Poetry Research

What is poetry? Poetry is a from of literature that uses aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language. Poetry comes in a wide variety of forms, such as; free verse, blank verse, couplet, sonnet, limerick and many more. As well as this there are many different themes in poetry. There are poems of emotions, such as love, happiness and hate. There are poems about life, death and everything in between.

When I choose what poem I am going to use for this assignment to create my book with I will have to choose carefully. The theme of the poem will decide the theme of my work. I could have a happy poem, and use brightly coloured pictures filled with smiles and joy, or I could choose a sad poem, and have dark miserable pictures to play on the words. 

One idea I had was to find a 100 line poem. I thought this was a good idea because our photography books that we have to create should be around 100 pages long. This would mean that I could have a line from the poem and a picture on every page. 

When searching on the internet for 100 line poems this is what I found... 

This is a poem called A Falling Star. 

There once was a boy named Buzz

A star student at South High he was

Captain of the basketball team

He always lived up to his dream

Getting straight A’s since freshmen year

He never thought of drinking beer

Other people he always supported

Student of the year he was awarded

Voted President of his class

Never was he once a badass

Buzz was every parents dream child

Not one of those teenagers gone wild

Every teacher’s favourite pet

He thought he had his life all set

Not to mention he was everyone’s best friend

Little did he know, his good grades would come to an end

Senior year was coming around

To MIT he was surely bound

First semester was coming to an end

So too, would all his study trends

He had his eye on a cheerleader named May

They talked and saw each other every day

Watching her cheer on the sidelines

Made Buzz go in and out of his mind

After the game he waited for his chance

To ask her to the winter formal dance

“May, will you go to the dance with me?”

“yes,” she replied with absolute glee

Within a few weeks, they stuck like glue

However a conflict arose out of the blue

Report cards came out and unfortunately showed

That all his grades surely slowed

“How could this be?” asked his mom

For calc and bio he had bombed

Ineligible Buzz became

Hence, forbidden to play a game

May must have been to blame

For she was the cause of his grades so lame

The room tumbling round and round

A solution could not be found

Realising his dream was at stake

He needed his mind to be awake

May was nothing but trouble

So Buzz knew he had to burst their bubble

Meeting her after homeroom class

He was not going to let this relationship last

Confronting her face to face

He could not keep going on this pace

Buzz showed her his report card

May whispered, “Study later, party hard.”

He began to procrastinate

Thus, greatly changing his fate

He started slacking in school

To his teacher he looked like a fool

His A’s turned to D’s

He couldn’t pass his class with ease

Got a call from school but he didn’t care

His parents shook their heads with despair

He couldn’t take it, so he went out

Walking about, with a very big pout

Went to her house looking for May

Hoping to see her would brighten his day

When he saw her, she gave him a hug

He got comfortable and started to snug

Something was weird and it began to smell

It was very faint so he couldn’t tell

She said it was weed

And he was in need

He was above the influence

Until he was convinced

She said it was fine

So he didn’t decline

He took one big puff

Which was more than enough

Weed was the beginning of his new life

And Buzz wanted his partying ways to strife

The reason was May

That he got wasted all day

He bumped his head

And went to bed

When he woke up, he felt whack

And realised it was May that was holding him back

She was nothing but trouble

He had to end it on the double

His future could be saved

If only the correct path was paved

Second quarter was coming to an end

The grades he dropped he’d have to mend

He went to his teachers for extra credit

He was a star student so they allowed it

He turned to his parents for support

Cause all he wanted was to get back on the basketball court

Surely enough his grades did improve

Got his life on track, and went on the move

Without May by his side

His life would not fall like a roller-coaster ride

His grades went back to all A’s

Because he returned to his star student way

Now his head is in the books and not the bar

This is the story of the falling star

I soon realised that an 100 line poem is longer than I thought it was, and that this would mean creating a picture relevant to each line of the poem. I think that is something easier said than done. I searched for more 100 line poem's, something I felt I could relate to and tell a story from more; but I soon found out that there are not a large amount of these out there and that a different kind of poem may be easier done. 

Realising that my 100 line poem wasn't really going to work I started looking for something else, a different kind of poem. I remembered back in high school we covered quite a lot of poetry in english, my teacher loved William Shakespeare. I had covered over some of Shakespeare's work and poetry before so I decided to have a look on the internet and see what I could find. 

This is where I came across something we had covered at school. One of Shakespeare's most famous sonnet's. 

Sonnet 18.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?	Shall I compare you to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:	You are more lovely and more constant:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,	Rough winds shake the beloved buds of May
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:	And summer is far too short:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,	At times the sun is too hot,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;	Or often goes behind the clouds;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,	And everything beautiful sometime will lose its beauty,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;	By misfortune or by nature's planned out course.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade	But your youth shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;	Nor will you lose the beauty that you possess;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,	Nor will death claim you for his own,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st;	Because in my eternal verse you will live forever.
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,	So long as there are people on this earth,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.	So long will this poem live on, making you immortal.

 Although this is a beautiful poem of love and emotion, I feel that to create the right pictures to express this poem and to have the same meaning they need to be taken in the summer time. Where I can take pictures of the a 'summers day' and have that bright lighting within the pictures. I also feel that this poem is not long enough to create an 100 page book from. 

I think the most effective poetry for me to use to create this book would be poetry that tells a story, as this on it's own creates a picture in the mind. Then the photographs could potentially give the poem a different meaning, or would show my interpretation of what I think it means trough photography. I really like the idea of using a poem and pictures to tell a story. As there is a story and meaning behind every poem that is written. Here is an example of a visual poem that I found on YouTube. 

I really enjoyed watching this as it just sparked up my imagination with ideas. This is something very similar to what I want to do, but instead of using video, and audio I will only use photographs and text. In some ways this is worse, as music and voice used to read the poem can create tone and emotion that would not necessarily be able to be created when reading a book. But my idea is in some ways better, as the reader will get to view the pictures and writing in there own time. They can go back pages and re-read lines, as well as stare at the picture for as long as they like looking at each intricate detail.