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    When Words Collide: A Crash Course in Writing Poetry
    When Words Collide: A Crash Course in Writing Poetry
    When Words Collide: A Crash Course in Writing Poetry
    Ebook81 pages59 minutes

    When Words Collide: A Crash Course in Writing Poetry

    By A.L.S Vossler

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    About this ebook

    Do you love poetry but not know the first thing about writing it? Is the idea of writing poetry so overwhelming you just want to curl up in a corner? Are you a competent poet who wants to become extraordinary? When Words Collide will have you writing your own poems by the last page.

    In this unique little book, A. L. S. Vossler explains all of the confusing parts of poetry writing in an easy-to-understand manner. You will learn all about structure, rhythm, meter, word choice, and a lot of the most common poetic devices. Finally, A. L. S. Vossler walks through her five-step process for writing poetry, using her own poem as an example.

    If you want to learn more about poetry, then open up this little book and find out what can happen When Words Collide!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherA.L.S Vossler
    Release dateJul 3, 2019
    ISBN9781947955035
    When Words Collide: A Crash Course in Writing Poetry
    Author

    A.L.S Vossler

    A.L.S. Vossler lived in the American Midwest with her husband, two sassy cats, and lifetime collection of four hundred fifty-two My Little Ponies. She passed away after a decade-long struggle with mental illness on December 5, 2018. Her husband is in the process of publishing her unpublished works in her memory.

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      Book preview

      When Words Collide - A.L.S Vossler

      Foreword

      This book about how to write poetry was the last work that A.L.S. Vossler ever completed. She began working on it in the last week of October 2018, finished writing in about 4 days, and edited it during November (while also participating in National Novel-Writing Month). She finished proofreading and formatting the book on Tuesday, December 4, and brought it to a local print shop that afternoon. The next day, Wednesday, December 5, 2018, A.L.S. Vossler lost her eleven-year battle with depression and bipolar disorder, despite all the best efforts of herself, her family, her counselor, and her doctors in keeping her safe. She took her own life around 6:30 that evening. Sadly, she never had a chance to see the finished version of When Words Collide, which has been so meaningful to her family and friends who have received copies since her untimely passing.

      She was torn between a desire to add a bit to this book and publish it for Kindle, and an equal desire to sit on it and just give it as a Christmas present to those named on the dedication page. I have chosen to publish this book as is (although I have tried to improve its formatting), with the addition of this Foreword, as a tribute to my wife. This is the first of what I hope will be several posthumous works I publish for her, including a couple poetry collections she had started, as well as Scylla, the sequel to her first novel Charybda and finale of the Worldstrait series.

      Somehow it seems fitting for A.L.S. Vossler’s first posthumous work to be a poetry-writing guide aimed at new authors, combining both her love of poetry and her desire to help young authors, as shown in her first blog (The Lonely Young Writer) and her love of tutoring.

      It is my hope that those who read When Words Collide will find it useful as they write their own poetry.

      - Chris Vossler, Husband and Executor of the Estate of A.L.S. Vossler

      Chapter One: Introduction

      What is Poetry?

      A poem should not mean / But be.

      —Archibald MacLeish, Ars Poetica

      There are a lot of fruity and elitist ideas out there about the definition of poetry. In his poem Ars Poetica, Archibald MacLeish suggests that the purpose of a poem is to exist for its own sake, independent of any meaning. While this is a romanticized view of poetry, the truth of the matter is that the simplest definition of a poem is the same definition as all writing: a collection of words to which we assign meaning. Without meaning, there is not much point to writing in the first place—especially poetry, which in my opinion is essentially meaning condensed.

      Now, I am not here to wax philosophical about the nature of poetry or present any ontological arguments about it. I had to deal with all of that in college and it was a snooze fest and a half. Rather, I am here to give you the skinny on how to write poetry. Unfortunately, this does bring us back

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