To begin the workshop, our guest leader, Keith Taylor (www.keithtaylorannarbor.com) walked us through some interesting exercises regarding (of all things) syllable counting. He showed how poets like Marianne Moore and Kenneth Rexroth (and even himself) have used this method to create unique forms to their poems. Some poets strictly used a certain number of syllabes for each line (say 8), except for a line or two that they wanted to stand out and these were given a larger (usually) number. It depends on what you want the poem to accomplish. I thought this type of poetry writing would lend itself well to poems associated with a specific date (anniversary, birth, death). Maybe we'll explore this in our next poetry group. ;]
For the second half of the workshop, Keith led us through 2 of our group members' poems (since he received them before the workshop he had more to say). He noted how one work, "Seniors Dancing," used its rhyming nature quite well since it was set to a piece of music. The other work, "Just like her," had a great form to it, focusing with repetition both verbally and imagistically on the title words. Everyone had a chance to read their poems out loud and received a few comments on them from Keith and other group members.
For his reading portion of the event, Keith took to one of our big and comfy chairs in the Faust/fireplace area and let his hair down on an informal yet fun trip of poems new and old, from early memories of his mother's hair (since his family was religious, the women never cut their hair) to remembrances of days as a poor expatriate in the French countryside with his first lover. Exciting stuff!
We hope to keep events like these going at the library, but we need our poets to keep writing and showing up. Hope to see you at the next adult workshop on 10/28 from 3-4:15 (note: there is not November event, since our normal day would fall on Election Day and I think it better to give everybody a chance to do their civic duty, rather than their poetic).
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