poetry with zero replies

[Leanne]

Maybe it's better not to start out thinking about meter? But you do need to get a feeling for rhythm and the rhythm of the words as you put them together in the lines and stanzas. That's reflected mostly by deliberately choosing words with the right amount of syllables so the lines and stanza flows smoothly with cadence when you read it.

... which is meter . That instinctive feel for the cadence of a poem is something not everyone has -- you do, I can tell from your writing, but knowing the mechanics of it smooths it out perfectly so that words never jar and detract from the beauty of the poem. Meter means that all your rhymes fall where they should and don't seem artificial or forced, or that your reader can hear the same poem you do. It's useful for any kind of poetry, form or free verse, and it's not just da dum da dum da dum. Meter is present in every sentence spoken aloud -- and poetry at its best should be heard as well as seen on a page.

I make a point of never reading other comments before I critique a poem. I write the critique first, then sometimes I'll go back and check what others have written just to make sure I'm not repeating anything bleedingly obvious. As a moderator, I do need to read comments on as many poems as I can to make sure there are no breaches or issues that need addressing, but so far (for a good few years now) I've managed to keep the two roles separate. I don't care if what I get from a poem isn't the same as the last person and I'm not afraid of looking silly if I get it wrong -- just as I don't really mind if someone reads one of my poems and gets something entirely different from what I intended. Meaning belongs to the reader just as much (if not more) as to the writer. And I definitely don't care if I do or don't like the poem I'm commenting on -- there's almost always something positive to say, and the negatives should be framed as constructively as possible, with suggestions whenever you can think of them (that's not always possible though).

Some people seem to think that reading critically means you have to pick a poem apart and find as many faults as you can. It doesn't. It just means being aware of more than the obvious, looking beyond the literal, being a discerning reader instead of just glossing over and not really taking it in. What is the writer really trying to say? What does it make me think of? Why has that specific word been chosen? How does this affect me as a reader? And so on. It's no different to being discerning about the newspaper really. Critical literacy seems to be something that's on the decline, but The Pig Pen is bringing it back