[Max Goodman]

If an adult with reasonable communication skills asked for help learning to write formal poetry, how might you help him get started? Are there particular poems or types of poems it would be most helpful for a beginner to read? Writing exercises?

I'll have an hour with him on Saturday and then another hour a week later.

What I find online is geared toward children.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

[Roger Slater]

If it's something that is well presented for children, there's no real reason not to use it. But I might ask him to read the introduction to Tim Steele and then read some poems with him where you tap out the beats together. If he has a good ear, that part should go quickly. Give him some terminology to work with, but then as far as the creative process is concerned, I would share your own personal insights and experience with him since that's the most valuable thing you have to offer.

[Douglas G. Brown]

Curses ... double posted. See below

[Douglas G. Brown]

If your local library or bookstore has William Baer's book "Writing Metrical Poetry" , fix your student up with a copy to read between the first and second week. It's a trade paperback, published by Writer's Digest Books, and should still be in print.

I'm on my 3rd or 4th annual re-reading of it right now. There are other good books on the subject (John Whitworth has one), but this is a good start.

[Max Goodman]

Thanks, Bob and Douglas. These suggestions are very helpful and I'll use some of them at the next session. Other suggestions are still welcome.

And if anyone has ideas about writing exercises for beginners, I'd welcome those, too. I'm expected to have the student(s) write while we're together.

[A little embarrassed about asking for so much help, I'll explain: I volunteered to run a 3-meeting writing workshop. Poetry was not meant to be any part of it. I was told to expect up to 30 students. Instead, only one student showed up and, without knowing that I had written poems, said he wanted to learn to write formal poetry. (He didn't use that term, but when he brought up poetry, I asked him what sort he wanted to write.)]

[Matt Q]

Hi Max

I think Stephen Fry's book "An Ode Less Travelled" is the best book out there for teaching oneself. Very clear, simple and straightforward. Humorous too. It's what I used to learn to write in metre, and I'd tried and struggled with other books first. So if you had to give him something to read, I'd go with that.

For me, in the beginning, the hardest part was learning to hear (or feel the pressure of) the stresses in words as I spoke them, whereas it was quite easy to grasp the logic of the pattern of alternating stresses. It also took me a while to realise I could physically feel the pressure of the stress as I spoke it rather than just try to hear it. I think that maybe hearing/feeling the stresses may be something easier to do learn with someone else's guidance rather than on one's own.

One trick I read of and found useful to begin with was to try strongly exaggerating (putting massive stress on, shouting even) each syllable of a word in turn while leaving the others unstressed. Only one permutation will sound right; the wrong ones sound distorted.

On another forum I'm on there's a long running game for people learning IP in which one person sets a question in "vanilla" IP, no substitutions. The next person answers and offers a question of their own. Extra kudos if you can make the answer rhyme with the question. Actually, you're allowed substitutions, but they have to be specified, so as to be clear they're not mistakes. But I reckon it's worth getting proficient at du-DUM du-DUM du-DUM du-DUM du-DUM before trying for anything fancy.

Of possible interest as homework: For Better For Verse is "An interactive learning tool that can help you understand what makes metered poetry in English tick", from the University of Virginia.

They have a collection of well over 50 classic poems (I didn't count them) including Shakespeare, Pope, Rossetti, Frost, Wilfred Owen, Keats. You mark up the stressed and stressed syllables by clicking above the words and/or divide the line into feet by clicking between the words. At the end of each line is a button to check the accuracy of your scansion, which means you only have to do it a line at a time. Looks like a great resource for those wanting to learn/practice.

I'll be interested to hear how it goes. What works, and so on.

best,

Matt

[Bill Carpenter]

John Whitworth's Writing Poetry and John Hollander's Rhyme's Reason are delightful books, good for your own enjoyment or for teaching.

[Douglas G. Brown]

Max,

Hope that a few more students drift into your classroom.

I forgot to mention the Stephen Fry book, which is indeed a lot of fun.

In 2011-12, I took a creative writing course at the Waldo County Adult Ed. The instructor was a well travelled journalist, who had done a few print-on-demand novellas, and was a first class proofreader.

He specified at the onset of the class that he could not help the students with poetry. But, as I had a few pieces of inspired metrical doggerel on my shelf, I would turn one in each week along with the assigned prose exercise.

The good thing was the teacher had been a PR man at one of the major Las Vegas hotel-casinos, and had a magnificent speaking voice of a carnival barker crossed with that of a fire and brimstone revivalist.

He opened each class with a stirring rendition of one of my verses.

The other students, dreary advocates of the "good poetry doesn't rhyme" school (let alone not knowing what "scansion" meant) were rolling in the aisles, and got a fresh respect for the craft of meter. It was far more due to the speaking skills of the teacher than the quality of my verses.

[Max Goodman]

Thanks for all the suggestions!

[Michael Cantor]

One more! I've always found Tim Steele charming personally, but his book and general approach - particularly for beginners - overly pedantic. I'd recommend Mary Oliver's A Poetry Handbook - a book that I don't think gets nearly enough attention - as a down-to-earth introduction to rhyme and meter and basics.