Edie Roones

Wrapping up a 26 blog posts about poetry during 2017, Writers Ink Services is presenting Pure Verse for Christmas. Yes, we take a look at two classic Christmas poems, including "The Night Before Christmas", as well as two that should be classics. And three video clips of classic Christmas songs and movies. Join us!

Pure Verse:  Seduced by Rhythm and Rhyme Over at Writers Ink Services, we're concluding a yearlong examination of poetry craft.  We've looked at "Clocks" and "Counting Stars", "Both Sides Now" and "Tapestry", "First Fig" and "Wildflowers".  We've looked at major poets and songsters who deserve the title "major poet".  And we glanced at Occasional Poems. Christmas is the greatest occasion during the year, and poets of all sorts can't resist writing their own version of a Christmas poem. Herewith are the dangers of Pure Verse that so many wannabies and newbies and hacks fall into while the true poets manage to avoid those pitfalls. We finish up this blog with Sara Teasdale (true poet!) and her "Christmas Carol".  You'll like it, I know.  You may even want to make it one of your Christmas traditions. Flip it ::  click here to read  this blog. Only one more blog for the year...

Another new cover for M.A. Lee:  this time for A Game of Hearts . Purchase here!

Blank Verse:   Old Masters and New Remember, we’re examining the poems using MMO:  Means, Methods, Opportunity (Aristotle’s Kairos ).  This time we won’t have three different forms to analyze.  Blank Verse only has one form. On tap we have the Old Masters, Shakespeare and Cowper, and the New Masters, Frost and Stevens. Flip to the link below to read the blog: http://writersinkservi.com/2017/11/25/ poetry-major-met…-blank-verse-mmo /

A new book by my friend Remi Black, the second in her Enclave series. Dream a Deadly Dream Assassination.  A fugitive comtesse.  A lethal sleep-spell.  Wyre and wraiths.  Wizardry against sorcery.  And regicide. In Dream a Deadly Dream , a sorcerous plot to kill the king weaves together past and present, dream and reality, to create a nightmare that can kill. For three years Cherai, the comtesse Muirée, has hidden from the conspirators who assassinated her father.  Now, in the weeping season, a sorcerer has woven a lethal sleep-snare to entrap her.  Although she doesn’t know it, she holds the key to the conspirators’ chance to seize the throne of Vaermonde, a chance thwarted when they killed her father too quickly.  The poisoned nightmares sent by the sorcerer will compel Cherai to turn herself over to her father’s murderers. Only a chance-met wizard can free her from the sorcerous sleep-spell. The exiled wizard Alstera wander...

Blank Verse Poets who want to appear “intellectual” (cue the snobbish accent) will use Blank Verse. See, I’m already limiting my readers who are turning off because I’m using the jargon of educational poetry. “**” Okay, first, let me talk about “professors” and “educators” of higher content learning.  (I am using “**” here so you will know I am being sarcastic about these terms.  These people aren’t teachers.  Sorry, back to my point.) These people run the Advanced Placement level courses in high school and many of the higher level college & university courses (for several years, as an adjunct professor, I had to bow to their strictures).  Some of these “people”—not all of them—act as if the knowledge they have is arcane, open to only the privileged few.  They want to keep their content secret.  They present the information in dribs and drabs wrapped around by multiple distractors, so that only a special few will understand it. Grrr.  T...

Try this:  click! New covers mean looking at how people can find books. M.A. Lee surveys a major e-retailer's listings for her books and list some Indie Writer difficulties.

Free Verse is like Jazz on Steroids. What is Jazz?  Well, here's a sample of the best:   Ella Fitzgerald riffing with "Blue Skies" The key to jazz is to present the melody then go everywhere else in play.  Like Dave Brubeck's "Take Fire", giving each musician an opportunity:   Equal Opportunity Music Free Verse does that.  It presumes the reader is familiar with regular poetry (Pure Verse), so it begins its riff immediately. I like Free Verse more than the other two methods:  Pure and Blank.  The best (think e.e.cummings) is highly experimental and an intellectual challenge to work out. It's Pure Verse that we encounter most often.  You know, those songs that rhyme.  Rhyme helps us remember. Blank Verse is the most "intellectual" (said with rounded snobbish tones). Free Verse is experimental. People have a tendency to think Free Verse is simple;  it's not.  Believe me, it is certainly FAR from easy.  It's actual...

We're hosting Emily Dunn of Writers Ink Services as she works through a yearlong series of blogs on Poetry! Even though people spend time with poetry everyday, they have a tendency to view poetry as something intimidating.  I fault Language Arts teachers for this, especially middle school and high school teachers.  Poetry in school becomes a matter of analyzing and picking out things rather than simply enjoying what the poet has to say. How do we spend time with poetry everyday?  Poetry is song.  The music you have words for :: that's poetry.  We don't look at it that way.  We should. We sing the catchy little tunes along with our favorite singers, we soar out with the power ballads from great movies, we cry at lost loves, we're motivated by the choruses we sing along with our congregations. Handle Me with Care:   Traveling Wilburys My Heart Will Go On:  Celine Dion's greatest power ballad That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be:...

Why do writers change great covers for books?  M.A. Lee presents the reason behind her change of the first three covers for her Hearts in Hazards romantic suspense series set in Regency England. Come over here to check it out:  click The 2015 cover The new cover for 2017

Over at Writers Ink Services, it's vacation time. During summer vacation, WIS is repeating blogs that originally published in July 2016.  After all, reruns are totally watchable again. Click on over to read the blog on Symbolic Colors in Writing: http://writersinkservi.com/2017/09/25/ using-color-symbols-writing / Remember, we're on the 5ths.

Over at Writers Ink Services, it's vacation time. During summer vacation, WIS is repeating blogs that originally published in July 2016.  After all, reruns are totally watchable again. Click on over to read the blog on Symbolic Numbers in Writing: http://writersinkservi.com/2017/09/15/ using-number-symbols-writing / Remember, we're on the 5ths.

Originally this blog post published June 2016 on the Writers Ink Books website.  As Writers Ink Services takes a vacation, we repeat three of the WIB blogs in the summer of 2016.  After all, reruns are totally watchable again. Creating Emphasis ~ More than the Subject Position Fun with words? Yes, it's possible.  And practical.  Especially practicable when we want to create emphasis. Easiest is simple repetition: "And the highwayman came riding--riding--riding / Up to the old inn-door." (Noyes, "The Highwayman") Pick a key word, and it becomes the key element. Be careful, though, for repetition becomes a key gimmick, as we know from reading "The Highwayman":  "A red-coat troop came marching--marching--marching".  From mid-point on, the repetition is too much. Play with Incremental Repetition: An increment is a small amount.  Incremental Repetition is a small change at the next repeat of the word or phrase. Again, from ...

Sprawling roots, seen and unseen, support the central Tree. For poetry lovers, we have a series of blogs,  Poetry Lesson s, guest-hosted by Emily R. Dunn of Writers Ink Books.  Visit our page on every 5 th   (5th, 15th, and 25th) to see which poem has inspired a lesson in thinking and writing.  We'll also intersperse news about Writers Ink publications. ~~ M. Lee Madder Three Unities. Action. Time. Place. Writing can sprawl into unnecessary digressions. The struggle for writers is to keep that sprawl focused so that every element seeds ideas relevant to the theme. When relating the story of father killing daughter, wife killing husband in revenge, and son killing mother to restore a balance, any writer might be tempted to stray away from the central storyline.  Aeschylus managed to stay focused for his trilogy  The Oresteia , and he didn’t have the Three Unities to guide him. I am tempted, just from that previous sentence, to co...

Fantasy Set In A Renaissance World Weave A Wizardry Web  by Remi Black Least becomes great.  Greatest becomes least. Two wizards travel sharp-bladed roads in  Weave a Wizardry Web . Wizard against sorcerer. Fae against dragon. Wyre against Rhoghieri. As children in the Wizard Enclave, Camisse and her niece Alstera recited that catechism daily.  Yet the war against sorcery seems far from the Enclave, and the current leaders have forgotten that childhood chant. Available on Amazon Kindle.  Click here! For more about the Enclave world of Remi Black,  Click here!

For poetry lovers, we have a series of blogs,  Poetry Lesson s, guest-hosted by Emily R. Dunn of Writers Ink Books.  Visit our page on every 5 th   (5th, 15th, and 25th) to see which poem has inspired a lesson in thinking and writing.  We'll also intersperse news about books. ~~ M. Lee Madder Burning Candles “First Fig” My candle burns at both ends It will not last the night But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends, It gives a lovely light. Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “First Fig” is a rich gem.  An unassuming jewel of four deceptively simple lines preceded by a clever title, the poem seems merely to celebrate the bravado and esprit of the bohemian lifestyle:  adventurous, blithe, and insouciant. Closer examination reveals the poem is crafted with a diamond-cutter’s precision, sparkling with St. Vincent Millay’s talent. Part of a collection entitled A Few Figs from Thistles and published in 1920, it heralded the Roaring Twenties.  ...

For poetry lovers, we have a series of blogs,  Poetry Lesson s, guest-hosted by Emily R. Dunn of Writers Ink Books.  Visit our page on every 5 th   (5th, 15th, and 25th) to see which poem has inspired a lesson in thinking and writing.  We'll also intersperse news about books. ~~ M. Lee Madder “O Fortuna” by Carl Orff seems a strange beginning to a post about the classic “Hotel California” by the Eagles. Stranger things have happened. To remind:  allegories are surface stories which have underlying meanings. The persona in “Hotel California” seems to relate a surreal visit to a roadside hotel that turns ugly before it imprisons him.  However, through allegory, the song relates a pursuit for fame and fortune that cost more than the persona anticipated and did not wish to pay. “O, Fortuna” The lady who draws in the persona to Hotel California is Lady Fortuna, goddess of fame and fortune, luck and fate.  Carl Orff (a rather...