Last weekend, I attended Peggy Archer’s poetry workshop. I sat and listened as she discussed rhythm and beats, near rhyme and true rhyme, soft and hard sounds and much, much more. I was out of my element. I’m a prose writer, honey.
Imagine my surprise when later that week I got an acceptance letter from Highlights Hello for a “humorous poem.” I’d already blogged about the workshop in my post titled Poetry, Writing in Rhyme and Wordplay.
The irony of it all? I still don’t consider myself a poet.
Poets write pieces fraught with meaning. There’s symbolism and they use the rhythm of words and phrases to great effect. What they write has layers and it is deep.
On a good day, I can pull off both rhyme and rhythm. On an insanely good day, the rhythm doesn’t sound like a kid galloping across the hard wood floor — duh-dum, duh-dum, duh-dum, duh-dum.
Meaningful? Not so much. There’s a twist at the end but rather than meaningful it tends to be quirky and funny (a little like me).
That doesn’t mean that I’m giving up. Far from it. As I walk the treadmill, I catch myself playing with the rhythm of words. One, two, one, two, three, one, two, one, two, three. Slower, faster, slower, faster. Peggy has managed to arm me with a bit of knowledge so I’m quicker to recognize what isn’t going to work (galloping across the floor) and I better understand what does work.
I’m still not a poet but I’m a slightly less pedestrian creator of rhymes. Hmm. That’s sure going to be hard to fit on a business card.
–SueBE
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