poetry form week 8: free verse (January 14-January 27)

Free Verse

Definition of Free Verse How do you define Free Verse? What is the definition of Free Verse? The definition of Free Verse is as follows:   Definition of Free Verse Free Verse is a form of Poetry composed of either rhymed or unrhymed lines that have no set fixed metrical pattern. The early 20th-century poets were the first to write what they called "free verse" which allowed them to break from the formula and rigidity of traditional poetry. The poetry of Walt Whitman provides many illustrations of Free Verse including his poem "Song of Myself".

Example of Free Verse There are many examples of different types of poetry. An example of Free Verse can be found in the poetic work of Walt Whitman.   Example of Free Verse Song of Myself by Walt Whitman I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loaf and invite my soul, I lean and loaf at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. Click the following link for the full version of "Song of Myself". Example of Free Verse

Forms of Poetry and Literary Terms   How do you define a couplet or a Falling Meter? And what exactly is an Iambic pentameter? We have provided  a definition of poetry and literary terms together with the meaning and examples, such as the above definition  of Free Verse. A helpful educational resource for those taking an English test or a University student  studying English and American Literature. Each definition, such as the above definition and example of Free  Verse will provide a glossary of literary terms or a dictionary with the meaning, samples, examples and  the rules of specialising in each different type of poem and poetry.

Definition of Poetry   Poetry is piece of literature written by a poet in meter or verse expressing various emotions which are  expressed by the use of variety of techniques including metaphors, similes and onomatopoeia. The emphasis  on the aesthetics of language and the use of techniques such as repetition, meter and rhyme are what are  commonly used to distinguish poetry from prose. Poems often make heavy use of imagery and word  association to quickly convey emotions. An example of Free Verse is detailed above. Structure of Poetry  The structure used in poems varies with different types of poetry and can be seen  in the above example of Free Verse. The structural elements include the line, couplet, strophe and stanza.  Poets combine the use of language and a specific structure to create imaginative and expressive work.  The structure used in some Poetry types are also used when considering the visual effect of a finished poem.  The structure of many types of poetry  result in groups of lines on the page which enhance the poem's  composition. An example of Free Verse.

Another sample of free verse: Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens, And she is dying piece-meal of a sort of emotional anemia. And round about there is a rabble Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor. They shall inherit the earth. In her is the end of breeding. Her boredom is exquisite and excessive….. will commit that indiscretion. (The Garden by Ezra Pound) Ezra Pound is also renowned for writing free verse poetry. He has created this modern free verse poem with musical quality. There are stressed and unstressed patterns but created in a very . clever way. It is not following a regular rhyme scheme but we can see alliteration in words such as                                                       “like, loose, round rabble, exquisite and excessive.”

Funny bunny Fridays Week 15 (January 2-12, 2015)

 

Hello, Welcome to The Purple Treehouse!

Happy January, 2015...


This is our fifteenth one, and this prompt is open to everything or anything funny in life! 


Possible Types of Funnies (It could be your own creation or by someone else!)


#1: Jokes
#2: Poetry, including free verses, Haiku, couplets, limericks, or Haiku...
#3: Quotes
#4: Cartoons
#5: Short Stories
#6: Art/Paintings/Drawings
#7: Videos or movie clips
#8: Music or Songs
#9: Photo Shots/Images on people, animals, signs, slogans, events, and etc.


Basic Instructions:


#1: post anything funny in your own blog.
#2: tag The Purple Treehouse or Funny Bunny Fridays post.
#3: share your entry with  your peers by linking your entry to our collection via inlinkz below.
#4: click on names of your peers to read, laugh, and think...

Let's spend some time laughing at ourselves or giggling at creations that are tickling from our blogging friends here, isn't it a fabulous way to relax, and start a month with lots of positive energy and inspirations?

 

Image Credit: Google.com on Humor or Funny Images

Please share your humor talent and smile!

1.	The Beautiful Couple	18.	Me	35.	Manoj Kewalramani (NewsPic)
2.	Terri (A Laugh For Your Friday Via My Nephew)	19.	Ina	36.	Manoj Kewalramani (Riddle me this...)
3.	kez	20.	Larry Meredith	37.	Lee - The Oldstrong
4.	Manicddaily	21.	Larry Meredith	38.	Dunstan
5.	blitzken	22.	Uneven Stephen	39.	Caroline
6.	Sad humor	23.	Timoteo	40.	The Red Raven's Poetry
7.	Eric 'Bubba' Alder	24.	Ann LeFlore	41.	Martin Lochner
8.	ghosterb/bruce	25.	Sherrie Theriault	42.	Veronica DiMarco
9.	Rach	26.	Dawn	43.	Abby
10.	Mindsinger	27.	Madeleine Begun Kane	44.	Bumper Stickers Fun
11.	EMK (How abt some romance? :))	28.	Mad Kane's Political Madness	45.	Saras
12.	Gigi Ann	29.	Rallentanda	46.	Paula Tohline Calhoun
13.	Princess Wordplay (Kiera O'Brien)	30.	Kim	47.	Charlie Parant
14.	Gigi Ann	31.	Ramesh Sood	48.	ZQ
15.	Rhyme Me a Smile	32.	Emanita01	49.	The Departure
16.	K. Shawn Edgar	33.	Rinkly Rimes	50.	Still Night
17.	Marbles in My Pocket	34.	cressida de Nova	51.	Rajlakshmi

(Cannot add links: Registration/trial expired)

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above is the collection of week number 3, below is for our week 15 prompt, thanks in advance.

Christmas Special of Poetic Forms : HAIKU (Week 7, A Repost of week 4)

Poetic Forms : HAIKU (Week 7, A Repost of week 4)

Welcome to the 4th installment of our FEATURE "POETIC FORMS", to get inspired and know the world of different forms of poetry and I am Shashi your host. Every month on the 3rd Wednesday, I will try to give you info about some forms of poetry which has attracted me and inspired me..

This post will also have some interesting example's to inspire you to write some poetry in the form.... so here we go friends with one of the most interesting forms that has kept me captivated for decades

....HAIKU .... 

One of the most interesting form of Poetry from Japan, which is all about creating an image within the reader's mind with very few words...

Wish this post inspires you to paint some beautiful images within 17 syllables and in 3 lines.

Go on... read and then post some of your own trial runs, rough drafts or your polished gems of HAIKU. I look forward to reading them and come back to you with my suggestions and my thoughts...

How to Submit Your Poetry?

Add your entry via InLinkz below by clicking on the blue button, and leave a comment in case it is your first time! It would be great if you could link back to us on your blog.

Now without any further delay... here is this year's (Horse for 2014, sheep or goat for 2015)  POETIC FORM "HAIKU" for you to sink your creative teeth in and let your words flow....

Classic Haiku

Haiku are short, brilliantly vivid poems containing visually complete descriptions of moments in a poet’s experience. In the space of their original 17 Japanese syllables, haiku express worlds of profound emotion and philosophical insight. Simple on the surface, yet fascinatingly complex on close study, Haiku have universal appeal and the number of languages into which they have been translated testify to this.

Much, though not all, early Japanese poetry was written by nobility, and despite the strict conventions of behaviors imposed on courtiers of the 8^thto the 11^th centuries, much of their poetry still radiates inspiration and sparkle today.

Nature images, such as cherry blossom, in early Japanese poetry became one of the most characteristic features of the canon. In other poems such as this by the 8^th centaury poet Takechi no Kurohito, a note of melancholy suffuses the poet’s vivid perception, and the snapshot of natural beauty is modulated by the suggestion of human activity, a technique often used by Haiku poets many centuries later.

Travelling and lonely, I see beneath a hill

A boat painted with red clay rowing to the other side.

- Kurohito

Murasaki Shikibu, illustration
by Tosa Mitsuoki (17th century)

Writers of the medieval period in Japan, from roughly the 8^th to the 13^th centuries, produced an enormous literature of love poetry. Most of the poems in Lady Murasaki’s prose classic “The tale of Genji” were short verses of longing, sadness or reminiscence exchanged between friends of lovers. The following verse traded between Prince Genji and the Japanese Empress at the death-bed of Genji’s wife are characteristic. His poem comes first; hers answers:

In the haste we make to leave this world of dew

May there be no time between the first and last.

- Genji

A world of dew before the autumn winds,

Not only theirs, these fragile leaves of grass

-Empress

Chūnagon Yakamochi by Kanō Tan'yū

The inherent sadness in life’s transient incompleteness is a theme that would preoccupy the great Haiku Poets.

A knowledge of classical poetic tradition represented in the 8^th century anthology Man’yoshu and the 10^thcentury Kokinshu was indispensable to later poets writing haiku.

The term Waka – a word meaning “Japanese poem” came into use in the 9^th century, to minimize the confusion with Chinese Poetry being read and written by educated Japanese people at a time during the T’ang Dynasty when Chinese arts threatened to become overly influential in Japan. It was during this period that Japanese imperial diplomatic and economic ties with Chinawere broken, and consequently Japanese writers were encouraged to pursue more local traditions and genres. Japanese people had been composing Waka for ceremonial occasions long before the advent of a literary culture, and even when writing becomes an established means of discourse, the recitation of Waka remained a public art and means of private communication.

The short form of Waka, later become known as Tanka, which grew to be the most popular poetic vehicle and Haiku developed from it.

The Kokinshu – whose ‘thousands of leaves’ represents the oldest poetic tradition in Japan. It was compiled around 920CE, where the poems are organized according to theme, divided into sections devoted to love and the four seasons. This ordering of topics became prescriptive and for many centuries determined the subjects that were deemed acceptable for study by the professional poets who made a living giving instruction in Haiku writing: the Haiku Masters.

Haiku Rules:

While some Haiku poets claimed a degree of personal freedom, most obeyed decreed compositional rules. First the Haiku consisted of 17 syllables, made of three phrases of five, seven and five syllables. Within this format, the Haiku was generally divided also into two parts standing in contrast or reversal to each other.

A poem might start with a traditional image such as cherry blossom, full moon or dew and then re-focus to a lower perhaps clashing image. A seasonal word (Kigo) was another prescriptive component of Haiku. Other rules underlined the subtler aspects of Haiku. If classical correctness could be ‘lowered’ to let in descriptions of ordinary life, it was, said Basho, important to ‘correct’ the ordinary, imbuing it with poetic exaltation (Fuga). In turn Fuga has to be used to express important ideas: the spiritual wealth within modest and simple things (Wabi); beauty, mystery and elegance (Yugen) as in the example below

 

Stillness and solitude –

Sinking into stones,

The trill of cicadas

- Basho

And melancholy sadness and tranquility (Sabi and Shori)

On a withered branch

A crow has settled.

Nightfall in autumn.

- Basho

Or in the spirit of poetic madness (Fukyo)

Let me show you,

You market people,

This hat filled with snow.

- Basho

 

And sometimes in shockingly comic ‘lightness’ (Karumi)

A bush warbler

Leaves its droppings on the rice cake

At the edge of the verandah.

-Basho

Emphasizing the shift in tone, a cutting word (Kireji) usually sits at the end of one of the phrases. The cutting word was often a semantically meaningless sentence-ending particle such as kana, ka, ya, heri or ran. Such word sounds did not themselves contribute meaning but acted both to divide the poem into two rhythmic halves and to set up a contrast between the two poem’s parts. A seasonal word Kigo was another prescriptive component of Haiku. Early classical literature contained a huge vocabulary of words that implied not only a season but an emotion appropriate to it. Spring, with its mood of optimism, was implied by cherry blossom and certain birds. The bright but often fatiguing summer was often suggested by flower and tree words. Autumn melancholy was expressed by ‘lonely’ images, such as a full moon, wind and dying leaves. Cold words like snow alluded to the hard experience of winter. Poets writing in the spirit of haikai added less refined seasonal words: Dandelion, garlic, horseradish and mating cats all connoted spring for example.

Some of the times, Haiku also shows of an acceptance of the life’s impermanence. The most famous Haiku Master Basho’s haiku some times also demonstrates the genuine Buddhist enlightenment. The following very famous Haiku by the most famous Haiku Master Basho expresses most vividly the truth – the enactment of both, the phenomenon, what is and its passing. In this Haiku, a creature living unconsciously, according to its nature, is shown in the context of the man made artifice of an old garden pond, highlighting the simple bare and eternally ordinary ‘is-ness’ of all existence in the present moment:

Old pond

A frog jumps in,

The sound of water

The Milestones…

After Basho, there have been many great poets who took Haiku to the greater heights …

Buson

The bite of my axe.

Sudden revelation –

There is life in this tree!

As Buson accepts his death quietly in this farewell poem

White plum blossoms,

Night turns to dawn –

The time has come

Kobayashi Issa

Alone among the shady bushes

A girl is singing

A rice planter's song

Masaoka Shiki

A river in summer

There’s a bridge here, but

My horse prefers water

 

Kaikyo

With useless authority

The great horned owl

Sits moon-eyed in daylight

Etsujin

I envy the tomcat:

How easily he lets go of

Love’s pain and longing

Ranran

The child cries at her breast.

And the mosquito also bites

The sleeping mother

Senna

With ink-stained lips,

The boy leaves his poem

For the cool outdoors

______________

For further reading and my personal journey in knowing and embracing Haiku, please check out my blog feature @ Haiku – The essence of a poetic moment

Now Join in with Linkz below to share, to read some great talents and get inspired...

________________

ॐ नमः शिवाय

Om Namah Shivaya

Text and Image Sources: Tom Lowenstein’s Classic Haiku and Wikipedia

Greetings from The Purple Treehouse, 

We redo Shashi's Haiku Form  post so that you can submit  

Haiku

to our site, in celebrating Christmas and New Year of 2014-2015, Have Fun!