Acrostic
Who Is There
Where is my flashlight Who's there, is that you daddy No, no, leave me be ~~~~ Author's Note: How do you write a haiku on the subject of bringing a scare, when haikus are usually about love or nature? Then, what about the minimum for poetry of 100 words mentioned in the community guidelines? I suppose you write several haikus to bring fear or mystery.
By Denise E Lindquist3 months ago in Poets
The Power of Precision: Crafting Correct Poetry
In a quiet village nestled between rolling hills and ancient forests, lived a young poet named Elara. She had always been enchanted by words—their rhythm, their weight, their beauty. From childhood, she filled journals with flowing verses, letting her heart spill onto every page. Her poetry was raw, emotional, and brimming with imagery. Yet, despite her passion, Elara felt that something was missing. One day, she gathered the courage to show her poems to Mr. Bellwyn, an old, retired literature professor who once taught in the city and had returned to the village for peace in his later years. Known for his stern demeanor and sharp wit, Mr. Bellwyn was not the type to offer empty praise. After reading a few of her poems, he looked at her over his spectacles. “You have a gift, Elara. But talent without discipline is like a wild river—it may flow beautifully, but it floods everything in its path.” Elara frowned. “I thought poetry was about feeling, not rules.” Mr. Bellwyn smiled gently. “Feeling is the soul, yes. But structure is the body. Without both, poetry cannot stand.” Thus began Elara’s journey into the world of correct poetry—a world she had once resisted. Mr. Bellwyn introduced her to meter, rhyme schemes, enjambment, caesura, and the musicality of syllables. He showed her how the great poets—Shakespeare, Dickinson, Keats, and Frost—used precise forms not to cage emotion, but to shape it, elevate it, and make it resonate. At first, Elara struggled. The idea of counting syllables, maintaining iambic meter, and following specific forms like sonnets or villanelles felt restrictive. Her free verse seemed to flow more naturally. But as weeks passed, something began to change. She found that the boundaries of form didn’t limit her voice—they sharpened it. One evening, she wrote a sonnet about the passing of seasons. Each line was carefully constructed in iambic pentameter, the rhymes deliberate and purposeful. When she read it aloud to Mr. Bellwyn, she felt the difference. The poem didn’t just express her thoughts—it echoed them, each line reinforcing the other, rhythm carrying meaning like waves against the shore. “Now,” said Mr. Bellwyn with a nod, “you’re not just writing about something. You’re building something. This is poetry that will last.” Over time, Elara came to understand that precision in poetry wasn’t about following rules blindly—it was about choosing the right form to amplify the feeling. A haiku could capture a fleeting moment in seventeen syllables. A villanelle could explore obsession through repetition. A well-placed line break could shift meaning or emotion in a single breath. She still wrote free verse, of course, but with new eyes. Now, every word had weight. Every choice—where to pause, how to end a line, which word to use—was intentional. Elara’s poetry matured. It was no longer a wild river, but a powerful one, with carefully carved banks guiding its flow. Her work began to gain recognition beyond the village. Local publishers took notice, and eventually, she was invited to share her poems at literary events in the city. Yet she never forgot her roots or her teacher. On the day her first collection was published, she visited Mr. Bellwyn’s cottage, placing a copy of the book in his hands. The dedication read simply: "To the one who taught me that form does not stifle the heart—it gives it strength." As Elara walked home that day, she paused to write a quick verse in her pocket notebook. It was short, structured, and carefully worded, yet it sang with emotion. The sun dipped low over the hills, casting golden light across the village, and she smiled. Poetry, she now knew, was both art and craft. Feeling gave it life. Precision gave it purpose. And in that delicate balance, true poetry was born.
By Muhammad Saad 3 months ago in Poets
The Living Verse
The Living Verse How Poetry Evolved to Captivate Hearts Across Generations For as long as humanity has spoken, we’ve sung. Long before we had books or screens, we had verses—chanted around fires, whispered between lovers, shouted in protests, and written into the fabric of our cultures. Once, poetry lived in the voices of ancient storytellers. In dusty temples of Mesopotamia and the open-air theatres of Greece, people gathered not to read but to listen. Words had rhythm and music then, echoing like drumbeats through time. Homer’s Iliad, chanted by bards, wasn’t just a tale of war—it was a heartbeat passed from one generation to the next. In ancient China, poets like Li Bai painted emotions with brushstrokes of verse. In India, the Vedas sang of creation and spirit. In Persia, Rumi’s poetry spun with love so profound it’s still quoted on social media today—centuries later. As time turned its pages, poetry changed its form, but never its soul. In the Middle Ages, monks preserved poems in illuminated manuscripts, gilded with gold and hope. In the Renaissance, sonnets bloomed in the hands of Shakespeare and Petrarch, capturing the ache of love in fourteen lines. Romantic poets like Wordsworth and Shelley later carried us into nature’s arms, while Emily Dickinson quietly revolutionized verse from her room, her poems found only after her death. And then—something remarkable happened. The printing press. Suddenly, poetry could travel. It no longer needed to be memorized and passed on by word of mouth. It was printed, bound, and shared. A book of poems could sit on a kitchen table, a library shelf, or be passed from hand to hand. And people read—sometimes alone, sometimes aloud, always together in feeling. The 20th century brought yet another evolution. Poets like Langston Hughes gave voice to the African American experience. Maya Angelou reminded us, “Still, I rise.” Bob Dylan wrote verses that danced with protest and peace. Poetry moved into jazz clubs, street corners, schools. It became accessible, raw, real. And then came the internet. Suddenly, everyone had a voice—and poetry, long thought to be fading, bloomed like never before. Spoken word artists filled cafes and auditoriums. Poems, once confined to dusty textbooks, became viral sensations. A few lines typed on a phone could move millions. Instagram poets like Rupi Kaur wrote about love, loss, healing—and connected with readers around the globe. TikTok poets recited verses that went straight to the heart. Poetry was no longer just for the elite or the academic. It belonged to everyone. Teenagers scribbled poems in journals and posted them online. Grandparents discovered verses that spoke to memories they hadn’t touched in years. At protests, rallies, and vigils, people turned to poetry—not to escape the world, but to understand it. Schools introduced poetry slams and creative writing clubs. Hospitals used poetry therapy to help patients heal. Parents read bedtime poems to children, planting the seeds of imagination. And here we are today—standing in the flow of that river of verse. We scroll past a poem on a screen and stop. A few short lines capture exactly how we feel. We send it to a friend, and they reply: “That’s exactly what I needed.” We realize that poetry—this ancient, evolving art—isn’t old-fashioned or distant. It’s alive. And it lives in us. The power of poetry is not just in rhyme or rhythm, but in recognition. In seven words, it can say what we’ve struggled to explain for years. It connects us across cultures, generations, and continents. In an age of endless noise, poetry offers quiet truth. From cave walls to Twitter feeds, from sacred texts to slam poetry stages, from love sonnets to healing verses—poetry has never died. It simply changes clothes. It remains what it always was: The voice of the soul, speaking in its most beautiful form. And in every heart it touches, it lives again.
By Muhammad Saad 3 months ago in Poets
