Showing posts with label organization. Show all posts
Showing posts with label organization. Show all posts

10.24.2014

organizing principle

He would spend many hours arranging each poem within a book, but a collected poems by convention is just one book after another in chronological sequence.

2.12.2014

transitions matter

The organization and diction of a poem are completely dependent upon one another, and you should not be troubled if your first attempts to sort out the two elements are not successful. The distinction between the two is a real one, and you will soon begin to discover it yourself. You will see that organization resides not so much in the words themselves as in the transitions that separate words, clauses, sentences, and stanzas from one another. When the poet is in control of his medium, these transitions are decidedly meaningful.

—James McMichael, The Style of a Short Poem (Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1967)