Poetry is fun.
With adaptable formats
and many styles.

Yeah, haikus are tricky, albeit fun, if you can get the syllables to fit just right. There are as many styles and formats to poetry as there are styles and formats to writing in general. Choosing the right one is rarely as simple as saying "I choose you, short story format!" or anything like that. Maybe in anime it could be, but sadly we live in a less ridiculous reality.

As I stated yesterday, I prefer the free style format for writing poetry. But for some the haiku style may work better. Or the sonnet, with its rhyme scheme and historical pension for emo-ness.

I've gone through several styles of poem formats, thanks to way too many English classes in college (woo, Creative Writing majors). And after four years of battling business writing, I've managed to forget a lot of the mechanics to poems. Sure, I remember the basics behind rhyming schemes, stanzas, and the lack of general rules regarding punctuation. But there's a whole lot more that has now been erased, like a paper and pencil sketch. There's still a vague outline of what I learned, but it's too fuzzy to make out clearly.

Being the responsible writer that I am, realizing just how much knowledge I had forgotten, I promptly procrastinated on skimming through my reference shelves to brush up on poetic styles. Having kept a majority of my school books, and continuously buying more writing guides, outlines, and how-tos, I have enough material to read through if I want to re-learn something or even learn something new.

But you know how it is – the Procrastination Pirates are a persistent bunch. What's a Word Ninja to do?

Well, I tried drafting a pantoum to poke the Procrastination Pirates with, but it resulted in me mostly flopping about while the pirates ate cheese poofs and laughed at me. When that didn't work I wielded a sharp sestina at them, but my stanzas were a bit rusty and my word choices were stale and flimsy. The Procrastination Pirates were not impressed.

After several anti-climactic battles I pointed out that I'd made several successful attempts at literary productivity, just with little presentable outcome. The pirates cowered at my logic and took sail to lazier lands. After the dust had settled and the sun was setting, I took my scraps of poetry and filed them away for later pokage. You never know when a couple stanzas here or there can be revised and polished into something presentable. It just takes some time and tinkering. And a bit of persistence against Procrastination Pirates. Alliteration tends to help against that.

And if set styles aren't for you, there's always free style, which lets you get away with pretty much everything. But I figure, if you're going to go and break the rules of poetry and machete your own path through poetic styles, then it's best to learn the rules properly. That way you know all their weaknesses and they become easier to circumvent and shatter altogether.