SHORTER IS BETTER

Draft Horses, Watercolor                          © by Ruth Zachary

Noontime Interlude

I don’t remember their names,
those big draft horses waiting
during one of their trips home and
standing by the pump house patiently,

still wearing their collars,hames,

and harnesses as they drank
from the tank. Behind the fence,
their large frames withdrew to
the shade, often resting one foot
at a time on the edge of a shoe,
tranquill in their tedium.

What is
indelibly etched in my mind is the
smell of the clear air, the peaceful
almost-silence just before a breeze
exceeded the resistance of rust,
causing the windmill to start up;
exacting the shriek of metal on metal,
lacking any subtlety, as the blades
gathered speed and faded to a
transluscent gray, against blue sky,
as if protesting indentured labor,
while the horses ignored the noise.

SHORT POEMS ARE BETTER.

In my opinion, poetry is usually better when kept short. Being wordy has always been my problem and it is still true with my creative writing. The challenge for me is to find a way to shorten it.

One way to handle a long poem that  is to break it into shorter poems, each complete in itself. These poems can be identified as a suite of poems under one title.

Think of the passage of time in the poem. Try to focus upon on one small soundbite of time, not an epic. The expressing that moment of  realization stimulated by emotion, is the challenge, and then hopefully will be conveyed to the reader.

Writing Exercise: One good way to begin a poem is to write out the idea in prose. Place the steps in the right sequence. This becomes the framework for the poem. Next, remove all extra words from this structure so it conveys the basic idea.

Read it aloud. Break it up into lines that sound natural.

From there, these building block words are supplemented with ones that offer more intuitive understanding. Usually the additional words are those that appeal to the senses, sounds, smells, images, tastes, the feel of something, like touching it. Write until you feel it is finished.

Much of the content of this post appeared at another time on an earlier blog by the name, R.Z. Writestuff

Writing and Images on this post are the Copyright © of Ruth Zachary.