How Poetry Works

likes to deliver confidence builders right before we hit record. Yeah, she goes, she said, Hey, something I've noticed when you guys record too, if there's one that you think stinks, record that one first, this one recording first. I like this one though, I do too. Jerry apparently is not down with poetry though she's like it's stupid. She's base hate poetry like regular sentences. Uh right, she's a fan of prose. Yeah. What this episode did for me was

reminded me that I like poetry. Yeah. Yeah, I remember now as an English major really getting into it for a little while. I'll bet you had to read a lot of poetry. For that I did, and some of it I didn't like it at all, But a lot of it I really really liked. And I just realized I don't read a lot of poetry anymore, and I really kind of dug it. There's plenty of good poetry out there, for sure. I've never been wanting to be like, uh, I'm going to sit here and read poetry all day. Well,

it does carry a certain like thing. Although I have smoked pipe before, some of my uh, longsleeve shirts have swayed patses on the elbows. But I guess I'm just a poser because I don't sit around reading poetry. But I do appreciate a good poem. Well, I think that was That's my deal? Is uh, Like, a really good poem just impresses me to no end? Sure? Yeah, oh man, try try writing a poem yourself. I did once. Uh, I post college wrote a poem that I liked so much I sent it to the New Yorker. Oh you

like it that much? Huh? I liked it enough to you know, realize rejection. Did it turn out that Ziggy had already done the same poem? No? You know the reference? Oh, there's a Signfeld where Elaine sent in a comic to the New Yorker, but it turns out she had ripped off a ziggy. I don't remember that it's good anyway. I have a copy of this somewhere, a hard copy, only, I think some in some box. You didn't bring it today. Well no, I mean it's got to be my addict,

but I need to get it. And because I remember thinking like it's pretty good. Well, yeah, I mean, if you sent it to the New Yorker, I would guess you thought very highly of it. But I was also twenty three, and you know I thought, you know, I wrote my first poem. I'm gonna send it to the New Yorker. Yeah, so it was your first first and only first. You're like, it's going to the New York

or first first shot. Yeah, that's funny. That's like a kin to like just writing your first script and being like, I should get this in Scorsese's hands. This, I might as well prepare my Oscar speech. Anyway, I did get a rejection letter, but it was nice to, you know, get that even. Yeah, you should have it framed next to your poem. Yeah, I'd like to see this poem or hear it. Uh, it was sort of longish and it was about a kid jumping in a pile of leaves in the fall. But as you'll we will see,

it had you know, symbolism and uh and metaphor. You know, I didn't, you know, I never said leaves or pile of leaves or you never anything like that. You know, it was all like very I thought, skillfully sort of crafted. Yeah, like you just put me on my head, Like I thought that the poem was about jumping into leaves and the leaves are metaphor for something else, but it's about doing something else that's a metaphor for jumping in a pile of leaves. No, it was about a kid jumping

in a pile of leaves. I just never explicitly said that. I see. You know, he like became a locomotive like a steam train. Oh, I got you that kind of thing. Oh, but that was good. I thought it was pretty good. I think everyone wants to hear this poem. Now you're gonna have to post it. Well, if I dig it up, I will definitely read it in a very special stuff you should know episode. It's a deal called how to Get our listeners to jump into a ravine. So uh.

One of the things, chuck that when I was researching this, I went, I looked all over for you know, learning to appreciate poetry or you know what it takes, just for some advice, because it's always been a tough nut to crack for me, which I think makes me like just about everybody. And I came across this, uh, this essay um poets dot org um, and it's called how to Read a Poem, and it is it's that's exactly

what it's about. It's written in prose form, thankfully, so you can understand it like right off the bat, and um the author may this uh this point, he said that readers make three false assumptions when addressing an unfamiliar poem right. The first is that they assumed they should understand the poem right out of the gate first time they read it, and that if they don't, there's something wrong with them, or probably less frequently, there's something wrong

with the poem. This poem doesn't work, get it. The second is that they they that there's in any given poem there's a code, and that if you can crack the code, you get the whole poem. Poems only about one certain thing, and it's all encoded in one way, and that's that like you just crack it, bam, you're done, poem has been read. And then the third one is assuming that the poem can mean anything the reader wanted to mean. That's not true. The poem means what the

author intended it to mean. It's open to interpretation, certainly, but the poems still from what I'm gathering here, there's no poet whoever wrote something it was like, I have no idea what that means. Yeah, but I have heard poets and songwriters say like, you know, I meant it to be this way, but it's whatever you take it. Yeah, And I think there's a lot of meaning imbuted, and not just poetry, but any kind of writing, any kind of art, um by the viewer, by the listener, by

the here by whoever right um. But the point is a poem is so meticulously crafted that you can bet every word, every literally every syllable in every single line was hand picked and almost sculpted. And it all comes together to point out that the best way to approach poetry is as a a typewritten object of art. Agreed, and that that once you come at it like that and that it's gonna be hard, it's gonna give you trouble, But the more trouble it gives you, the more rewarding

it's going to be when you understand it. If you come at a poem like that and that you're not going to get it the first time out, that you're supposed to spend some time and effort on it, you can start to appreciate poems. Yeah, that's what I got

from this in prose. I wonder if one of your issues with poetry is uh, has something to do with how concise poetry is and you're you as a writer, Like, why you haven't written a two thousand page novel is surprising to me still, you know infinite just the sequel, like I always imagine your book would be like uh in Wonder Boys, you know that scene where he gets to sit down and he types out like I can't remember the first three digits, but you think, oh, it's

three hundred words, and then he types like in a four at the end it's like three thousand pages long. Yeah, And Katie Holmes is like, yeah, once you started getting into the different lineages of the horses that were you stop you stopped making choices? Such a good movie. Um, you what do you think? Do you think that's accurate? What like why you might, oh that it's too concise. No,

I can appreciate things that are different. I think for me, it's I I ran into the same thing that this the author of How to Read a Poem Um kind of called out, which is, Um, you expect to get it the first time and if you don't, you just get kind of frustrated and you give up. I'm a quitter. I'm a quitter reader. That's not true. Oh, I take it back. Then, should we talk about history? Well, one thing I thought was kind of really neat is that

poetry predates literacy by hundreds of years, if not thousands. Yeah. Um, I think when you know when kind of every site that I looked at talking about the history of poetry all pointed to Epic of Gilgamesh. Such a good story. Um, and just you know the kind of the earliest poetry period where these epic poems. And a lot of people think that one reason they turned to poetry was so they could memorize stories. Right, Yeah, because if you were a storyteller in your group. You were in a story

and that was your role. Yeah, and you needed to remember actual like facts, events, that kind of thing. So it was a way to help record and memorize history in a way, right, Which is kind of a revealing thing about poetry, because a lot of people think of poetry is written or typed, when really poetry is actually usually intended to be read aloud. Yeah, and once you start reading poems aloud, then I think you'll you'll be like, oh, I see, I hate my voice. I don't go to

poetry readings. But um, there is a dude in fact, I'm going to read one of his poems later. Um, there's a modern poet named Derek Brown. Derek. I thought you might have met him somehow. He he tours. He's a touring poet and opens up a lot of times for music bands and like comedians. He opened for Eugene Merman. So how I met him once and um, I got to know him a little bit and he's just great.

That's pretty cool, Like his poems are awesome. Well, yeah, I'm sure if you're a touring poet, yeah, you're not gonna suck. But he's trying to sort of and they're you know, all kinds of It's not like he's the only person out they're writing poetry. But you know, you see articles about poetry being dead every now and then,

and it's just not the case. Yeah, the article either says poetry is dead or poetry is alive and well, but everybody calls it rap and then somebody else writes another Yeah, and there's this huge i'mgoing debate over whether rap qualifies his poetry and it's just all written by like middle aged white men pretty much. Ye oh goodness. Um. So, speaking of epics, the Greeks and the Romans, historically, between and a d was when they were really cranking stuff out,

and everyone always points to the two big eas. Uh. Homer wrote the Iliad or I'm sorry, Iliad, not the Iliad and Odyssey. He didn't write the Iliot. I don't think the official title is the Illiot is Illiot and Odyssey. Um. I was surprised that he see it was called out instead of like Virgil. I would I guess Virgil would have been name checked sooner than he see it right as number two behind Homer, Homer number one for sure. Ancient Greek epic poets. Yeah, I think so, but he

see it. Come on, I don't know. Works in days not bad as far as epic poems go, which I'm not into. I struggled with with both Illiot and Odyssey. Oh you read them both? Oh yeah? In English class. I mean I can't. I can't absolutely look back and say I read them both all the way through for class. I might have been a little lazy about it, but we studied them in great detail. I I read enough of I guess the Odyssey that I started to confuse it with the Odyssey. Harry Hamlin, Um Clash of the Titan,

class of the Titans, yep together. Um, he started to confuse it with Making Love his eighties movie. I never saw that one. Yeah, it was a movie about like a gay man that was married and had like a secret affair. Harry Hamlin was him? Well, no, I think the husband was Michael and Keene remember that guy. And I think he had the affair with Harry Hamlin because

who wouldn't. Well, yeah, you know I mean that guy speaking of I want to say something and it has nothing to do with anything he just reminded me with eighties movie. Um, I've been watching a lot of riff tracks lately, and they kill it. I want to specifically recommend, and if you have an Amazon Prime membership, it's streaming on Prime. A lot of riff tracks is um nightmare

at noon, I think is what it's called. So had you not watched a lot of riff tracks, I'd seen a few, but I just kind of caught the bug, and I've been like like crying, laughing at some parts or like I'm just wiping my eyes like I don't listen to me, man, I don't laugh like that, and it's making me laugh like that. Yeah, Kevin and John, uh listen to stuff you should know. Supposedly, Yeah, I've heard that. At least they were nice enough to say that to my face. I don't know either that or

they're just super nice guys. I didn't want to make me feel bad. I can kind of see that They're like, yeah, I listen to stuff, it knows. Uh. So moving on to medieval times, um, things started to get a little more well, not creative, but they started to expand the poetic horizons a bit um with the language they used and the subject matter they wrote about. Chaucer In particularly started doing something really unusual was writing in the common

everyday language, which kind of didn't happen a lot before him. No, had been Latin up till in. Yeah, and he's like talking about you know, common people in the common language. You're all common for then, But Chaucer is tough, impenetrable. Yeah. For me, it's like, what's this guy talking about? Yeah, you need a good teacher for that stuff, like a really good English teacher that can walk you through that. Yeah, supposedly Canterbury Tales are really interesting and like there's a

lot of wit and humor to him. But yeah, you it's it's just really difficult language. Yeah, I had to get somebody who knows it. I had a good teacher in college, and I had an idea to make Canterbury Tales into a modern movie but but on a Greyhound butts, And uh I thought that was great. I thought all my ideas were good when I was like twenty one. Yeah, you know, it's not a bad idea. Sorry, it's no Sharknado. You need royalties for that one. Uh So, moving on

to the Renaissance period, thing's gotta the more creative. And this is when we saw new forms of meter young

man named William Shakespeare Thomas Marlowe. They started the verse drama movement, right, and so initially you've got poetry is um, it's just oral history basically, and then the Greeks come along, and then the Romans um and codify it and and make formal structures out of it, and then everybody starts to undo those, and it's getting further and further away from the Greeks and the Romans until we hit the Enlightenment period from about the mid seventeenth century until almost

the eighteenth century, almost the nineteenth century, I should say, um, and they went back and basically venerated the Greek and Roman traditions, which seems weird to me because some somebody, somebody was struck and said, these guys knew what they were doing. Yeah, I'm kind of surprised to would have thought the Enlightenment would have taken things in an even further like a way from that, But I guess not.

I guess not. I think the Romantics did, though, uh seventeen yeah, about eighteen thirty, Um, that's when they kind of poopooed and poopoo But they'd straight a bit from what the Enlightenment was doing well. Rebelled for sure. It seems like there were like periods of strict structure and then rebellion away from that over the decades, in centuries in the history of poetry, which is literally what we're talking about right now, and probably a cultural movement as well.

I'm sure it was kind of all tied together, right, uh, certainly with the Transcendentalist movement in the United States. And I used to be all about those cats. Yeah, I loved them, And then I started really learning about Thorow and I was kind of like it was a bit of a weirdo, you know, like in real life odd dude. Yeah, and not like in all great ways. You know, I could just go off and like poop in the corner at a party. He just go off and lived deliberately

like opirto uh, poop in the corner party. All right, Um, but they did, you know, the transcendentness in the Romantics did focus a lot on create a nature and stuff like that. Certainly, throw it was all about it. I liked let me, I'm just saying I liked Emerson more than the Row. As I got older, I used to think the Row was great then I came to like

Emerson more well throws that's a young man's game. Uh, I'm wondering how people are just like one of these guys talking about welcome to our new subscribers, Victorian period nine one, and this is further breaking away from the establishment. And this is when you get like the great granddaddy of them all, Mr Whitman. Yeah, he's like structure meter for them. You can take it and shove it. I say nuts to that and things kind of like that was it from kind of then on, like you had

your traditionalists still and even today you still do. But um, that's when basically all the rules were out the window and you could do whatever you wanted yea, and call it poetry thanks to Walt Whitman. Leaves of Grass Baby, I think that was the original title. Yeah, a couple of wise on the end. Um, should we move into the twentieth century to Well, you kind of have to, because it's not like poetry just ended with Whitman. The

twentieth century definitely saw its share of movements. Um. Apparently in the very early twentieth century there was a modernist movement that sought to go even further away from the norms, and they even rebelled against poor Walt Whitman, who may or may not have still been alive to see this. But they said, you know what, we're sick of your flowery language and your fancy calligraphy and all that. We are gonna make short, concise, interesting poems. And that was

the Modernist movement. This is where it really started to get interesting for me. The Modernists. Yeah, like I was, I was way into e. Cummings and Yates and Gertrude Stein and Sylvia Plath. What about Robert Frost. Yeah he was good. I mean, listen to me. He was good. He was all right, No, he was amazing. Aden, which one was the one who like made pitthy rhyming short rhymes? Like there was a this is so sad. I got

my poetry from King of the Hill. But there was this one King of the Hill where Peggy Hill is um reciting a poem. She said, the cow is of the bovine ilk one and gives mu the other milk. Who was that? It wasn't Ezra Pound? Was that Ezra Pound would have written something like that. It sounds like something like Oscar Wild would have done. It was a Texan, I believe because they were observing the guy's house no

idea definitely was an Oscar wild then. Um. Anyway, that's when I really they got into poetry, like it was way more accessible to me, and like I could read E. Cummings and and sort of get it. I think part of it also, though, Chuck, is your experience was a lot closer in resemblance to the experience of people in the early twentieth century than it was to a Puritan writing in New England, And like the seventeenth century, you know about how much I love God and my neighbors.

You know, like your experience is different, so of course you can identify with it. So of course the poetry that's created from that experience is going to speak to you, or at least be more accessible to you. I think that's why a lot of people get turned off from poetry to Here's another reason is because you're indoctrinated into this history of poetry and it should go backwards. Did

you go counter chronologically? Like you should be inculcated in poetry roughly in at least the same century, within the last act, And then once you start to get that, you can take on older and older stuff. But it's like, not only do you have to get the poem, you have to get the poem and also understand like a completely different social outlook from somebody who lived a couple of hundred years ago. Yeah, it's like, what are they

even talking about? Well, I was about to give advice to English teachers, but then I realized we just did the same thing. It's like, if you start your class with all right, let's talk about the epic of Gilgamesh, it's like, that's how you can lose a student. But we just did the same thing. Jerry, can you publish this thing backwards? Uh, there's a way. Well, I have to admit to my dead poets society had, you know, pretty big impact on me too. I never saw it.

Shut up, I never saw it. You're kidding, I've never seen it. Just so I could say this moment, have you really? Yeah, I've never seen it. We should start a movie podcast where we each just our like, no, yeah, called you've never seen it? Right? So um, I was inculcated into the work of Robin Williams in the wrong way and much that. No. No, Patch Adams, Oh, once I saw Patch Adams I was like, I can't see any more Robin Williams movies. You should see that? Posts

I'm sure I should. It was really good. I think I've got another ten fifteen years of Patch Adams to wear off. First, is that the only Robin Wayams movie you've ever That's the last one I saw that? Really? Man? No, that's not true. Father of the Year I saw. Have you seen it? You're picking the wrong movies, have you seen it? No? That was good in a weird indie way. It's a weird little movie he did. He did good. I think that might be his last one. I think

I'm thinking of something else. Yeah, this is a little weird into movie. Yeah, I'm thinking something different. I think Bob Goldwaet directed it. Oh well, then it's good. Um, and then we move on. We're getting into the nineteen No, we're getting into the mid forties. And I got into

this stuff to the beat poets. Um. I think every every college student probably went through a little phase where they listen or well and listen to Gainsburg, but red Ginsburg and Carouac and you know those those that generation definitely uh sort of embraced to do what you want with the style and bongo. Yeah, I liked it. I thought it was cool. Oh the beats were awesome. Man. Yeah yeah, Carouac in particular. I never got into any of the other guys, but I liked him a lot.

Everyone should read Howl by Ginsburg. Yeah yeah, I mean that's his most famous poem. And and I'm sure Ginsburg big Ginsburg fans will say, of course you can recommend how yeah, but Troit you should be how sure and we should take a break. Yes. Oh so, Chuck, we are back and we are done talking about the history of poetry. Let's talk about poetry itself. Okay, okay. So a poem has uh four lines and they all rhyme yep, they all rhyme a a A, they're all in iambic pentameter,

which will describe later. And um, they're each made up of four stanzas. That's a poem. Anything else is just COMI propaganda, right, Yeah, boy, we're silly today. Uh. I guess we should talk about the genres um. And you know, this is one of those topics where we're gonna do fifty minutes on poetry when there are we could do fifteen podcasts about poetry. So forgive the the overviewness of this. That's what we do. Uh. You have narrative poetry, which

is a poem that tells a story. Yeah, which doesn't have to be an epic poem. It doesn't have to be you know, book link that can it can be a very short poem that tells the story. But it's got like basically a plot in action and characters. Yeah, car Chase right at least one. Um. But epic poetry does fall under that banner though. You have dramatic poetry, which we talked about with Shakespeare. A lot of people maybe don't even realize that Shakespeare was writing poetry for

the stage. Yeah, you know, I guess maybe they don't think about it that way. I thought everybody thought that's what it was, was poetry. We talk about dense and impenetrable too. Yeah, it's tough, can be again, need a good teacher, good teacher, su um. I wish I could remember my teacher's names to shout them out. My college teachers that really like, we're so great at that. But I think I've talked about him before. I had a great Shakespeare teacher. He would just we just read it

out loud. In class, and he would say, well, this is what's going on after after each like you know, couple of stanzas, so you do. Yeah, it's like an annotated live, annotated virsion of Shakespeare. And his theory was, you know, this is what you gotta do to make these kids get it. But once they get it, they realize that these are modern stories, just you know, told in a way that none can understand timeless stories. Yes, exactly.

Lyric poetry, it's probably if what a lot of people think of as a poem, right, you know, it might rhyme doesn't have to tell a story, it doesn't have to have a plot. Um, it's like rhyme and rhythm, and it creates just like this. It's it's for effect of a feeling. Maybe it uses a lot of imagery, usually of different types, um, to get you to visualize something or hear something, or imagine what the poet's trying

to get across. There's lots of different meanings. It's like, yeah, it's like what people think of when they think of poems. Lyric poetry, remember that one, uh, and there are many other kinds and genres, but um, I think those are kind of the main the main ones that a lot of people consider the three main genres. Is that fair? I think so? All right, So, when you we already kind of said it, when you're reading poetry, most of the time you're reading it silently to yourself, and that

is not what you're supposed to do. Most poems are written to be read out loud, even if to your

just to yourself. Yeah, yeah, and um, apparently, what what like the first time from this how to Read a Poem essay, The first time you go to read a poem, just read it out loud, and the author points out that you will notice a lot of stuff about the poem and you don't have to get the meaning right away, but you want to just basically read it out loud at least once, and that alone is going to raise a lot of different flags and markers about the poem to you, because when you read it out loud, the

sounds that the words make start to really come out. And that's really what starts to differentiate poetry from prose, the fact that basically sound effects are used in this written art, like a laser pu p. Right, that's how you read a poem. Uh rhyme Obviously, is the most common um, or maybe at least most recognizable sound effect. That might be alliteration. Yeah, in fact, I think it is.

No that's on amonopia amonopia right, snap english major. Um, we all know what rhymes are, so we're not gonna in saught you with the definition. But there are also things like near rhymes or slant rhymes, which are when, uh, well kind of when you can't think of a word that really rhymes, but you can get one that's close. So Emily Dickinson apparently was a master of the slant rhymes. Yes, how about bear and far Yeah, I mean it's close. You're not going to be like that stupid and like

swap the book off of your desk. It's not like bear and orange. Well, nothing rhymes with orange, right, That's why I said it supposedly right, I've never heard anything that rhymes with orange. I'm sure there are some emails coming on that one. Orange. Uh. There are a couple of other things, um, we can talk about, like a literation and consonants with an A N C E and consonants is a good example. Um, Mommy's mommy was no common dummy. Yeah you got that sound. Yeah, but it's

not necessarily at the beginning of the the word. They were at the beginning of a bunch of different words close together. That would be alliteration, right, but they are specifically consonants. H alliteration. You're right, that is, you know, the big brown bear bit Benny's but poor Benny. Yeah, what about assonance. That's one of my favorites. That one's tough. That's where, um, it can be tough to pick up on. That's where a vowel is repeated, or a vowel sound

is repeated in a number of words close together. Um, somewhere in the word, like the rain in Spain falls gently on the plane, I think mainly on the plane whatever. Or I like the example of the'se in here. I might like to fight nine pirates at a time. Yeah, that's a good one. I don't know all this stuff I love Like this is poetry is kind of playful quality to me. Or when a poet sits down and you can put a lot of thought into if you're trying to pull off something like that, you know, yeah,

as you're trying to also tell a story. Oh yeah, no. Like to be a genuine poet is to be probably one of the most creative and technically proficient artists around. It's got to be one of the most difficult things to to do. Well. I think you know, because think about it. You're a great director. Well, you've got a camera to assist you and really get your vision across, and you've got this technology. You're author of prose. Well, how many pages did it take you to get your

point across? You are a musician, that's great. You gotta violin, bravo, a poet, you got a quill and Inkwell some paper, better get it right. It's tough. You're wearing your breeches. Yeah, exactly. Uh, well what I say earlier literation, But you said it was on a monopeia. Yeah, that's that's the one where it's the word sounds like the word it describes, like bang, beep, snap, crackle, pop buzz snap and crackle crackle, don't forget per and pop clash. I like like those words. I would love

to see this episode animated. Do you remember the dude who used to animate They were great? Oh man, they were better than the actual episodes, right, and uh, this one I think would be virtually impossible to animate. I think you're right, um, And these, of course are just sort of some of the most common sound effects. Are many tools that the poet can pull out of the

old toolbox and use at their disposal. So um. Sometimes I found that when you are forced to work within a structure, a very highly structured environment, you're able to be more creative than you might be if it's just like here go crazy, no rules, because then you have to like you're just thinking about the edges, the boundaries, and then you have to think about how get creative.

People need structure, So if the structure is given to you, it's it's easy sometimes to kind of play within that structure and to really let your wings spread, which I think is one reason why poems have certain structures, even though really it's a free for all. You can basically do whatever you want and call it a poem. Um, But there are plenty of structures, and there's certain parts of a poems structure that you can find in almost

any poem. Well. Yeah, and these structures are just things that were repeated enough by enough people because someone did it first and someone else thought, hey, that's pretty clever, and enough people did it to where it became you know canon canon all right, canon structure. Yeah. Uh. Like, for instance, I said, stands is and pros have paragraphs

and and poems you have standsass. It's like a poem, yeah, and what you know, how you actually type that on the page is very much thought out, as in where you take the line, breaks to the next line, and where you might put that period. Uh, if you if you break a sentence up, or you can have one sentence that's super long on one line and then three words of a sentence on another line, and then one word one word, one word on each line, everybody's gonna

hate your poem. But no, not necessarily could do that. Or if you choose to break a sentence in the middle of a line, that actually is a name. It's called enjambment. And it's all part of like this wacky, crazy poetic structure world. But that's the thing. And there actually is a type of poetry called concrete poetry, where the shape that the poem takes on the page um is meant to to visualize something or to be uh depiction of like a picture. Basically I'm not into that.

I'm not either. I think most poets aren't. Um. Yeah, I think the ones that do. It's like it's like a poem of a windy river is like typed in such a way that if you blow your eyes it looks like a windy river. Right. So that's called a concrete poem, I believe. I think on the nose is another word for it. Right. Yeah, So most poems, most poets aren't breaking lines. They're not doing enjambment um to

make a picture. It's too too. It's meant to have to either point out a word, to play with a series of words um, or just to um create a rhythm that otherwise they wouldn't be able to if they just did sentence by sentence on a line. Yeah. And you know, even when I wrote as a novice that poem that I submitted, I found myself doing that just instinctively, after studying poetry and stuff like, Oh this word, I'm gonna capitalize it, and it's gonna go on a line

by itself, right exactly. Oh they'll love this and New York is gonna go crazy, That's what I thought. So I ran across the guy named Robert Creeley, who is apparently very well known for his enjamment. Uh so you can here seriously. So here's a poem from the language You're part of. Some lines from his poem the language locate I love you somewhere in teeth and eyes bite it. But so if you just read it like that, it's whatever. It's a poem. But this is how he has the

line breaks. And apparently he's well known for reading his poems out loud and and like leaving a beat after just about every line locid I love you some where in teeth and eyes bite it. But right now, can't you just see everybody in a cafe going like this. That's happen after that? But this guy is like a master and Jamin because if you take it and you look at it, especially when you look at it, it just really changes the meaning of the words. You know, I think master of m Jam it should be your

rap name for sure. Oh apparently you take your um. Yeah, you take your last the last meal you ate and put little in front of it. I'm a little ramen. Yeah, I'm a little fried chicken and collards. Really that's what you had? Where'd you get it? Hopston? Oh downstairs? Good? Yeah, I've had the chicken, I have had the greens. They're perfect. They're like not mushy, they're not undercooked, they're just they're great. I had the ramen from downstairs, just my most common

meal here, little ramen. Or I had the don the don don Maybe little don don would be better, or little don don ramen little don Don is good. I was a little nachos for a little while. Yeah, and I ate something ethan. You had another meal that was at nachos for about eight hours, all right. So there's something else called the cis sura c a e s u r a And that's a pause in the middle of a line. And again, and these are all just that's usually where there's a period in the middle of

the line. Well, that's an enjayment. No, and enjayment is like a break, oh, break in a sentence. Yeah. The say sirah is where there's punctuation, typically a period in the middle of a line. Yeah. I had those backwards. And these are all just, you know, ways to play with the structural effect of your poem. Basically you can you know, rhyme scheme is a if you've taken any kind of English class, you definitely they would hammer home the rhyme scheme of it's a test question, you know,

like what is the rhyme scheme of this poem? Uh? And that's the pattern and the rhyming pattern and in the lines basically, and you know it's A B, A or a BB depending on what rhymes with what right, And the rhyme scheme is always described by like that. So you depending on how many lines, let's say you have four lines, you've got A B, C and D well the ryan the lines that rhyme say, your first and third and second fourth rhyme, they're going to share the same letter. So A B, A B is how

your rhyme scheme would be written out. And anybody who knows poetry would be able to look at that and understand what what lines of the poem rhyme. It's pretty simple. Yeah, I think I just made it way harder than it actually is. No, I don't think so. Uh. Meter You've probably heard um your teacher talk about meter two, and that's the actual rhythmic structure and UM there you're mainly

talking about the stresses on the syllables. UM. And this, to me is one of the really neat things about poetry is the sort of uh and the sentence I use in here is actually good one. He'd like to have some pumpkin pie. You know, the way that that's stressed is very just very sing songy and sort of playful. You know, it's almost like a dance in your mouth. I always dance around when I'm asking for pumpkin pie. I'd like to have some pumpkin pie. Yeah, And that's

you just a jazz hand um. And again that's just how you know you're stressing the words and how you're playing with the words, And that's the meter. It creates that rhythm. Right, So in a meter, the basic unit of a meter is a foot, and it's a a foot is it can be any number of stressed and unstressed syllables. Usually it's up to four, right, And there's different names for different types of feet. So everyone's sort of iambic pentameter. Up until yesterday, I had no idea

what I ambic pentameter really was. Just New Shakespeare rode in it a lot, right, Well, and I am is actually it's a foot. It's a it's a type of stressed and unstressed syllable pairing that is used to create the meter of a poem. So when I am is a an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, And the example of this article gives us the word part take right, so par is unstressed. Take has a little

more of a stress to it, right. And if you put five i ams together, so partake, partake, partake, partake, part take very creative. One line of a poem, what you have there is iambic pentameter penta, meaning five and five five i ams on a line making up the meter i ambic pentameter. But there's plenty of different kinds of meters that a poem can have based on the type of stressed and unstressed syllable pairing, and then the number of times that type of pairing appears on a

given line. Yeah. Uh so if you had four i ams, it would be iambic tetrameter, and so on and so on. Um, there's another one. If like the word banjo is a stress syllable followed by an unstressed syllable, that's a trokey, Yeah, and you could have a trochaic pentameter, and that's five trokeys in a line. Yeah, which sounds I mean, all this sounds very dense, but it's actually pretty straightforward. Yeah, once you kind of know what the words mean behind it.

What else is there? There's a dactyl, which is a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables like capital capital. Yeah, not a fan of those. Now what about the antipest not bad, that's too unstressed, followed by a stressed um. The example they give a seventeen kip Winger was a big fan of the antipest uh, And anfa brock is an unstressed syllable followed by stress syllable and then another unstressed syllable um like archaic. Yeah. And then lastly there's

the critic. That's my favorite. So it's stressed, unstressed, stressed like trampoline. Yes, we're trampoline. I'm a big fan of the critic. Are you critic for life? But think about think about this though, Like this is again when now we're starting to kind of like pull back the curtain, and this is what poets are dealing with. This is this kind of stuff describes a line. A line will have different types of these types of meters, these different

feet that make up these different types of meter. Well, yeah, and my hope with this episode is that if you slept through this in English class, you might listen now and say, oh, hey, that's actually kind of neat when you think about it in those terms. Yeah, at the very least, I hope you realize how hard poets are working sure to go unappreciated by most people. They're earning the lack of money that they don't make. All right, well, let's take another break, poor one out for the poets.

We'll be right back. Stuff. No, so chuck um. There's different types of poet poetry to based on you take. Yeah, you take all these this structure or these different effects, and you will have different types of poem and putting together. Right. So, a son it has specific rhyme scheme. It's got to be fourteen lines along or else you can just take your poem and go home because it's not a sonnet. Um. A ballad is one that's um written and stands as

of four lines. Each has a specific meter of iambic tetrameter, which is four four i am per line, and then it alternates with iambic trimeter three i am s per line. Um. And that one I've always heard also is supposed to Basically, it's supposed to be a narrative, right, aren't ballads at least as far as music goes, a narrative song? Yeah,

but I'm not sure. It's probably the same thing in poetry, right I would think so, I mean definitely know it is in a song and like a murder ballad specifically, which is uh the fact that I think I wanted to put that down as one of our ideas to do an entire show on ballots. Yeah, ballot cool rich tradition. Is there such a thing? Oh? Yeah, it's like huge, huge in Mexico, like singing basically ballads about these outlaws. Um, there's a uh, Heisenberg got his own I'm breaking bad. Really,

it's called bad ombre. I can't remember what it was called. Um. Haiku boy, oh boy. In the early days of stuff, you should know, we put out a call for high kus or haiku haiku and um. Traditionally, hiku is three lines along, five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second, and five and the third, and all these years later, occasionally we will still get the random hiku from a listener, but we got him a lot

for a while, and um, until we said stop. Remember that guy who got us by sending in a haiku and it was a well known T shirt. Oh yeah, we read it on the air. I think that's when we said stop us. Yeah, I remember that. Uh sistina sc s t I n a um. This one's a little different. Instead of a rhyme scheme, it repeats words, so as it's broken into standsas, each with six lines and the six words to end each line I'm sorry, yeah in each line in the first stanza are then

repeated as in words and every other stanza. And I think you have an example here the John Ashbury poem farm Implements and rude Vegas and a landscape. Yeah, everybody go look up that poem and read it out loud to yourself. It's actually really kind of difficult the way it's laid out. You should read the first couple of stands us maybe okay, Uh, that's kind of long though

you ready, Yeah, it is a little long. The first of the undercoded messages read Popeye sits in thunder unthought of, from that shoe box of an apartment, from livid curtains, hue A Tan Graham emerges a country Meanwhile, the sea hag was relaxing on a green couch. How pleasant see if you start reading it like William Shatner, which she really comes out to spend one's vacation on lacasa de Popeye,

she scratched her cleft chins, solitary hair. She remembered spinach, And so throughout this poem spinach, thunder, apartment and uh well apparently three other um words come through and reused throughout the whole um the whole poem, and it gets really really dense, and then all of a sudden it just zooms out onto Popeye, who finally makes an appearance at the end, and it just becomes kinda and it it's it's a neat poem. Actually, yeah, it's called um

what's it called again? Farm Implements and rude Bag? Isn't a landscape by John Ashbury? Check it out? Yeah, and again. To me, this is like the fun of poetry is it's almost like a challenge to a writer to say, like, all right, try to write a sistina like this weird structure, and and not only do you have to meet the needs of that structure, but it has to be good and creative and interesting, just really neat to me. I love the kind of word play. Um, I might start

writing poetry. I think you should. A villanelle. One of the most famous poems of all time Dylan Thomas is do not go Gentle into that good night is a villanelle. And it's a nineteen line poem that um it only it's made up of only two end rhyme sounds that are repeated throughout the poem, which is tough on its own, but then to make things even worse, or not worse, but more trickier, tricky for the writer worse. The first and third lines are repeated in a specific pattern all

through the poem. And um, I guess I'll read the first couple of bits from this one. I won't read the whole thing, though, Uh. Rage, Rage against the dying of the light. The wise men at their end, no dark is right, because their words had forked no lightning. They do not go gentle into that good night, good men the last wave by crying how bright their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay. Rage, Rage

against the dying of the light. So um, that's probably the most famous example of all time of the villainil, don't you think, Oh yeah, for sure, it's a good it's a good. I think one of the reasons why that poem is so famous in universally loved is because it's you understand what it means. It's pretty pretty superficial really, as far as poems go. I'm sure there's way more

stuff going on right beneath the surface. You can also appreciate it on its face as well, that it's about a dying father or something, right, sure, but it's also basically called arms to go live, like don't ever just give in to death, and you're impending mortality like live live, live until live so much that you rage against the idea of of dying. Eventually you need to go home and watch Deadpoet Society. You're basically just described the plot.

Oh really yeah, uh, an ode something? Um it usually celebrates Walton. Ode celebrates a person or not even a person that can just can celebrate anything. But it's an ode to them. Yeah, um, yeah it is. It's to say, hey, you did a great job. Here's a poem for you, which is sort of like an elegy, but an elergy is about someone who died. Yeah, did you read An Allergy for Five Old Ladies by Thomas James Martin that this,

this article calls out. Yeah, it's it's unusual in that it's about a UM, an actual real life event UM where apparently at UH an assisted living home, maybe in the sixties. I think, um, five older women were in a car waiting for the driver, and I think them the car the transmission came out of park and it rolled into a lake and they all drowned. And Martin, I guess read about it in the New York Times.

It was moved to write a poem about it, um, which is the whole It's a bizarre poem all around, especially the fact that it was based on a true story. I want to check that out. Um. There are epigrams that one's good. Did you read that one? You go ahead? So an epigram is a poem that's like satirical or funny. Yeah, I don't know if this one's funny, but it's it's maybe satirical. It's existentially satirical, all right. A man said to the universe, Sir, I exist. However, replied the universe.

The fact has not created in me a sense of obligation. Oh yeah, you gotta read it a few times. It gets better. Then do you have a really really niche type of poem? And obeyed A U B A D E. I believe it's how it's pronounced, and it's about the arrival of morning. If it's not about the arrival of morning, it's not unobeyed. If it is, it's an obeyed. Yeah.

And a lot of times, um wink wink, arrival of morning means hey, I just made some sweet love and I'm really bummed that the sun's coming up because last night was a gas. Right. I think you just wrote and obeyed off the top of your head. I think so. Uh. And then an epistle is a poem usually that's addressed to someone very close to the poet, And you know there's some overlap with these, for sure. Yeah, Like an epistle can also be uh, well, it could be an epigram.

I guess sure this epistle that this article, this article on how stuff works, did a really good job. I suspect it was written by an English professor. Yeah, a poetry expert clearly wrote this. Um, this is not just from research. Right. So the author calls out a poem called Dear Mr Finelli as an example of an epistle, and I went and read it and it is really interesting.

It's about this guy who notices. So it's basically it's like an open letter to Mr Finelli, but Mr Finelli invited correspondence because he's the like the manager of a subway station, the seventy nine Street subway station, and there's a sign that says, notice any need of improvements or anything wrong, get in touch with me, the manager and

Mr Finelli of the seventy ninth Street subway station. And so the author's writing to him with suggestions and it so he's just kind of devolved into like this existential crisis that the guys going through, and he reveals that he hasn't been sleeping very well because he's really worried about the world, and it just really goes off the rails. It's a pretty neat poem, Dear Mr Finelli by Charles Bernstein.

I have to check that out. Uh. And you know, we talked unspecifically about what a lot of these poems are using um literary effects and anything that you use in your pros um, you know, symbolism and metaphor, and similarly you also can use and in fact oftentimes do you use in poems? Um. Similarly, obviously is something where you have to use like or as. Um, that hillside is is like a uh be a great poet. Hillside

is like a beer built there you go. I like that, yeah, Um, whereas a metaphor or is saying something is something else that that hillside is a beer belly. Um. And the example they used is the wonderful poem The Road Not Taken. When you're talking metaphor, it's, um, you know, maybe more about your life choices than the actual road that's written about. Right, But they point out that Frost in the Road Not Taken doesn't even say and by the way, these roads

are really a metaphor for your life choices. Yeah, it's just left to the reader to to make that guess an assumption, which makes it a far better poem. Yeah, he's like, and at the end he's like, and these are really your life choices. I was talking about this whole time. Yeah. I think, if I remember my poem correctly, it wasn't about the pile of leaves, even that I

didn't reference. It might have been about the the boys that the childlike qualities that ultimately fade away with age, which I man, I was right in on that when I was twenty two years old. It's great. You gotta find that poem. Yeah, it's probably not as good as I remember. You got a poem to read? Yeah, I got too. Um and I was talking about um newer poets, and I mentioned Derek Brown, who it's a good dude. And you should go see Derek if you have a chance.

He's It's always a fun time because some of his poems are very funny. Some of them are just beautiful love poems that like, you know, you see the ladies in the audience kind of squirming in their seat a little bit like swooning. Yeah, they swoon. He does a good job with that. But this one's called Ringlets, and um, he has quite a few books out. I think one's

coming out soon. Um. Here we go, young prom ladies and loud dresses and ringlets mingle outside the restaurant and oversize men, suit jackets, their dates, smile, smoking, shivering, pretending not to shiver. The thing you said was dead is not dead. No virgin deserves a cigarette. We should head to the emergency room and just pop our head in and say hello. Tell them we are all right, so they don't think we only visit when things are bad.

We're breathing without tubes today. They don't make pills yet. For this feeling, it's like finding fruit in the snow. I want to call down cocktails and black tire jacks from the heavens. I want to break into something that kind of good. Your eyes are the kind we have all been waiting for. When I hear a single note sustained in a room with bad lighting, I think of us,

both of our bodies shivering nice good stuff. And that's an example of just you know, one of his I mean, sort of playful, but some of them are really really funny, like he's kind of part comedian up there sometimes, Derek Brown, Derrick Brown, good stuff. We didn't even talk about poetry. Slams do we need? Yeah, well, it's kind of like a championship. Talk about poetry like a tournament. Yeah, or you got your poetry and you move on. And I'm assuming I've never seen one, but I don't think you

take the same poem for round around around. Hopefully you have different poems so people don't have to hear the same one like four or five times, and I think at the end, if you end up tied, you like Wressell. Sure, as is the tradition. Right, you got one? I do. Um. I'm going to say f but that's not what Philip Larkin writes. Philip Blarkin, he's British. I think he's writing in this fifties sixties. Maybe I think um, and he is good. You may introduce me to him. This one's

called this be the verse. They f you up, your mom and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had and add some extra just for you. But they were left up in their turn by fools and old style hats and coats who half the time were sappy, stern and half at one another's throats. Man hands on misery to man, it deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, and don't have any kids yourself. Wow. I love that guy's I love that poem. Just uh,

and I'm gonna finish with um. Probably my favorite new poet and new meaning just around now is David Berman of the band Silver Juice, who I got into them because he did an now he's he's buddies with uh. Steve Malcolmus and Bob Nistanovitch from Pavement, and THO wasn't Malcolm us in Silver Juice he was for a couple of albums, and so wasn't Astanovitch and uh Burman was the songwriter and it was kind of mountainous of side project and shout out to Nistanovitch. I kind of know

now because of this podcast, I'm getting to meet my heroes. Anyway, Burman, he's putting on many books of poetry and what I'm called Actual Air, which on the cover features the King and Queen Building over in Dunwoodie, which is kind of funny. Anyway. It's called Imagining Defeat by David Burman. She woke me up dawn, her suitcase like a little brown dog at her heels. I sat up and looked out the window at the snow falling in the stand of black Jack trees,

a bus ticket in her hand. Then she brought something black up to her mouth, a plum, I thought, but it was an asthmat in hailer. I love that line. I reached under the bed from my men thols, and she asked if I ever thought of cancer, Yes, I said, but always as a tree way up ahead in the distance where it doesn't matter. And I suppose a dead soul must look back at that tree so far behind his wagon, where it also doesn't matter, except as a

memory of rest or water. Though to believe any of that, I thought you have to accept the premise that she woke me up at all. Dave Berman, Wow, that was good, good one. That's why I want to like go back and read again. You can do that here, Okay, uh man, we did poetry, man, Yeah, we didn't mention illustrations. You know, you can have illustrations with your poetry. It's not like the Great Chill Silverstein article points out Um was very

famous for using great illustrations to enrich the poetry. Yeah, and sometimes you wouldn't really get the poem without the illustration. Like Something's Missing is about a man who's sitting there like I dressed myself, and he lists off all this stuff that he put on, but he still feels like something's missing. And then in the illustration is not wearing pants,

so you wouldn't quite get it, you know. Or my poem you might have a image of a kid crashing in a pile of leaves, right, but you would never say that that's what he was doing. It would just end and then have an arrow pointing to the picture, and underneath the arrow would say get it right. Question. Uh, if you want to know more about poetry, there are a lot of places that you could start, like go

to the Poetry Foundation for example. That'd be a great resource for you to just find some poems to start reading out loud to yourself in your bedroom at night alone. You were starting to sound like Steve Rule. Oh the stupid library. Put that in your milk. Uh, since I said put that in your milk, it's time for a listener mail. Uh, this is about band names. Um, hey guys, I've been listening for a while now. I'm loving it. Also, really enjoy all of Josh's Simpsons references since I know,

Hey Matt. By the way, we met Matt Graining once in person, and um, he was very kind to us and we said that we had a podcast where we mentioned the Simpsons quite a bit, and he actually asked for the name and wrote it down and then he looked at us bed the eye, crumpled the paper and threw it away right. Uh. He was very nice. So I wonder if he listened. Yeah, we have signed scripts scripts. Yeah it was awesome. Yeah, that was bucketless stuff. And

big thanks to Jesse for the millionth time for that experience. Um, anyway, here we go. Since I know you two can appreciate solid band names, I want to tell you this worry. The other day. My wife was trying to tell me about the time she went to see a band. She said, I can't remember their name, and like a genius volt of lightning out of nowhere, I just blurted out Pig Chesterton in the knuckle Ducks. It as if my brain in the universe were one solid band name creating machine.

I was super impressed with the odd combo of words my brain created and that split second of time. Also, to further the laughs and validity of this is a band name, my wife actually said I don't know who they are. Still makes me laugh. Anyway, Thanks guys for such a fascinating, informative and funny show. And that is Matt Burns from Gilroy, California. Nice. Thanks a lot, Matt. That was a that was a pretty good email. Yeah, just a channel. That band name not bad, He's a

band name generator. Agreed. Oh, I've got one for you, the Benedict Comberbatch name Generator. It just comes up with all sorts of random stuff. My favorite is that's a website, yeah, Benman, snap comer button? What is it? Just rerange? Yeah, yeah, it's good stuff. Man. I love the Internet. Uh. If you want to get in touch of this, like Matt did, you can tweet to us. I'm at josh um Clark and at s Y s K podcast. Charles is at Charles W. Chuck Bryant on Facebook and at facebook dot com.

Slash stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com and has always joined us at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot com