Online Class: Poetry Writing 101

Great poetry is not the ability to string together flowery phrases, or to say something so nonsensical that it sounds poetic and intelligent only to the ignorant. Great poetry can be understood by anyone who reads it. And writing great poetry means having the ability to write about the ordinary in a way that's never been stated before. Poetry is a beautiful art, and it's an art that you're going to learn about in-depth throughout every lesson in this course.  

You will learn: 

• The terminology, form, and devices used in poetry.
• To recognize and understand the terminology, forms, and devices in great and classical poetry. You'll study poems by Frost and Dickinson, to name a few. 
• Why the terms, forms, and devices are critical aspects of great poetry.  
• How to apply these things to your own poetry.  

You will be taught these things in each of the lessons, then be asked to demonstrate what you've learned through various assignments. It is important that you complete each assignment given in this course, not just to achieve a passing grade, but to also take away the in-depth comprehension of poetry so you can begin to effortlessly apply it to your own work.  

You will be asked to: 

• Complete lesson assignment exercises. Lesson exercises are placed at the end of each lesson to test your comprehension of the material covered by asking you questions. You need to complete the lesson exercises right away before advancing.  
• Complete lesson reviews quizzes. Lesson reviews are located at the end of each lesson, and cover terminology and definitions of the material covered. These should be completed at the end of each lesson before advancing.
• Write poetry to include in your chapbook. There will be places in this course where you will be asked write your own poem by applying devices or techniques you've just learned, then placing them in your chapbook template. All poems that you write for this are required to be no longer than 50 lines. It is hard to write a great long poem, and it is important that you learn to write great, shorter poems first. Poetry assignments appear in boxes. These poems will not be submitted to your instructor. They are just for your practice.
• Write essays. There is an essay assignment at the end of each lesson. These essays must be completed because they challenge you to think about what you've learned and appreciate why it's important to poetry. Essays must be no longer than 1500 words.  

Poetry is an art form that is older than literature, itself, and dates back to ancient times. It is used as a form of communication, a way to tell a story, and a way to express emotion. Throughout this course, you're going to learn how poetry is used to achieve all of these things by studying its form, devices, and by reading the poems of some of the greatest poets of all time. You'll learn to recognize the elements of poetry, which will help you to understand and write it. 

However, before we delve into this course, it's important to start out by discussing what poetry is not. There's a common misconception, especially since the boom of the Internet, that poetry is a form of self expression that is void of any rules or form. While it's true that a poem can be a very beautiful means of expression, it is not true that there aren't any forms or rules to it. There are devices and techniques that set poetry apart from other forms of literature, and it's applying those things to your own writing that will determine how great a poet you are.  

But the truth is, the original meaning and use for poetry had nothing to do with emotion. Poetry dates back to prehistoric times and out-dates literacy itself. The oldest surviving poem, The Epic of Gilgamesh, was written in 3000 BC on clay tablets.  

When it originated, poetry was used as a form of record keeping. Ancient societies wrote poems to record cultural events, laws, and to tell stories (epic poetry). The rhythm, beat, and rhyme of poetry made things easy to memorize and aided in accurate oral transmission. 

You can write: The girl went to the store

With lightning at her heels. 

But you couldn't write: The girl went to the store

The boy went to the dentist. 

In the first example, the words in the two lines are closely related because they both talk about the girl. It is a correct use of enjambment. The second example features two lines that are unrelated. Using an enjambment here would be incorrect. Instead, you'd need some form of punctuation.  

Unlike text, where long passages are broken up into paragraphs, poetry uses stanzas. A stanza is equal to a verse. It can be defined as a group of lines whose pattern repeats throughout the poem. Think of a stanza as a "paragraph within a poem"-- each stanza is divided by a space.