Style (Poetry Edition)

Alright, so I haven't written much on the subject of poetry on this blog.  There are two poems available for reading on here that are marked with the "Poetry" tag.  They aren't my best.  I can't say that they are my worst either, unfortunately.

I wrote several poem drafts for my Intro to Creative Writing class last Fall.  Two of those became polished poems for my portfolio.  I revised a poem that I had written on a whim toward the middle of the semester to take the third and final slot in the portfolio.  The three poems earned me a 98%.  All three were later accepted by my school's literary magazine and published in print.  While the three poems cover widely different subjects, I have noticed some similarities that seem to be becoming aspects of my own personal style as a poet.

I've written two poem drafts in the last week, and I dug up a short poem that I wrote within the last few months that I think shows some promise.  Those three poems also share some similarities with the three from my portfolio.

The first aspect of my poetic writing style seems to be: short lines.  Many of my lines in these six poems have contained three or four lines, some with one or two words.  Only a handful have five.  I believe there was only about one six-word line and one seven-word line.  Looking at other poems in this year's edition of Backroads (my school's lit mag), my lines are characteristically short and fast.  One poem from the 2016 edition had similar line lengths, and about two from the 2015 edition followed suit.  I don't mean to make any comment on line length from this.  Different line lengths work not only for different poets, but also for different poems.  I find it interesting though that the style that I've been developing is somewhat peculiar.

The second aspect of my style that I've noticed is: stark images.  Some of my thought process on this subject may be bias.  I can obviously see the images well because I wrote the poems and carried the images in my head.  But I do think that there is some truth to my analysis.  I like to use words that either illicit physical impressions or visual photographs.  My images are not always concrete (as in rendering in the same way to everyone), but they are images that can be felt or seen without much straining.  I use metaphors as much as the next guy/girl, yet I try to make my metaphors as "seeable" and "feelable" as possible.

The last aspect of my style does not appear in all of my poems, but does seem to be developing.  It is a tendency to stretch out the last part of my poems.  I like to close with a long comment on the subject that the poem has been dealing with.  These comments are not precisely my own.  They are born out of the poem in question.  One of my poems in particular expresses an idea that I do not believe in, but that I thought could be used in a good poem.  I'm not sure that I like the "dishonesty" of it.  I must admit though that I did find it very interesting, and the full poem could be interpreted as satire if stretched enough.

These aspects to my style may very well change in coming months and years.  I haven't developed very far as a poet quite yet.  But I think, for now, that I enjoy this writing style and will continue using it when appropriate.