On Poetry & Poetic Forms

[Mike Baker]

It appears that the good Yaakov has touched a definite nerve with his 
question concerning poetry.

At least one of the follow-ups raises another battery of questions: within 
*our* context, is there a line to be drawn as to what is considered poetry? 
 Where do "prose-poems" and free verse belong in the modern bard's bag of 
tricks?  And what of translations, transliterations, or alternative 
non-rhymed forms such as haiku and "Norse" alliterative verse?  (Not to 
mention some of the more obscure Welsh constructs found in the 
Four-and-Twenty...)

I will admit to being more than usually conservative in my personal 
definition of poetry.  If a piece does not consist of rhymed sequences of 
lines fixed in a pattern, or does not meet the strictures of a syllabic 
counting structure / rhythmic form, I find it difficult to accord the title 
"poem" to the work at hand.  The majority of my own work in poetic form 
tends toward quatrain & sonnet, couplets, and closely related types.  Not 
all that I utilize are necessarily "classical", and I recognize that  I am 
certainly in need of expanding my scope along those lines, and will be doing 
so over the next months and years.  (Bards are, after all, eternally 
students seeking to improve their command of the tools at hand!)

(Instant-composition / WORK IN PROGRESS warning: the following poem is 
more-or-less off-the-cuff, rough, and should in no way be considered a 
polished and performance-ready offering!)

     On Poetry & Poets
          Amr ibn Majid al-Bakri al-Amra     June, A.S. XXXI
          copyright 1996, Mike C. Baker
   Who seeks to move my inner mind, and chooses so to speak in rhyme:
   I 'plaud the efforts and the scope that mark the method and assail hope.
   Yet to the forms, I plead with all, be true as ever you can, or fall
   Short: and know the mark untouched by rope looped outward.

   The poet, a mortal who seeks to prove mast'ry of word and hits the 
groove,
   We task to the labours of recording mighty efforts in words that sing.
   While we expect nothing more than humanity, rhymes that contend in vanity
   Fail: and our hearts are still lifted by the voice that speaks so hard.

   I am just one of the poets who, sweating and trying their whole life 
through,
   Aspire to the accolade of knowing that the rhymes we spread as seeds 
a-sowing
   Some bridging afford to the hearts of Man, stretch strongly forth and 
seek to span
   Undaunted:  but realize that most impinge on ears of lard.

     Such is the nature of the bardic life:
     Eternal hope and ephemeral strife!
* * * * * * *
Kihe Blackeagle (the Dreamsinger Bard)  s.k.a. Amr ibn Majid al-Bakri 
al-Amra
     currently residing in Barony of the Steppes, Kingdom of Ansteorra
Mike C. Baker                      mbaker at rapp.com
Any opinions expressed are obviously my own unless explicitly stated 
otherwise!