Poetry and Poetry Tutorials.
My heart is bound for distant Galilee,
Her steed a white-winged boat, her road the sea;
I try to smile, and then she's gone.
The waters stretch forever on
Between my heart and me...
Farewell from Babylon.
Poetry Tutorials.
A brief word of explaination.
I am extremely fond of, if not addicted to, structured poetry in all its forms. This has led to a certain degree of confusion, because I tend to assume -- as do all obsessives -- that everyone shares my interests, and will thus completely understand what I'm talking about when I start rattling off specific poetic styles. I've learned (to my dismay) that this isn't the case, and, being the sort of person that I am, have decided to fix this.
The tutorials on this page were originally written for an on-line journal site that I maintain, and are presented in roughly their original order, with some adjustments made for common sense and ease of reading. Further tutorials will be posted as I complete them, and may eventually be collected into a book on composition of structured poetry which I have been working on. As to why I am publishing them here if I hope to publish them professionally: they have already been posted to the Internet, and if I keep them here, I can use them for reference too.
So there.
Tutorial Set I: The Victorian Lover's Chain.
One long lesson divided into fourteen parts, this will instruct you in the composition of a Lover's Chain poem -- a piece of poetry meant to be delivered to your beloved over the course of fourteen days. These tutorials should be read in the order in which they are posted if you wish to get the actual concepts of the chain, although they can be treated separately as guides to specific poetic forms.
- Step I: The Concept and Compliment.
- Step II: The Couplet.
- Step III: The Triplet.
- Step IV: The Quatrain.
- Step V: The Paradine.
- Step VI: The Triat.
- Step VII: The Hexadine.
- Step VIII: The Triolet.
- Step VIV: The Novet.
- Step X: The Decalet.
- Step XI: The Baroline.
- Step XII: The Pantoum.
- Step XIII: The Chain Poem.
- Step XIV: The Sonnet.
This page last updated
on August 19, 2002.
All poetry and tutorials
are copyright 2002, Seanan L. McGuire.
Please do not present
these as your own work, or repost without permission.
Comments and complaints
to delirium@mleko.xocolatl.com --
you can also send compliments
there, if so inclined.
William Shakespeare is not in your cat. Trust me on this one.