Edie Roones

Memorial Day and Flag Day are commemorative occasions just ripe for a poet.   While many are addicted to Open Mic nights, these public ceremonies will stretch any writer’s abilities. The 5/5 blog presents the 2 Chief Reasons to write and perform occasional poetry: 1] adhere to audience requirements. 2] keep to the 4 Requirements of Song. Now let me add a 3 rd : 3] manipulate structure to stand out.  Poets who do so can provide copies of their poems to participants.  It’s like free publicity.  “All politics is local”, 1930s newspapermen said, and word-of-mouth is the best marketing. Also in the 5/5 blog, is a brief contrast of the inaugural poems of Maya Angelou and Robert Frost.  She gives us a poem as sprawling as American cities while Frost’s “The Gift Outright” is tightly focused and structured.  For the audience, this is the difference between a 30-minute speech and a 5-minute one. It’s the Gettysburg Address that we know and love, not the...

M. A. Lee has published the sixth book in her loosely connected series Hearts in Hazard. While some characters are introduced in previous books (for this novel, A Game of Secrets), it is not necessary to have read those books.  This novel, as are all the novels in the Hearts in Hazard series, are complete and do not contain cliffhangers. The Dangers to Hearts Do broken hearts destroy all dreams?   Years ago, Agatha Helmes’ lover abandoned her.  When her baby died at birth, she thought all her hopes for the future had ended. She poured herself into her family’s farm, but in the last year, mismanagement by three different stewards has the farm losing more money than she can pour into it. Jess Carter occasionally crewed for a known smuggler to bring a little extra into his home.  He fell for a maid working at the Hawthorn Inn.  Then the smuggling ring was arrested.  The woman he thought he loved married another man.  With a bruised ...

May and June and July are jammed with occasions. o    Mother’s and Father’s Days. o    Memorial and Flag and Independence Days. o    Graduation and Wedding and many other types of days. For poets seeking an audience, these occasions offer multiple opportunities to practice craft. Poetic Occasions: 2 Chief Reminders 1] For a poet writing an occasional poem, the most important remembrance is that the audience controls the writing.  Occasions require poets to stretch their abilities without causing deliberate offense to the audience. 2] The poet also needs to remember the 4 Requirements of Song. The writing must be heartfelt without being smarmy.  Powerful lines and strong imagery must keep the audience engaged:  a listening-only audience will break attention faster than a reading one.  Rhetorical devices that emphasize points are especially necessary as they help the audience “hear” the ideas through repetition and cli...