Category: Poetry

April 2: The “B” Word

On By Suzanne B. LeitnerIn My Poetry, New Things, Poetry, Reading4 Comments

As I explained yesterday, I am going to be taking on a poetic device a day, from The Poet’s Dictionary: A Handbook of Prosody and Poetic Devices by William Packard, in celebration of National Poetry Month. You are invited to play along.

Yesterday, the device was Alexandrine.  Because I wrote one alexandrine (one line), I later posted a poem, because I did also promise a poem every day this month.

Working with today’s device, however, will involve making the effort to draft a complete poem.  Now might be a good time for a Warning!  I am not afraid to post “bad poems.”  Remember – in my world, “bad poems” are known as “drafts.”  I am embarking on an exercise here.  Revisions will be in order, certainly; I am transparently starting at the beginning of the process, and inviting you to start with me.    Have at it!

Today’s device is:

Ballade:  Early French form with twenty-eight lines divided into three octave STANZAS, each stanza having a RHYME scheme of a/b/a/b/b/c/b/c with the final line as a repeated REFRAIN line; the ballade ends with a four-line ENVOI rhymed b/c/b/c with the final line being the refrain line.

[all caps indicate another poetic device that is defined in the book].  What follows is my first draft of an attempt at a ballade.  There are many things wrong with it, but I would prefer to let you find them on your own.  Thanks for reading! Continue reading “April 2: The “B” Word” →

April 1st Poem

On By Suzanne B. LeitnerIn My Poetry, Poetry5 Comments

Appetite
(by Suzanne Baldwin Leitner)

Why do I begrudge
the older woman beside me
in the café
the noise her soup spoon
makes as it scrapes
bowl’s bottom?

Is it because she seems hurried
furtive and afraid
as if she thinks
she is taking up too much
space and
for too long?

The rattle of her ample
metal spoon
on the brittle white
finish of the bowl:
Comfort
and emptiness.

I came here to eat,
not think.

It’s April. I Must Be a Fool.

On By Suzanne B. LeitnerIn New Things, Poetry, Writing and Not Writing1 Comment

I get nervous even typing that word.  Must be a southern thing, since here we learn the Bible practically by osmosis (see Matthew 5:22).  Anyway, it is April, and it is Poetry Month.  And if your response, in your head because you’re too polite to say it aloud, is “That just proves that April is the cruelest month,” just let me remind you, that little ditty is poetry too.  Therefore, every day this month, I am foolishly going to attempt to post a poem a day.  But wait!  There’s more!

Continue reading “It’s April. I Must Be a Fool.” →

A Job Only a Poet Could Manage

On By Suzanne B. LeitnerIn My Poetry, Poetry, ReadingLeave a comment

I have a “Useless Knowledge” gadget on my iGoogle home page, and I just love it.  Knowledge is never useless, no matter how seemingly “impractical.”  I was so happy earlier today when my Useless Knowledge box contained a list of Generic Terms.  Generic Terms, as defined in my Poet’s Dictionary (William Packard, editor), are “collective names for species or types,” like “school of fish.”  I once wrote a poem inspired by one item on that list: a murder of crows.  The interesting part of that story is that the poem is a meandering contemplation, the subject of which is the loss of a child.  I would rather not say what emotional experience I drew upon while crafting the poem, but I will tell you that I have never, thankfully, lost a child.  Why this poem would emerge from my desire to write something about “a murder of crows,” I don’t know. Continue reading “A Job Only a Poet Could Manage” →

“It’s Trying to Be a Sonnet…”

On By Suzanne B. LeitnerIn My Poetry, Poetry, Your Poetry1 Comment

For several years, I have conducted poetry workshops for children in the schools in my area.  Some years I am only invited to do one or two; other years are busier.  Often, I am asked by either teacher or student to explain why I write more free verse poetry than formal poetry.  I suppose the answer is, I don’t know.    As the definition provided above from the Poetry Archive site, as well as the title of this post, indicate, it isn’t necessarily up to me.  From the Poetry Archive:

What free verse claims to be free from is the constraints of regular metre and fixed forms. This makes the poem free to find its own shape according to what the poet – or the poem – wants to say, but still allows him or her to use rhyme, alliteration, rhythms or cadences (etc) to achieve the effects that s/he feels are appropriate.

[emphasis mine] Continue reading ““It’s Trying to Be a Sonnet…”” →