Ninth-Annual College of Engineering E-Week Poetry Writing Forum

 

 

Rules

 

1.     Any student, faculty, or staff member of the College of Engineering may submit up to 5 separate poems to the Sixth-Annual College of Engineering E-Week Poetry Contest.

2.     All submissions need to be received by 5:00 p.m. Monday, April 20, 2009.

3.   Submit entries electronically to poetryforum@egr.msu.edu

4.     Poems will be judged for merit by members of the College of Engineering Faculty and Staff.

5.     Awards for First, Second, and Third prize will be given in each category. Honorable mentions will also be presented.

6.     Winning poems will be displayed appropriately in the Engineering Building.

7.     There will be no requirement to read one’s own poetry.

8.     No specific theme is required, BUT there will be two categories:

·       Engineering themes

·       All other themes

9.     No specific type of poetry is required.

10. Go to www.egr.msu.edu/~gunn for info

 

Suggestions that follow are simply included as a help for the writer.

 

Writing Poetry

 

  • Narrow your focus: Grandiose themes like 'love' and 'injustice' need to be pared down to manageable size. What sort of love, what kind of injustice?

 

  • Write around your theme: Is your poem about love? Then don't use the word 'love' in your poem! (What a bland word it has become, after all . . .) Instead, describe the precise feeling, build a metaphor, write around the idea of love to get through to the core of what you're trying to evoke.

 

  • Express ideas, not emotions: Poetry is more than a venting of feelings (that's what a diary is for!).

 

  • Put some intellectual distance between yourself and the subject matter of your poetry.

 

  • Ditch the Rhymes: Don't rhyme for the sake of rhyming. New poets tend to think they can get away with less-than-perfect rhymes, and/or rhymes divorced from meter. Not so! Stick to free verse unless you're prepared to work very hard at mastering formal poetry.

 

·       Edit your poems: Poetry too must undergo many revisions in order to shine. Don't be afraid of scrapping whole verses, or cutting everything down to a few good lines and rebuilding -- this is a necessary part of the process of producing great poetry.

 

 

Here are a few suggestions that may give you some help. PLEASE DO NOT STAY WITH ONLY THESE SUGGESTIONS!!!!! Branch out into whatever direction you would like. You are an engineer. You are invincible!!!!

 

HAIKU

 

A Haiku is a short poem with an oriental metric that appeared in the XVI century and became very popular, mainly in Japan. It has been disseminated all around the world during this century. It has an old and long history that reminds the reader of the spiritualist philosophy and the Taoist symbolism of the oriental mystics and Zen-Buddhist masters who express much of their thoughts in the form of myths, symbols, paradoxes, and poetic images like the Haiku. It is done to transcend the limitations imposed by the usual language and the linear/scientific thinking that treat the nature and the human being as a machine. It is aáá contemplative poetry that values nature, color, season, contrasts, and surprises.

 

Usually it has 3 lines and 17 syllables distributed in 5, 7 and 5. It must register or indicate a moment, sensation, impression, or drama of a specific fact of nature. It is almost like a photo of some specific moment of nature.á More than inspiration, it needs meditation, effort, and perception to compose a real scene.

 

3 lines

1. 5 syllables Heat, transferring slow

2. 7 syllables the gentle reminder

3. 5 syllables MankindÆs brush with fire.

 

Old pond...

a frog leaps in

water's sound."

Matsuo Basho.

 

http://www.lsi.usp.br/usp/rod/poet/haicreate.html

 

 

 

 

LIMERICKS

The Elements Of Limericks

 

There are five lines.

Note: Lines 3 and 4 are often printed on the same physical line.

 

Rhyming scheme (a a b b a):

Lines 1, 2, and 5 rhyme

Lines 3 and 4 rhyme.

 

Number of syllables:

Some of the examples in textbooks vary, but the number of syllables usually follows this pattern:

Line 1- 8 syllables.

Line 2 - 8 syllables.

Line 3 - 5 syllables.

                        Line 4 - 5 syllables.

                        Line 5 - 8 syllables.

 

Rhythm:

            Lines 1, 2, and 5 contain 3 accented syllables.

Lines 3 and 4 contain 2 accented syllables.

 

Meter:

There is no required metrical scheme, but each line usually has a masculine ending ù that is that each phrase is always stressed, or emphasized, on the last syllable.

 

Humor:

Limericks thrive on the lack of harmonious agreement between parts. They contain a broad humor that most people appreciate.

 

 

There was an old man from Peru

Who dreamt he was eating his shoe.

            He awoke in the night

            In a terrible fright,

And found it was perfectly true!

 

 

BLANK VERSE

Blank verse is an unrhymed poem written using a set metrical pattern.

 

 

Here's How:

 

1.The first thing to note is that rhyme is not used and this poem is built on constant rhythm.

2.Compose a ten syllable line in which the second, fourth, sixth, eighth and tenth syllables bear the accents or stresses.

3.Continue this pattern until the poem is done.

 

Tips:

 

1.Iambic pentameter has five beats to a line, which consists of ten syllables each, with every second syllable being stressed.

2.Shakespeare, Milton and Marlowe used blank verse extensively.

3.The term blank verse has been extended to include almost any metrical,

unrhymed poem.

 

 

 

FREE VERSE

 

Poetry that is based on the irregular rhythmic CADENCE or the recurrence, with variations, of phrases, images, and syntactical patterns rather than the conventional use of METER. RHYME may or may not be present in free verse, but when it is, it is

used with great freedom. In conventional VERSE the unit is the FOOT, or the line; in free verse the units are larger, sometimes being paragraphs or strophes. If the free verse unit is the line, as it is in Whitman, the line is determined by qualities of RHYTHM and thought rather than FEET or syllabic count.

 

Such use of CADENCE as a basis for POETRY is very old. The poetry of the Bible, particularly in the King James Version, which attempts to approximate the Hebrew CADENCES, rests on CADENCE and PARALLELISM. The Psalms and The

Song of Solomon are noted examples of free verse. Milton sometimes substituted rhythmically constructed VERSE paragraphs for metrically regular lines, notably in the CHORUSES of Samson Agonistes, as this example shows:

But patience is more oft the exercise

            Of Saints, the trial of their fortitude,

            Making them each his own Deliver,

            And Victor over all

            That tyranny or fortune can inflict.

 

Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass was a major experiment in cadenced rather than metrical VERSIFICATION. The following

lines are typical:

 

All truths wait in all things

They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it,

They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon.

 

Matthew Arnold sometimes used free verse, notably in "Dover Beach." But it was the French poets of the late nineteenth century --Rimbaud, Laforgue, Viele-Griffln, and others--who, in their revolt against the tyranny of strict French VERSIFICATION, established the Vers libre movement, from which the name free verse comes.

 

In the twentieth century free verse has had widespread usage by most poets, of whom Rilke, St.-John Perse, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Carl Sandburg, and William Carlos Williams are representative. Such a list indicates the great variety of subject matter,

effect and TONE that is possible in free verse, and shows that it is much less a rebellion against traditional English METRICS than a modification and extension of the resources of our language.