Writing poetry in Greece
It's time to practice writing verse
I'll try for better or for worse
But after sitting here for quite some time
And staring at this sheet in front of me,
I see that something's wrong. Iambic beat
Is fine for many other types of poems;
Tetrameter may work for them, and I
Might try it on some other day. But now
Those lines are just too short -- they sound a bit
Like greeting cards that simple people write,
Or e-mail forwards -- not the kind of stuff
That I will put my name to, even if
It's just for practice. Better that I learn
Good habits from the start, so that is why
I changed the meter at Line 3 above.
Pentameter is written with five feet
Per line instead of four, and that allows
More space to form one's thoughts, and spell them out
More naturally. Also along with this,
I'm better using verse that doesn't rhyme.
This isn't laziness; quite the reverse,
The lazy people are the ones who think
That all you have to do is make it rhyme,
And that's a poem. But some of us recall
That what they call English heroic verse --
As used by Milton, Shakespeare, and the rest --
Was actually unrhymed pentameter.
It served them well and helped them to create
Some of the greatest and well-crafted lines
Ever expressed in English. In that case,
I think that I am fully justified
In using that same verse for lesser works.
With those preliminaries gone, I now
Turn to the task at hand, which is to write
Some kind of valid, memorable poem.
But like the music here at this cafe,
Which starts out good at first, and all the songs
Are techno mixes with a decent beat,
Like "Dame mas gasolina" and that one
By somebody that sounds like Ace of Base,
But after you've been sitting there for like
An hour and a half, you realize that
You've heard the whole CD at least three times,
And now you're sick of it. I think that that
Is how it's going with this silly poem.
It started fine, but now it's dragging on;
It's served its purpose, now it's time to end.
I'll try for better or for worse
But after sitting here for quite some time
And staring at this sheet in front of me,
I see that something's wrong. Iambic beat
Is fine for many other types of poems;
Tetrameter may work for them, and I
Might try it on some other day. But now
Those lines are just too short -- they sound a bit
Like greeting cards that simple people write,
Or e-mail forwards -- not the kind of stuff
That I will put my name to, even if
It's just for practice. Better that I learn
Good habits from the start, so that is why
I changed the meter at Line 3 above.
Pentameter is written with five feet
Per line instead of four, and that allows
More space to form one's thoughts, and spell them out
More naturally. Also along with this,
I'm better using verse that doesn't rhyme.
This isn't laziness; quite the reverse,
The lazy people are the ones who think
That all you have to do is make it rhyme,
And that's a poem. But some of us recall
That what they call English heroic verse --
As used by Milton, Shakespeare, and the rest --
Was actually unrhymed pentameter.
It served them well and helped them to create
Some of the greatest and well-crafted lines
Ever expressed in English. In that case,
I think that I am fully justified
In using that same verse for lesser works.
With those preliminaries gone, I now
Turn to the task at hand, which is to write
Some kind of valid, memorable poem.
But like the music here at this cafe,
Which starts out good at first, and all the songs
Are techno mixes with a decent beat,
Like "Dame mas gasolina" and that one
By somebody that sounds like Ace of Base,
But after you've been sitting there for like
An hour and a half, you realize that
You've heard the whole CD at least three times,
And now you're sick of it. I think that that
Is how it's going with this silly poem.
It started fine, but now it's dragging on;
It's served its purpose, now it's time to end.