Allow me a few words concerning the Workshop before our actual discussion begins on the 14th.
The Elf has said at times that I can be a bit dry and analytical.
Guilty as charged.

The mechanics of poetry has always fascinated me. Vocabulary, grammar, poetic form, meter and rhyme is, in a very real sense, how my poetry gets written. It is a curious joy to me and comes, if not exactly easy, without undue struggle.

The emotional is more difficult for me.

This Workshop will be about both of these aspects of poetry; the ability to use the mechanical structure inherent in good poetry to create an emotional well.
Each participant will be asked to submit the rough draft of a poem. It is important that this draft be the first and only of the poem to be used as the commentary on “where” the poem should go is the crux of our goal. No particular form is required. Whatever suits the poet’s fancy is acceptable, from Shakespearean sonnets to verso libre. I ask only that it have some length that we have more to talk about. Meter, rhyme and more is up to the poet.

Through these conversations we will discuss not only structure, but more esoteric subjects as simile, metaphor, metonym and irony.
In other words… all the working parts of poetry.
The first subject we will broach is what I consider to be indispensible to the writer of any sort and that is proofreading.
We will begin there.

Time to start thinking.
The tools of the poet are nigh infinite.
If one collects them diligently throughout life, they will not be mastered on the death bed.
We must ask ourselves how many of these tools are necessary?

Enough to build a house.

If you were to give me a few dozen two by fours, a hand saw, a hammer and a box of nails, then tell me to build you a lovely home… how well might I succeed?
However, if you give me a line of credit at Home Depot with no limit… I could build you a mansion.
If I knew how to build.
And there is the rub. Having all of the tools does not mean we can build, but if we have no tools then the subject is moot. We will not build.

The poet requires two things as any craftsman does. One, the tools with which to build and two, imagination or to use the term I have expressed already… emotion.

So what is the poet to do?
First of all, begin learning about the technical tools of the poet and never stop adding them. Not so that we may write technically flawless poems, but that we may do what Faulkner said when we compose—
“… when you write, just write. Don’t think. Just write.”
In this way is the emotional served, but if we have no tools… vocabulary, grammar, an understanding of how poetry works… then we will produce naught but confusion. If the tools are ingrained in our psyche we will write and write what we want to have read.
We will manufacture art.

In my first conversation of the fourteenth I will discuss my perspective on proofreading our work. I welcome everyone else’s take on the subject.

In fact I will insist upon it.

This is good for everyone to hear. When I explain this outside of a strict storytelling venue I describe it as a speechwriter does.
Exposition- tell the audience what you are going to talk about.
Complication- talk about it.
Climax- make your most important point or points.
Resolution- tell the audience what you talked about.

Another way to look at it is this.

A good poem starts at a small, tight little point and then expands from there until it is large, expansive.
Then it brings it back to that small, tight little point only to find the small, tight little point is subtly changed.
Every good poem, from the smallest haiku to the largest epopee, needs to be organized loosely or tightly on these lines... if... the logic is to be clear. Remember that when a poem is being read it is not the poet being judged, but the reader. Therefore what is "clear" to one reader will be gibberish to another. We must choose our audience carefully and then construct the poem to be understood by that audience. Not everyone will comprehend the points we make. That is alright, but without a "forward going" organization- no one will understand.

Proofreading is the reading of a galley proof or an electronic copy of a publication to detect and correct production errors of text or art. Proofreaders are expected to be consistently accurate by default because they occupy the last stage of typographic production before publication.
For those unfamiliar with newspaper jargon, a “galley proof” is an early print of a page attached to a large wooden frame. The page has over-large margins for the purpose of writing corrections alongside the page. The printer then incorporates these changes and prints again… hopefully but once.

Let me offer a perspective.

An artist friend of mine paints with oil and work chiefly off of photographs (he has yet to paint me thankfully). Though he is like a proud father (a simile) when they are completed, the man is positively rabid (a personification) about denying this before he is satisfied with the work. He simply will not allow it to be seen by human eyes, until it is precisely what he intended it to be.
A poet is an artist. That one would slave as a Greek on a Roman Galley (simile) to produce literary art and then release it in even a slightly flawed form always boggles my mind (if I knew what a “boggle” was, this might be a metaphor).

As a game to occupy our anxious minds, until the shop begins, I invite everyone to proofread this comment. I have allowed a number of mistakes; some obvious, some objective, some deliberate tricks.
Count them if you dare.
I fully expect someone to find at least one more than I intended.

The first question is: "To proofread or not to proofread". It is a valid question.
Strangely, I think many poets simply do not proofread. Partly because it never occurs to them and partly because they believe they do, but don't. The latter meaning they believe they actually look at the poem, but do so in such a cursory manner that it serves no purpose.
For example, many will think that proofread means to look for punctuation and spelling flaws. In my comment above I played a trick. "... work(s) chiefly off of photographs..." draws one to the obvious flaw with the missing letter, but then there is the tendency to miss a grammatical flaw. "Of" is unnecessary in the sentence. A bit redundant actually.

Proofreading means looking for everything.

I agree with Jess that the poem should not be analyzed first. The emotional impact of a piece is the priority and one can only read a poem the very first time... once.

Do so. Then begin to analyze.

If a poem is numbered it makes pointing out suggestions easier, but having numbered a large piece manually (there is no software to do it in a poetic format) I know how time consuming it is. The larger the poem the more necessary it becomes. If a poem is separated into stanza that will help.

Of all the tools available for a poet to use, this could rightly be called the foundation.
There are many reasons to increase one’s vocabulary, but in my mind the greatest is avoiding repetition. Reiteration, of course, is also a tool that can be used to effect, but simply using the same words in close proximity to one another cripples a poem.

In the English language we have a problem not experienced in languages descending from the ancients; such as Hebrew or Modern Greek. English, as tongues go, is quite young.
The language referred to as Old English dates back only to the 5th century becoming Middle English in and around the late 12th. Early Modern English morphed into our modern language in the late 17th century, so what we use today could be said to be but three hundred years old. No wonder we borrow so many words from other dialects.

The threat of repetition is as valid in short poetry as long. In short poems repeated words are obvious due their closeness and in a long poem so many words are necessary it becomes impossible not to repeat ourselves endlessly.

Been there, repeated that.

Thus it behooves us to utilize every word we can comprehend.
Now a disclaimer. I freely use rare, uncommon, archaic and obsolete terminology in my poetry. I love my vocabulary and play with it regularly. However, there is an abundance of common expressions to aid in verbosity.
So how do we increase said vocabulary?

First of all- read voraciously. Not only do we expose ourselves to new terms, but reading “reminds” us of words we are not using. I’m a little obsessive, but I never read without my desk dictionary. There are few things that bother me more than coming across a word I have never seen and not being able to ascertain its meaning.
It also vindicates our use of certain words. An example is “amain”. It means an excessively violent reaction; berserker and when I first came across it I considered it a little over the top. Then I read it in Time magazine and heard Josh Elliot use it on Good Morning America. Obviously “someone” thinks of it as common terminology.

Next, use a thesaurus. It not only helps us to replace a word with another, but also exposes us to massive lists of other words. Usually I am aware of about ninety percent of the words in an entry, but the other ten percent are new words added to my vocabulary.

In your comments to the workshop submissions try to help the poet eliminate that repetition that is not deliberate (some of it will be) and offer your thoughts here on what vocabulary is to you and your poetry.
In my last workshop we talked about the difference between “rhythm” and “meter”.

Rhythm is the final product. It is how the poem “flows” for the inner ear. Meter is how we describe this flow.
All poems have rhythm whether one likes it or not. It can be pleasant to the ear and allow the poem to be easily read or it can be inconsistent causing us to stumble through the piece.
In a strict form such as a sonnet, we are given a very particular meter to use, but even in verso libre if there is an inconsistent “flow” the poem will be an uncomfortable read.

Consistent meter IS poetry. Please note I said “consistent” and not “particular”. It matters not what meter we use so long as it is little varied throughout giving the reader the opportunity to relax in his/her perusal.
However, meter is not the only aspect of “structure”. A poet is in his/her way a painter and the appearance of the poem on the page is vitally important. This is often described as the placement of line breaks, but it comes down to “what does the poem physically look like”.

A poem that is slap dash on the page is not inviting to the reader.

In our ongoing revisions let us look not only to the metric construction of the poem (consistency is the by word), but also the physical appearance of the poem. Does it look like a poem or simply prose with an over use of the enter key?
Let us “invite” our reader to read.

Rhyme:
Not every poet uses rhyme and in fact the style of rhyme commonly used today did not enter into poetic tradition until around the 15th century. However, rhyme has been a part of poetry always and likely preceded the verse. Like sounding words were easier for Paleolithic man to remember and thus imperatives such as seasons and locations were not forgotten.

Rhyme is an echo of a sound, sometimes simply the vowel or consonant, sometimes a combination of the two. Strictly speaking a rhyme usually involves a constant and a variable. In authentic /perfect rhyme a vowel or vowel consonant sound (the constant) is preceded by an unlike consonant sound (the variable). An exception to this is rime riche in which the words are identical in sound, but different in spelling and meaning.
A rhyme can be monosyllabic, also known as rime suffisante (go/slow), double syllabic (bubble/trouble) or triple (gunnery/nunnery). They can be placed at the beginning of a verse (initial rhyme), the end (end rhyme) and in the middle (internal rhyme).

Assonance is the repetitive use of a specific vowel sound in a verse. Consonance is the use of like consonant sounds. They are most commonly used in words that hold the stress in a verse, but this is not in stone.

Which brings me to my point. Rhyme is a tool that used carefully can gently hide a sound from the reader allowing it to slip by and around until the poet is ready to drop it like a sledge hammer. The closer two like sounds are to one another, the more pronounced is the “echo”. The farther apart, the more subtle. Sometimes the poet desires to lay into the reader with a strong sound and uses end rhymes in couplets. To quiet this sound without eliminating it the poet rhymes in alternating verses.
“… and out I call before I fall.” This is a thrown brick.

“In a solitude of the sea
deep from human vanity.” (Hardy)

This is somewhat hidden in a multi syllabic word that carries the rhyme.
There is more to rhyme than I will try to cover in one discussion. After other topics I will return to this. I would like everyone to start thinking of rhyme as percussion or bass in your “song” and ask yourselves if you want a strong sound that drives the reader’s emotions or a more subtle method of “tickling” them into the feeling.
Both are desirable and depend exclusively on the nature of the poem at hand.

Internal Logic:
It’s one of those buttons we can click at the bottom of a poem submission, but what does it mean?
Clarity.
It is asking whether the poem makes sense or not.

“`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.”

This is nonsense poetry, but if one knows Carroll he knows there is logic even in this.
Does this mean that all of our poetry must make perfect sense at all times? Of course not. It’s your poetry, you can write anything you care to.
But beware… though not all readers will understand all poetry (there is something to be said for complexity and subtlety), the less a poet’s poesy is understood the less it is read.

Consider this…
“Logic can be described as a way of thinking about thinking.” (Guttenplan)

The poet, if he/she wishes to reach their selected audience, must “think” as the reader does. Read your poem as though you had no background on the subject whatsoever and determine if your language is simply mysteriously subtle or blatantly obtuse. The most beautiful language can still mean nothing. Politicians do it all the time.
Go back and re-read your poem from this perspective and decide if it is easy, moderate or difficult to understand. If it is difficult, you limit yourselves dynamically to those who will read you.
More importantly, not this poem only.

I recently read John Dryden. Excellent poet, but so difficult to grasp I will not read him again. He doesn’t mind.
He’s dead.

Imagery:
We have now discussed several aids that help us in fine tuning our poem, but what are some of the tools at our disposal for the actual write?
Imagery, the process by which we paint a literary picture, may have many parts. I would like to describe five of the chief.

Simile is used to denote a specific relationship between two disparate things. Most often using the words “like” and “as”, simile compares two unconnected things to place the understanding of one unto the other such as- “Quido is as strong as a bull” or “the wind was like a hurricane”.
Grammatically the word “as” is used to indicate an exact likeness in the comparison whereas “like” is more general.

E.g. Quido really IS as strong as a bull, but while the wind is fast, it's not truly a hurricane.

A metaphor is an implied equation between two objects- “A young man is but a sapling.
The difference is subtle. Similes and metaphors are sometimes seen as interchangeable. However, similes acknowledge the imperfections and limitations of the comparative relationship to a greater extent than metaphors. One way of looking at them is to see a simile as a direct comparison whereas a metaphor is indirect and more broad in its contrast.
One of the most well known metaphors in literature is by Shakespeare-

“All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;”
William Shakespeare, As You Like It.

The Metonym substitutes one word with another associated word. In the instruction “all hands on deck” the word “hands” refers to the people attached to them.
When the White House dispenses a press release it is actually the President from whom the information comes, though Mr. Obama’s name is changed to “the White House”.
Personification (often referred to as anthropomorphism) attributes human characteristics to an animal or inanimate object.

Irony is when the actual meaning is the exact opposite of the literal meaning, often leading to surprising results.

E.g.
Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.
Coleridge, Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Instead of asking you to change your poem to incorporate these tools, I would like everyone to revisit the poems in the workshop and point out where these tools have been used as well as how they might be enhanced to improve the poem.
These discussions can be held on the poets own poem or in the general conversation thread.
Metaphors, simile, metonymy and irony are all rhetorical devices designed to describe and thereby persuade the reader to view the subject with a particular perspective.

Allegory and hyperbole are also rhetorical devices at our disposal.
Allegory is a device by which characters, places or things represent ideas or personalities in a past or present societal reality.

E.g. King Arthur surely did not truly exist, but is likely a compilation of many men who led the Celts in their heroic stand against the Saxon hordes in the fourth century. Therefore Arthurian legend is allegorical.
Although a very useful tool for the poet it does occasionally pose some risk.

Some decades ago a political scientist wrote a treatise explaining the allegory in A. A. Milne’s “Winnie the Pooh”. His arguments were compelling. He argued that the stories were satirizing the present state of British politics (ala Gulliver’s Travels). At the end of the book, however, he essentially said- “just kidding”. His point was to show that sometimes a tale is just a tale.

Hyperbole is used extensively in poetry. It is an exaggeration to aid in making a point.

E.g. “The day is hot as Hell.” Meaning that the day is rather warm, but likely not as hot as Hell.
Which of us have used hyperbole or allegory in a workshop poem? “Chinese Song” seems hyperbolic and allegorical as Weirdelf’s poem appears to be allegorical. Look in on the other poems and see if they are perhaps allegorical or hyperbolic and come here to tell me what you found.

Proofreading revisited.
Here is something everyone will think picky.
I do not.

Our first subject (there are many to go) was proofreading. The poems in this workshop have been wonderfully void of flaws of this nature.
I am pleased and impressed, but what about the comments?

We are not only poets... we are writers. Why would a writer allow anything he/she writes to be published without it being precisely what they want to be read.

Why would we not proofread our comments to the same level as everything we write? Why would we not "write" our comments?
We are artists. If we exert energy producing an oil of quality, we should exert this same energy in our pencils.
Everything, virtually everything, we write is part of us.

Proofread all that you write.

Everything.

Every word has worth.

Punctuation.
Here are my thoughts.
“In written English, punctuation is vital to disambiguate the meaning of sentences. For example, "woman, without her man, is nothing" (emphasizing the importance of men) and "woman: without her, man is nothing" (emphasizing the importance of women) have greatly different meanings, as do "eats shoots and leaves" (to mean "consumes plant growths") and "eats, shoots and leaves" (to mean "eats firstly, fires a weapon secondly, and leaves the scene thirdly").
Larry Trask.

This is a touchy subject for many poets. There is a popular style in which only the words are relied upon to deliver the message. This is known as Scriptura Continua. It was the nature of the written word in Ancient Greece and continued in various changing forms through the Roman Empire to Medieval Europe.
However, punctuation began in Egypt and was used by Euripides in his plays to indicate emotional changes by the actors.

My perspective is this:
When someone reads our poem we have a distinct disadvantage. We are not there. We cannot lead our audience through the work. We are helpless with no tools to dictate how the poem is read save one.
Punctuation.
The poet actually has a favoring circumstance over the painter or the sculptor. It is a benefit shared by only the composer of music.
The actor or musician is physically present when presenting their art. The painter can only produce the art and leave it to his/her audience to determine how it should be viewed.
However, the composer has musical notation that describes in great detail precisely how the music should be played or sung.

The writer shares this distinction.

Through punctuation the poet may dictate how the poem is read. Without it, he/she is at the reader’s mercy. Placing the words precisely in a very specific order may have a mitigating effect on this trauma, but it is woefully limited as the above examples demonstrate.

How many of the poems in the workshop have used punctuation judiciously and how many, absent punctuation, have succeeded in manipulating the reader effectively?
What are your thoughts on punctuation?

Stanza:
Stanza need not be uniform in size. Four lines, five lines or two, we can comfortably break anywhere we want. Stan's thoughts are good. Consider the stanza as containing a complete thought and move to the next. Some poets use enjambment (carrying a thought from one line into the next unbroken) between stanza, but I think it causes the poem to be confusing. We tend to stop for a moment at the end of a stanza, but if the thought goes on it can trip us up.

Another thing to help you practice is to use a specific poetic form. For example, do the simplest possible- write a quatrain (four lines of poetry... remember a single line of poetry is called a verse) that comes to the end of a thought at the end of line four, then write another one on the same subject, but coming from a slightly different perspective.

Then do it again.

Phonaesthetics:
It’s time to up the ante. This is the Olympic Pool after all.
Most of the poems submitted are considered polished drafts at this point and I would agree. I would like to take the opportunity now, with these poems before us, to explore and recognize aspects of our poetry not often considered.

The first is Phonaesthetics.

Phonaesthetics is the art of producing sounds that are pleasant to the ear. Poetry is a phonaesthetic artform. Metric organization, rhyme, alliteration and other techniques allow the poet to produce language that is lovely to be heard.

This is known as Euphony.

At the same time the poet may employ Cacophony which are sounds deliberately designed to be harsh and unpleasant. For instance, the poet describing gun fire in battle may use words such as “crack” or “bang”. These are cacophonous not only because they attempt to depict unpleasant sounds, but rather they are cacophonous because they actually “sound” harsh.
Euphony is generally produced through the use of vowel sounds over consonants. The longer the vowel sounds the more pleasant to the ear.
More on that in a moment.

“Moon” is considered euphonic compared to “tune” which is slightly less so due the sharp sound of the “t”.
A word that utilizes consonants may be considered cacophonous depending on the number and “brilliance” of the consonants. “Cacophony” itself is somewhat harsh.
When addressing this subject many people will choose as beautiful words that have a beautiful connotation. “Sky” is a slightly harsh word, but many will call it lovely because of what it represents- possibly a lovely, blue sky.

Phonaesthetics is concerned ultimately with the “sound” the word makes.
“Mellifluous” has a soft, rolling sound and is generally considered euphonic.
Oddly enough writers of the past several decades (some very well respected) have determined that “cellar door” is the loveliest phrase in the English language.

Go figure.

Another way of creating a euphonic sound is through the use of long and short vowels. Not their pronunciation, but the fact that some vowels actually take longer to pronounce than others. “Door” will create a “longer” sound that say, “skip”. The use of long and short vowels rather than accented syllables constituted the meter of poetry in Ancient Greece.

As an example I dare to present a stanza I have attempted to produce “euphonically”.
It is in catalectic anapestic tetrameter.
“Would that I knew of a moment sublime.
Would that I heard once a mockingbird’s rhyme.
But there is naught that’s divine I recall.
I know of only the proof of my fall.”

Determine if your poem is meant to be “melodious” or “brittle” and look to the very sounds you are creating. In this way we can manipulate what our audience “hears”.
I invite you to read my recent blog that quotes J.R.R. Tolkien on the subject.

Ambiguity:
Ambiguity (Latin, “driving both ways”) is an image, phrase, word or idea with an unclear or ambivalent meaning. It will signify more than one thing.
A pun or a double entendre is ambiguous.
For example, the word “light” could mean it is brightly lit inside, a lamp itself or it could mean that something is not heavy.

To quote William Epsom, “The machinations of ambiguity are among the very roots of poetry.”

Ambiguity causes poetry to become richer with meaning as if the very verses were “branching out” taking multiple roads that the reader must consider simultaneously.
The downside of ambiguous language is that when used haphazardly it creates confusion.
As with any of the tools of poetry it must be applied with conscious care.

“Ambiguity that muddles is bad. Ambiguity that magnifies is good.” (John Drury)
Where have we used ambiguous language in the workshop poems?

We will be closing this workshop shortly, but before we do I would like to discuss… what we have discussed.
I believe this is known as “rehash”.
I have always felt that anytime I worked with a teacher if I could walk away with one new thing then the time was well spent.

If you walk off with but one thing… let it be the “proofread”. If you will take the time and effort necessary to produce the sort of art being made here, then please make it intentional.

One of my teachers once told me that “every word has worth”.

Let it be so with your poetry, your comments, your emails. You are writers. Let nothing written by you be merely thrown to the “page”, but let it be a true representation of who and what you are as a poet.
Next, let us continually increase our vocabularies. Words are our lumber. We cannot build without a preponderance of it. We require nails and glue (structure, rhetoric and rhyme), but without lumber we simply stand about the work site with power tools and wait.

Personally, I don’t want to build birdhouses.

The tools of the poet, as any artist, are quite literally infinite. If you spent the rest of your days searching them out you would find many, but by no means all.

Collect them as you go.

Meter and rhyme must be first. Without meter a poet produces a stumbling language. This is true in prose as well, but to the poet, who can do without rhyme, a lack of meter is a cancer.
Metaphors, simile, metonymy, irony, allegory, hyperbole, imagery and ambiguity are the power tools I spoke of. An old boss of mine never stopped saying that “without the right tool, you cannot do the job.” I find it true in every aspect of my life each day. There are so many tools left to discuss we would need a plethora of workshops to scratch the surface.

Collect them as you go.

Phonaesthetics is simply the art of listening to our own language and determining if it accomplishes what we want it to. If the poem is violent, is the language also? If we write the love song, is it ugly? Does it “sound” harsh or gentle?

And perhaps most important is that little box at the bottom of our submissions- “internal logic”. If the poem makes no sense to anyone but the poet… who will read the poet’s next poem? Write to your audience but take care that the audience knows what you write.
If anyone has questions about what we discussed in this workshop or anything else concerning poetry, the NeoPoet Mentor Program is prepared to offer insight from a dozen different perspectives. Do not hesitate to contact me.
I am at your disposal if you may put me to use.