Writing Collaborative Poetry

Isn’t it nice to have a friend to call when things get rough? Is it not good just to vent thoughts and having some kind of validation as to what you are thinking…? Maybe even better to have someone put things into a perspective you never thought of before to form a broad enough conclusion ..? 

This metaphor presents an overwhelming aspect of collaborating poetry with other like minded poets. 

Just as when you are calling on a friend with a conversation to talk about a subject… a collaborative poem draws two expressions together about a subject for one final absolute conclusion!

This happened to two friends in Somerset in 1795. Poets  Samuel Taylor Coleridge  and William Wordsworth got to be great buddies. Samuel even moved closer to William in Grasmere to be able to talk poetry and swap ideas. Now that’s friendship! The culmination of their collaborative book entitled “Lyrical Ballads” started what many thought to be the beginning of the Romantic Era 

Even more than that,.. their collaboration came to involve the talented Robert Southerly, among others. These came to be known as the “Lake Poets”, named for the Lakelands of Northwest England. Their like minded aspirations matched their introspective ideas of love and nature in an almost conversational delivery well worth reading.

The idea of stepping off of a narrow path onto a multi-laned freeway of ideas reduces a one sided direction. It inspires poets to yield to many more opportunities to accelerate into the passing lanes of new perspectives.

Poet  Jen Hofer also adds a great point in on article on collaborations from the Poetry Foundation,  “ … collaborative processes create conflicts, frictions, difficulties, and discomforts that wouldn't exist if I were working alone. Moving through those challenges is as crucial an element of the work as whatever legible "products" the work produces.” 

Conflicts of ideas can often have the most obscure positive effects on the final draft of a collaborative poem.

Surrealist French poets Andre Breton , Paul Eulard , and Rene Charl  wrote a line by line publication over five days in 1930 game referred to as the “Exquisite Courpse ”, a collage of intense words and images. My colleagues and I wrote our own version of the “Exquisite Courpse” in my last year as an editor of our school literary magazine at Western Illinois University. The “game” turned out so prolific, I decided to publish it exactly as it was. An honest poignant collaboration between friends.

Poets are not hermits, as many would seem to imply with the stereotype (though some do prefer to be alone). Poets are people, and people at some time have to communicate. Collaborations are a wonderful way to take an interesting conversation and turn it into art.

I invite you to comment on this article with whatever feelings or experiences you may have had as an artist with collaborations. Thank you for reading!

Matt Elmore

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_poetry

https://sites.udel.edu/britlitwiki/coleridge-and-wordsworth/

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet-books/2014/03/on-collaboration

To Rhyme Or Not To Rhyme

To rhyme or not to rhyme that is the question… to suffer poetic arrows of lines too narrow… ok,… I’ll stop!

Anyone familiar with my work knows that I am an ardent addict of anything that has to do with assonance or internal rhyme. If I could feed bleeds of rhyme intravenously I’d have an English lit drip right here on my desk!

However… Steve Wheeler put it best in his last blog to refine, define, and stretch your skills as a poet by stepping out of your box into that big wide world of what for and try something new. He illustrated a sweet timeline of historic writing styles to draw from. Howeever, this article is not about semantics. I’ll leave that to the experts! This is about the “world of what for”…

Too much rhyming can get rather absurd, obtuse, and downright annoying. Just like Dr Suess or a crazy tongue twister…. not many people enjoy poems about silly Sammy slurping down slushies by the seashore… are flavored ice drinks called slushies outside of the United States?! Just curious…

Anyway, I’ve fell prey to this so many times I’ve made paper airplanes out of my supposed masterpieces just to see how far they would go! Usually, they would nose dive before they even made the open window… they were SO HEAVY with rhymes.

I’ve come to find that rhyming is much like cooking… you tend to pepper your dish to taste, not just douse it on there! Many simple quatrains or octave stanzas are of the ABAB or AABB or ABBA variety, which is conservative enough. 

Yet when you mix those forms with internal rhyming, or setting words that rhyme continuously next to each other… that’s a whole different beast.

It can slap you out a beautiful word salad,, with nothing but limp lettuce. No crunchies in there to provide zest, no veggie messages, nothing nutritious… just a blubbering politician on a same old stump speech bobbling right down the middle of the road. Boringsville. Nothing burger.

                                    —

However… with a proper method, incorporating little clever wordplay and a calculated flow, internal rhymes can be incredible…! Consider these zingers by our very own Steve Wheeler in an exert of his poem entitled “I Poet”…

I wright fiction 

I write suction 

I kick up a ruction 

I cause friction 

with my diction 

it's poetic abduction. 

I create propaganda 

proper scandal and banter

like a candid backhander 

to the casual bystander. 

I'll write ya more slander 

than you'll care to handle 

so just take a gander

at the verses I land ya.

You can't hold a candle 

to the substantial anvil 

of my written write-angle

I'm a pen wielding vandal. 

Steve Wheeler © 21 June, 2023

Clever wordplay, eh?! An inspiration to rhymes everywhere, Steve can really kick out the jams when it comes to internal rhyming, making it enjoyable, smooth, and cognitively assessable all the the same time.

                                     —

On the flip side of this confederate coin, dissonance in poems works as well, making the words work against themselves to create a feeling of disorder and anarchy. This can really  sculpt themes relating to madness, war, confusion or even death. I offer a few lines from one of my own as an example here entitled “Evocative Dissonance”..

innocents bombed without remorse dissonant explosions! 

political analytical meat for a course; collateral damage to the eyes

of buildings once filled with laughter and cheer insidious incredulous explosions!

now desolation mutilated tombs of fear-castigated with impunity 

trespassing outlasting suppression of loss for fumigant transference of misery

pushing on for survival no matter the cost… oh, maleficent malignancy 

missiles like thistles ripping into the air those sequentially random aneurisms 

bemoaning homes in hopes of someone is there creating fractures inequitable 

©️Matthew Elmore 

Ok… so I threw a few of my trademark rhymes in there! I told you,… it’s an addiction!! So this is not a true example of dissonance. However, notice how some words work against each other… “remorse/dissonant explosions” “fractures/inequitable”… nothing fits here … except they compliment each other in a strange way. Funny… there were NO RHYMES in this originally… I had to sprinkle a few bits of assonance and rhymes the piece was so corse. Too corse! Yet that, of course, is just a matter of taste. I prefer a spoonful of sugar with such a bitter subject.

                                    —

Some poems do not use rhymes at all to get a point across. Take this piece of a poem out of my recently published book Constellation Road called “Rumors Of Wars”…

snarling fires burn wicked tounges unclean

such miscommunications lead to world wars

launch enervating embers in unknowing eyes

destitute of delight to negotiate indignation

situated in instability floating on despair 

©️ Matthew Elmore

Nothing about that rhymes. But it works somehow.

 

                                     —

Whether or not rhyming works for you is really just a matter of style. I love it! Rhyming sings to me like music. Yet music is known to have its random crescendos, blurps and bleeps as well. That is what makes this world interesting… because if it were all the same,… how boring would that be? Try it sometime! Vive la difference! 

Please feel free to leave your comments below. I always appreciate hearing from you! Write on poet…

Matt Elmore

Where do you sit?

Poetry writing styles can be a bit like sitting in a classroom. You generally know your place. You usually sit in that place, and only change when you are asked to do so, or circumstances demand a move. Sitting in the same place gives you a unique perspective on the view, but it is only one view. To gain alternative perspective in the room, a move is necessary. Where is this leading? The clue was in the first sentence. 

We become comfortable with our place in a classroom (or a lecture hall, or a social club, or a church service) and frequently sit there. We don't welcome change. And that's analogous to our poetry writing style. Some can be eclectic and move around and switch between styles and themes. Others are comfortable writing from the same perspective time and time again. Both are cool. Poets write what they care about and if they care, they will write with a passion. 

But... here's the twist. Sometimes you can lose your passion, motivation, muse ... whatever you care to call it. Then the blank page begins to taunt you, and no matter what you try to do, that page remains blank, or repeatedly ends up as a screwed up ball in the trash can. Frustration upon frustration. Then it's probably time to change your seat. Adopt another style, take on another theme - try something new. The image above is a timeline depicting the evolution of literature in the western world. It is quite useful because you can attach specific writing styles (and even authors and poets) to each period of time. 

But the best question is... where do you sit in this time line? Are your writing in a modernist style, or one of the other styles? Do you have your feet planted in the dark romantic era, or are you delving into the fallow depths of Renaissance poetry? And are you prepared to venture into unknown territory to try something new? For the sake of creativity.

Steve Wheeler 

Image from this source

Writing Sentimental Poetry

This writing gig is getting personal. But hey, when you’re a poet… what isn’t personal?!

Love assumes many forms. It can be hurtful to healing, vulnerable to impregnable, intimate to stone cold, longing to “get away from me!”… it is the most diverse dichotomy in our emotional repertoire. 

Love love love… it is both the answer to a question and a question to an answer. Like the old adage… can’t live with em, can’t live without em… it presents quite the confusing allure that haunts us all. 

We are not meant to be alone.

This theme provides the very fabric of a poets being… whether professed for nature, a person, a place, or even a thing… I’ve written love poems about ice cream for heavens sake! Yet is also has a dark side, that potent fault that pricks our very souls. Yes, the love to hate. 

Dark poets love Lord Byron… he is always one of my go to poets for dark inspirations with a glimmer of light. His poem “Darkness” illustrates this perversion of all that beautiful and true, yet remains a draw upon us all… take the ending of this magnificent blast…

“…the waves were dead; the tides were in their grave, 

The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before; 

The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air, 

And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need 

Of aid from them—She was the Universe. “

Byron takes cruel manifestations of the human condition … mankind’s passions, selfishness, death, evil intent, war… mixed with elements of nature, and formulated a hope for love defined as the infinite range of texture it weaves.

William Shakespeare was never one to miss a poignant dart no matter how sweet its intention… demonstrated within this excerpt form “Sonnet #40”…

“I do forgive thy robb’ry, gentle thief,

Although thou steal thee all my poverty;

And yet love knows it is a greater grief

To bear love’s wrong than hate’s known injury.

    Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,

    Kill me with spites, yet we must not be foes.”

Master at turning a phrase, the immortal bard knows his damage control! He’s saying we have to talk it out before it destroys us! 

Intricate poet code… this is what we use, isn’t it? I often have to explain what I’m writing about when my writing may throw my woman into fits… saying one thing meaning another. 

Of course there is the drippy, sappy, overtly romantic poetry that is reminiscent of the sunsets, candle light dinners, and sweet professions our hearts desire. Love poems. So many of them. But they all go to the same place… the heart. Let’s look at “A Red Red Rose” by Robert Burns and prepare for the collective “Awwwwwe!!!!”…

O my Luve is like a red, red rose 

   That’s newly sprung in June; 

O my Luve is like the melody 

   That’s sweetly played in tune. 

So fair art thou, my bonnie lass, 

   So deep in luve am I; 

And I will luve thee still, my dear, 

   Till a’ the seas gang dry. 

Yep… works every time!! Who can resist?

Yet there are so many forms… so many loves. It can go so many places that as poets I am not sure we can ever find the shore of where it all ends as to what can be written of this feeling. “In My Heart Leaps Up”, William Wordsworth sets his adoration to existence itself within the ultimate cinemascope of life itself within his beautiful references to awe inspiring aspects of our natural world…

My heart leaps up when I behold 
   A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began; 
So is it now I am a man; 
So be it when I shall grow old, 
   Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

I myself hit upon this vein as I realized it is my mothers birthday today, and in haste scribbled her out a poem addressed within a birthday card I had bought as a just in case affair. I placed it on her favorite chair to be found when she wakes up. Direct and simple, when she read my book, she said she liked the poems that meant what they said and said what they meant. Easy to understand. This was fine by me because I’m not Wordsworth! So I wrote this out before I hastily headed out the door to work this morning…

you are the music to my song

always here and never gone

for in my mind it’s you I see

and in my heart you’ll always be…

Simple, direct, and to the point. No poetic code there… just a simple statement of a tender hearted son to his sweet mother on her 83rd birthday. 

Sentimental poetry remains one of my favorite to write. Its surface simplicity hints at the complex currents that run so deep at the water’s edge. It is there always, as a constant muse in its many shapes… inviting poets of all ages, classes, and colors to dive into the universal beauty and even ugliness of its universal truths.

Matt Elmore