[tgseale]

I thought my copy made it back to the shelf, but I don't see it.  I'll look under the bed, in the drawers, behind the couch...
It's around here. 
tg

[lurban]

Hope you all don't mind if I join in.

Kimmar, you asked big picture questions about structure and the like, but it always helps me to look at small things and see how they apply to the larger work.  In particular, I've been looking at the poem "The Accident" and I wonder if people would like to join me in examining it.

The baby is calling, so let me just lay out a couple of points we could discuss.

1.  Economy.  This is a pivotal (or maybe THE pivotal) moment in the novel and it is told in spare, but essential detail.  How might it be told differently in prose?

2.  Structure.  The way the first stanza mirrors the last line of the poem.  The way that each stanza tells a specific chunk of the story. 

3.  Repetition.  There are a couple of lines that are repeated, and added to.  Like "I didn't know./  I didn't know Ma was coming back."

4.  That couplet.  Or sorta couplet that comes right before the final line.

5.  Line breaks.  The difference between "I got/burned/bad" and "Ma/got/burned/bad"  or why words like "tried" and "Daddy" get left all alone.

Okay.  Jack is mad now.  I'd better get to him.

What do you all think?

[lurban]

aw nuts.
I'm a thread killer.
Please ignore above post and go on with your discussion.
I'll be dying of embarrassment in Els' dungeon.

[kellyr]

And here I was thinking you were brilliant for focusing the discussion.  I haven't responded because I've been waiting for someont to return the book to the library so I can get my hands on it.  But I thought your slated topics were terrific.

[tgseale]

Still looking, Linda.  The past couple of days have been crazy busy.  If I can't find it, I'll get it at the library.  I liked your questions, too.  I wish I could remember enough about that specific poem to discuss without re-reading, but the search for the missing book continues.  ack!
tg

[WG]

I like your question, Lurban. And as soon as I get the chance I will respond for real.

[Ree Posts: 339 Status: Offline No Boxes WWW]

Let me see if I am understanding this correctly. There are rhyming poems, freeverse poems (poems without rhyme) and then prose (which is writing without a rhythm). Is this correct?

Thanks in advance,
Sue

[lurban]

Here's an encyclopedia definition of freeverse that should povide more than you want to know:

free verse, term loosely used for rhymed or unrhymed verse made free of conventional and traditional limitations and restrictions in regard to metrical structure. Cadence, especially that of common speech, is often substituted for regular metrical pattern. Free verse is a literal translation of the French vers libre, which originated in late 19th-century France among poets, such as Arthur Rimbaud and Jules Laforgue, who sought to free poetry from the metrical regularity of the alexandrine. The term has also been applied by modern literary critics to the King James translation of the Bible, particularly the Song of Solomon and the Psalms, to certain poems of Matthew Arnold, and to the irregular poetry of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. The form is probably most closely associated with such English and American poets as Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell, and T. S. Eliot who sought greater liberty in verse structure. Other poets who used the free verse form were William Carlos Williams, Carl Sandburg, and Marianne Moore.

[Gail Posts: 508 Status: Offline The harder you work, the luckier you get. WWW]

I finished "Out of the Dust" last night. I've been avoiding reading this thread so I wouldn't "learn" too much before I finished. Now I'm wrapped up in working on an illustration...must stay focused. So, I will chime in next week.

Gail

[lurban]

hope that helps

[Ree Posts: 339 Status: Offline No Boxes WWW]

Thanks Lurban
Sue

[kimmar]

Linda,
I was all set to FINALLY respond to your thread, even wrote comments in the book margins of the poem, and now I can't find the book! I know it's here somewhere!!!! When I find it, I promise to share my thoughts.
,
Kim

[brendalynn]

I just wanted to pop in and say hello. I'm knew to this board and was ecstatic to see this and the other noves in verse thread. My WIP is a NIV and I've read my copy of OOTD to the point of a dogeared, stained, and well-written-on mess, but I still love it just the same, if not more.

Lurban- Your topics are interesting and I'm left wondering more of what your thoughts on these topics might be. I see the sparsity of the piece as essential. For me, "melodrama" is the word that immediately comes to mind if the piece were told in prose, or added to as is in verse form.  As it stands, we're given the essential, bare-bones, slap-in-the-face account just as it happened. We're nearly there in the scene. Any more verbage and we as readers would only be pulled futher from the emotion of the moment. When reading it aloud, it's almost as if Billie Jo is recounting the events to "me" just about five minutes after they happened, with all the stress and trauma still hanging in her voice. I can nearly hear her grasp for more air as she attempts to spout out more info in the middle of her turmoil. This effect is neatly acquired through the structure and minimal line lengths you also point out. There is a definite fast pace- intensity- when reading this piece aloud. Those couplets you point out are almost a resignation, a sigh. "I did the best I could./ But it was no good." These "lines" are just that: a full thought on one line. In this way, they suddenly slow the tempo of the piece. Of course, this is all my reading of The Accident, but I think it's pretty right-on, I hope. Anyway, I just love Hesse. She is a true poet as far as I'm concerned. Take a look also at On Stage for another great example of Hesse's use of tempo, structure, pacing, etc. Read it out loud. It's superb. I'm beginning to ramble. Sorry. Nice to meet all of you and thanks for the thread.

[kimmar]

Hi all!
It's been way too quiet on this thread and I miss it, so I'm attempting to start up again...
Linda, I found my notes on The Accident, and they almost perfectly mirror yours!

I just read CRANK, by Ellen Hopkins. Has anyone else here read it?  I can appreciate the skill it took, in some of the poems, to make words fall on the page so that if they are read separate from the rest of the poem, those "stand out words" show a progression of feelings. However, while I appreciate that technique I was also quite frustrated by it, as it took me out of the story. I like freeverse best when the words stand alone to add emphasis while falling where they should naturally fall. Here, some words stood alone mid-sentence (but only, it seems, so they would work together as I described above), and because they stood alone emphasis was placed on them in my mind, although the emphasis should only have been placed on them when they were taken apart with the other stand-alone words to show that stream of consciousness. This bugged me. A lot. If anyone read, or plans to read this book, hopefully my comments will make better sense .

Anyone else read any freeverse lately?
Kim

[joanpaq Posts: 437 Status: Offline]

Would you believe that I have not ever read a freeverse book--at all?? (Is there something wrong with me?  :) Does anybody have a recommendation of their single favorite book as a beginner's intro to the genre?

Joan

[kimmar]

Joan,
Two of my all-time favorites are OUT OF THE DUST, by Karen Hesse, and STOP PRETENDING, by Sonya Sones. I also loved LOCOMOTION, by Jacqueline Woodson. Happy reading!
Kim

[kimmar]

Joan, one more thing. If you check back toward the start of this thread, some writers list other freeverse favorites.
,
Kim

[joanpaq Posts: 437 Status: Offline]

Cool - I'm going to put those on my Hold list at the library (as if I don't have enough books out already!!) But I'm eager to find out what all the fuss is about - so many people are loving this genre... I can't miss out on that bandwagon any longer!

Thanks, Kim!
Joan

[kimmar]

Wow! It's been a long time since anyone stopped 'round these parts ! Read any new and exciting freeverse novels lately?
Kim