. And you see it also with what Goethe and Heine do by tricking you and only right at the end introducing something that transforms the meaning, and basically let's you know there is this higher order that governs the entire poem - things are not what they seem. It's at that point that the mind is challenged.

While one could go on explaining. I think too much literary criticism and discussion can be harmful, because beauty should feel as it nature. Nature, which while it appears comely free, completely untethered is yet governed by universal principles. I would focus on reading great poets, looking at their forms, see how they are doing things, and let that inspire you and help you find your own voice as your skills and instincts all become sharper.

Buy a book of Heinrich Heines poems, you won't regret it.
edited by thechainedmuse on 10/15/2017