Each month, we'll feature a book of poetry. In January, the book will be Ocean Vuong's Night Sky with Exit Wounds. In February, it will be My Brother Was an Aztec by Natalie Diaz. The book club will be facilitated by former Duluth Poet Laureate, Sheila Packa.
The following months, I hope to select really good poetry books via recommendations by the participants. Maybe you're a writer or maybe just curious. This book club is for everybody who loves to read poetry. Order your book club book with Zenith Bookstore for 15% discount.
At the meetings, we'll talk about metaphors, sound patterns, and anything else that might happen to come up in conversation about poems. We won't have a rigid structure, but I will facilitate the conversation. So pick up a book, read some of it or all of it, and come and talk about your impressions!
Not used to the idea of a poetry book club? We can talk about the content of the poems and the form. The following things are common to all poetry:
At the meetings, we'll talk about metaphors, sound patterns, and anything else that might happen to come up in conversation about poems. We won't have a rigid structure, but I will facilitate the conversation. So pick up a book, read some of it or all of it, and come and talk about your impressions!
Not used to the idea of a poetry book club? We can talk about the content of the poems and the form. The following things are common to all poetry:
- Sound patterns: repeated words or phrases, alliteration, repeated vowel sounds (assonance), rhyme, meter, beat. Poetry is connected to the breath. Poets use spacing and punctuation to help the reader say it aloud.
- Visual patterns: some poets create a visual pattern on the page. There are line breaks (usually the line ends on an important word) and stanza breaks (stanzas are similar to paragraphs)
- Figurative language: images are important (nouns and verbs predominate), poems often use metaphor (one thing used to describe something else), personification (giving human attributes to things or animals), metonymy (using just a portion of something to name something else -- example, hands might be used to refer to workers, crown might be used to refer to king or queen)
- Form: Poems might have a traditional meter or form, or the poet might create a unique pattern or form. Observations are welcome about the length of the poem, about stanzas, lines, line breaks, enjambment (a sentence that runs over a couple of lines) and other elements of the physical form. These are a few of the many different types: elegy (like eulogy), love poem, ode (celebration of things or people or places), aubade (morning poem), ekphrastic poem (written to or for a piece of visual art), sonnet, villanelle, etc.
Here's a link "How to Read a Poem (and Fall in Love with Poetry" from the book by Edward Hirsch. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69955/how-to-read-a-poem
Talking about a poem generally always leads to discoveries and a deeper appreciation. Sometimes it might lead to you writing some poems of your own. I look forward to our conversations.
Talking about a poem generally always leads to discoveries and a deeper appreciation. Sometimes it might lead to you writing some poems of your own. I look forward to our conversations.
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