Unleash The Poet Within
Is a primer for women
To try their hand at verse,
Though why it’s male-averse
I’ve no notion
Or explanation
For. Is the author,
Wendy Nyemaster,
A literary feminist,
A versifying specialist,
Intent on a sorority
Skilled in prosody,
But absolutely no time
To teach men to rhyme?
Or is it anomalous
To teach verse
To guys like us
Though we’re analogous
Sexually to Keats,
Eliot and Yeats?
Exclusionary,
Discriminatory,
Avowedly
Women’s-only
Writer-instructor
Wendy Nyemaster
Is, nevertheless,
God bless
Her, a master,
A proper mentor
On poetics and metrics,
The ingenious tricks
Of poetry
Or poesy.
What’s a foot, what’s a metre?
Let Wendy Nyemaster explain to ya!
It all begins with the syllable,
The fundamental, irreducible
Unit of pronunciation
And clear enunciation.
Thus “love” is a monosyllable,
But “lover” is a disyllable.
And poems have feet,
No mean feat,
One foot, two feet, three feet,
Poetry’s more complex than chicklit.
The feet make metre,
The iambic pentameter
With five feet
Especially common in Eng lit.
Yes, it’s crazy,
Poems by no means easy
To write or understand
Unless you take a stand
To get to the bottom of it
And not admit defeat
To meter and feet.
So turn to her,
Wendy Nyemaster,
To learn the art
And craft
Of how to write a sonnet
And – the bee in her bonnet —
A sestina and, if you will,
Even a villanelle.
Oh well,
This is doggerel.
Rewrite! Belay,
Poets aren’t made in a day.
Readiscovery 