E S S A Y S
Getting Started With Poetry by Sorcha
Although it is not very common some people like to write fanfic in the form of a poem rather than prose and because of this I have complied this essay with some things to remember about poetry and some nifty techniques you might want to use. I think the lack of fan poetry is down to a lack of confidence in writers and that's sad, especially with how poetic Buffy and Angel's relationship is at times, so hopefully this essay will give you a few pointers.
If you want a pause at the end of a line then remember to finish it with a comma, otherwise a suspensive pause will occur and the vowels of the first word on the next line should be elongated when reading. Of course this would only spoil the pace of your poem if being read by someone who was knowledgeable in the correct way to read poetry, but I bring it up while we're being precise.
Enjambement is a nice technique, which is very simply taking a sentence and splitting it over more than one line. This is used often to emphasis words which are left at the end or placed at the beginning of a line and can isolate words or phrases with differing effects.
Another very important part of poetry is the phonic level of the writing, or how it sounds. Lines or verses with many glottal and plosive sounds are harder to read out loud and give the text a very coarse or precise sound. Whereas sibilance will give a much softer easy to read sound. The phonic level of your poem can set the atmosphere, enhance your message or even completely change the meaning and interpretation of your poem. So be very careful when picking words. Just like a chef would with food, make sure your words bring the right flavour and feeling to the piece.
While talking about that I should probably quickly explain the meanings of glottal, plosive and sibilance. It's quite simple once you know. Each of the following examples should be sounded out like a small child would when reading the alphabet. Letters like "g" and "k" are glottal sounds. Letters such as "b" and "p" are plosives and "shh" is the sound of sibilance, found in words such as "shore" and "sheep". There are other types of sounds created by words, but while writing poetry these three are the ones you're most likely to be confronted with.
Juxtaposition is just as effective in poetry (if not more so) than it is in prose. This is when you place two opposing ideas or images next to each other thereby emphasising each one. This might mean placing an incredibly ugly and deformed man in front of a beautiful church as Norman McCaig does in his poem Assisi, or placing the idea of Angel's immortality next to the horrifically short life span of most Slayers to which Buffy seems to have been destined to.
You should also think about the placement of words, and this goes along with enjambement, which we have already covered. Take for example the following verse from Assisi, Norman McCaig.
"Said Grazie in a voice as sweet / as a child's when she speaks to her mother / or a bird's when it spoke / to St Francis."
The words "mother" and "St Francis" are placed in a similar position as are "child's" and "bird's" this gives a motherly, protective image of St Francis taking to the birds, who are the children. You can, and should, use this technique to your advantage. It takes some thought and most of your readers may not see the effects at first glance, but you want to write poetry that can stand up to analysis and be appreciated on more than one level.
Other factors to remember are the meter of a poem and the rhyme scheme, if you so choose to have one. Starting with the meter, this is the pace and rhythm of your poem. How many syllables are in each line? If you want a consistent meter then your pattern of syllables should be stuck to in each verse, though some choose to add or subtract them in various places during a poem to change the pace, speeding up or slowing down the poem.
There is also Blank Verse, which is written in iambic pentameter. This is when there are ten syllables to a line, but arranged such that there are five stresses only in each line, with a decline between each one. Shakespeare was fond of using this in his work. The meter takes its name from having five (penta) iambs in each line. Blank Verse may or may not rhyme, but no set rhyme scheme is associated with it.
And secondly going onto rhyming schemes, these are the order in which lines of your verses rhyme. Rhyming Couplets where the first line rhymes with the second and the third with the fourth, fifth with sixth etc. are presented as AA BB CC. Where as another common rhyming scheme is AB AB. Some poems contain many rhyming schemes, which granted can be confusing, but in a lot of modern poetry the poet takes more freedom in their work and manipulates the cultural assumptions of certain types of poetry for effect.
There is also the question of what kind of poetry you are writing, a sonnet with fourteen lines, a haiku (five syllables, seven syllables, five syllables), a piece of Blank Verse or even a whole play as Shakespeare has done. Whatever you set out to do, make sure to research your chosen poetry type carefully, read lots of poetry and most importantly have fun and experiment. There is no set formula for writing after all.