The Outerview Series: Part IX - Crafting Drafts

       So far, we've established that:

I) Poetry is verbatim.
II) Poetry is most often rhythmic.
III) Poetry was subsumed by song in the 20th Century.
IV) Verse is scanned from right to left because lines find their rhythm.
V) Rhymes are crowd-pleasers.
VI) In addition to concision, poetry relies on repetitions of sounds.
VII) Poetry has lost its audience [and readership].
VIII) Audiences and readerships] needed to be created.

      "People used to read beat poets.  Why did they die out?"

       Prose with linebreaks has always been a failed aesthetic--or non-aesthetic--but no one, including the author in most cases--bothered to memorize and either perform or quote them.  In essence, these "poets" published first drafts because they were either too preoccupied/lazy or lacked the skill to craft them.  For example, look at this anaphoric piece:

“PITY THE NATION”
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (After Khalil Gibran) 2007

Pity the nation whose people are sheep
And whose shepherds mislead them

Pity the nation whose leaders are liars
Pity the nation whose people are sheep
And whose shepherds mislead them

Pity the nation that raises not its voice
Except to praise conquerors
And acclaim the bully as hero
And aims to rule the world
By force and by torture

Pity the nation that knows
No other language but its own
And no other culture but its own

Pity the nation whose breath is money
And sleeps the sleep of the too well fed

Pity the nation oh pity the people
who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away

My country, tears of thee
Sweet land of liberty!

       "That has some nice lines."

        Nice sentiments, yes.  So why would we consider it an outline of a poem rather than a finished work?

       "Too long?"

        Essentially, yes.  After the second strophe (i.e. paragraph) it descended from clever to preachy.  Paring away the dull lines is called "killing our darlings".  Let's see if we can turn this into something memorable.

Pity the nation whose people are sheep
And whose shepherds mislead them

        People as sheep is cliché but it could work if we don't connect the last dot.

Pity flocks misled by shepherds.  A sunny
future darkens.  Bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity nation states whose breath is money,
soothed to sleep by lullabies of bare slaves.

      We've arranged the thoughts in a meter, trochaic pentameter:

Pity | flocks mis|led by | shepherds. | Sunny
futures | darken. | Bigots | haunt the | airwaves.
Pity | nation | states whose | breath is | money,
soothed to | sleep by | lulla|bies of | bare slaves.

      It's hardly a masterpiece but it is becoming easy to remember and not much is lost due to the compression.  For the most part, we are simply stitching the killer lines with as little filler as possible.  Note the "b" sounds building in each sentence:  the unstressed "by", the stressed "Bigots" and "breath" with short vowels after them, then the alliteration of "-bies" with "bare" (which introduces the double rhyme of "bare slaves" with "air waves").

     "This seems like a lot of work.  All this attention to detail--"

      It is.

     "So how long does it take to write a poem?"

      Be prepared to spend an eternity with your verse.

NEXT:  Contests and Awards