One thing we see a lot of here at Gyroscope Review is a good poem—that suddenly goes wrong. In their haste to put a tidy bow at the end of the poem, the poet wraps it up with a cliché. Instead of ending strong and leaving the reader to marvel at the deft wording, the poet tries to evoke the emotion they want us to feel with a stock image/phrase. It doesn’t work. The reader…
Although I’ve been writing poetry as best I can of late, I felt my output wasn’t where it should be. The state of the world had me flummoxed. My poems were scattered in theme and many felt unfinished even when completed— a sort of bookish throat-clearing that happens periodically as I flail about, searching. I needed to move out of the ‘any half-assed written down poem is a good thing’ mentality. As a way of…
The last two times on the Gyroscope Blog, I talked about listening vs. performing poetry. Here’s one last thought on that topic, more along the lines of reading vs performing poetry. Billy Collins. I didn’t realize how much I enjoyed Collins’ poems until I started listening to his CD “Live”. I didn’t come to appreciate it until I was into about the tenth listening while driving across the barren Wyoming plains week after week. About…
(Click HERE for Part I -Listening to Poetry vs Reading Poetry, and last week’s videos.) What happens when we listen to a poem? All kinds of stuff goes on in your brain when you’re actively listening. Scientifically, neurons in your brain fire in sync with the rhythmic structure of what you are listening to. Neurons like the rhythmic and process it exactly into your brain. On the other hand, the pitch of sounds might get…
