Before I write, I used to go to wikipedia and come up with examples for all the figures of speech. It's a kind of like doing scales before playing piano. It worked for me. Once I started a substack, I created little slideshows for each figure of speech: https://mattjgarland.substack.com/s/rhetoric/archive?sort=new. I'll start filling up the comments with more copycats soon, since I need to write. You are welcome to as well! It's humbling for sure, comparing your own attempts to the best in class, but I find that exercises when I am not in the flow pay off when I am in flow.
“There’s actually something of an emerging renaissance of formal verse in academia and some lit journal publishing but it hasn’t yet filtered down, generally speaking, from high-end journals to the mid and lower tiers yet. Good luck finding formal, metered poetry in anything except a handful of journals!”
I write metrical verse, and have been looking for suitable journals to follow and submit to. Do you have any recommendations? I also plan to share some of my own verse on Substack, though under a different account name.
sorry I was buried in work after publishing this post and just saw this!! I have an article coming out in a couple weeks on where to submit metrical work so stay tuned! but as a frist stop I always recommend New Verse Review!
Lovely list of literary devices. Sporting some of my personal favorites: allusion, repetition, and apostrophe. I'm pretty sure I've used all of those in the past week. Oh and rhetorical questions. I'm weaker than I'd like to be on rhyme and meter, but I do try my hand at them regularly to keep in practice. I love synecdoche, but don't think use it as much as I ought.
that's amazing!! Super inspiring that you use so many (and I love your poetry so makes sense). I'm actively trying to use more of these - I do use questions and repetition and only recently started using allusion. Meter is my weak spot but I've only been trying it for a few months in the background. I would LOVE to see more apostrophe - if I had to pick just one from this list that's actually what I'm most interested in reading, it gives such focus and a different, often more narrative and epic slant to the poem
I'd love to see more epic poetry for sure, so much so I'm considering making that a focus on some of my works for the foreseeable future. Formic poetry in general has fallen by the wayside in favour of free verse, and I do feel we're missing a lot from its presence!
Before I write, I used to go to wikipedia and come up with examples for all the figures of speech. It's a kind of like doing scales before playing piano. It worked for me. Once I started a substack, I created little slideshows for each figure of speech: https://mattjgarland.substack.com/s/rhetoric/archive?sort=new. I'll start filling up the comments with more copycats soon, since I need to write. You are welcome to as well! It's humbling for sure, comparing your own attempts to the best in class, but I find that exercises when I am not in the flow pay off when I am in flow.
What a great exercise! I should try that.
A lot of the examples are actually from songs and movies, but that's because traditional rhetoric lives more in them than in modern poetry.
this is really cool!! such a creative concept, and great for practice. (and I love Bogart movies so good choice there)
This explains so much about why I feel like my poems are not suitable for submission. (But they are suitable for me and that's good for now.)
“There’s actually something of an emerging renaissance of formal verse in academia and some lit journal publishing but it hasn’t yet filtered down, generally speaking, from high-end journals to the mid and lower tiers yet. Good luck finding formal, metered poetry in anything except a handful of journals!”
I write metrical verse, and have been looking for suitable journals to follow and submit to. Do you have any recommendations? I also plan to share some of my own verse on Substack, though under a different account name.
sorry I was buried in work after publishing this post and just saw this!! I have an article coming out in a couple weeks on where to submit metrical work so stay tuned! but as a frist stop I always recommend New Verse Review!
Lovely list of literary devices. Sporting some of my personal favorites: allusion, repetition, and apostrophe. I'm pretty sure I've used all of those in the past week. Oh and rhetorical questions. I'm weaker than I'd like to be on rhyme and meter, but I do try my hand at them regularly to keep in practice. I love synecdoche, but don't think use it as much as I ought.
that's amazing!! Super inspiring that you use so many (and I love your poetry so makes sense). I'm actively trying to use more of these - I do use questions and repetition and only recently started using allusion. Meter is my weak spot but I've only been trying it for a few months in the background. I would LOVE to see more apostrophe - if I had to pick just one from this list that's actually what I'm most interested in reading, it gives such focus and a different, often more narrative and epic slant to the poem
Thank yiu Claire
Been feeling this.
I'd love to see more epic poetry for sure, so much so I'm considering making that a focus on some of my works for the foreseeable future. Formic poetry in general has fallen by the wayside in favour of free verse, and I do feel we're missing a lot from its presence!
agreed on both! any idea what theme or types of settings you'll use for your epic poems? I'm curious!
I'm drawn to a retelling of Robin Hood as an epic poem... but I have one or two other ideas too 😁
This may have been written tongue in cheek, but there are some good reminders about what poetry from the past can contribute to poetry today.
There's a good chunk of those in mine.
https://soundingoutthewonder.substack.com/
I really appreciate these reminders! I feel we could all benefit from refreshers like this