This blog is about poetry. The sheer love of it–the art of poetry, the music of words. In this context, we will explore all aspects of poetry. Some broad strokes are: (1) What is poetry? What is not poetry? (2) What is the inspiration which leads to placing your heart on paper? (3) How is it transformed or shaped so that the reader/listener can connect to its heart in a universal way?
From time to time, I will teach about the art of poetry and the crafting of poems. I’ll examine poems, including my own published works, profile poets, tease you with poetry prompts, discuss literary projects, promote products and services, comment on resources, announce selected poetry news and share poetry miscellany that might be helpful to you.
John C. Mannone: The Art of Poetry 
Welcome to the wordpress world! SO good to see you here! I’m looking forward to the varied topics you know so much about!
Thank you, McKenna. I appreciate that.
This is my very first blog and I’m groping my way around. It will be an adventure for me as well as for my readers!
John
Hi, John: I think you know I am working in Chiapas and don’t have regular access to the internet, but will stop in from time to time when I do.
Ah! Enjoy the weather!
Thanks for stopping by!
John
Gorgeous John!! Really. Thanks for sharing the link. I’ll add you to my blog list.
Many thanks, Gay!
John
I have never considered myself a poet. What I learned mostly came from you. When the lightbulb over my head went off, it was always with you trying to get through my thick skull. So I know you will reach others through this. Likewise, I have always said “John C. Mannone” is going places. Not once have I been proved wrong, especially with your most recent acceptance for poetry at Apex, a most prestigious market.
I am a fan.
Thank you so much, John. I really appreciate that.
And Abyss and Apex Speculative Fiction Magazine has been such an encouragement to me. As far as I know, Hard Rain and Her Name was Pelotit are both still on hold with them 🙂
John
Hi John,
I’ll first say that I’m not much of a fan of blogs (enough great reading out there and not enough time), but yours looks like a very promising one. I can see you’ve put your poetic heart and mind into its creation, and I know you’ll maintain it with the same spirit. I’ve added it to my very limited list of blogs that I follow (about three at the moment). Wishing you much continued good fortune in the world of writing and publishing… Fondly, Cathy K.
Thank you so much, Cathy. It is always great to hear from you. I appreciate your kind words.
I have been hearing great things about your editing business, too. So I will be delighted to link your website (and blog if you get one).
Good luck with your continued publishing success, too.
Warm regards,
John
Nice look John. I love poetry. Don’t write much, but sometimes some things I write are more poetry than prose. Look forward to reading your posts and Hoo-Ray for Blogging Poetry!
Thank you for your support, Lucinda! Your poetry will definitely help your prose!
John
Hi John,
Thanks for guiding me here. I’m glad I found you and will be back.
Best,
Laurel
http://splashfiction.wordpress.com/
You are most welcome, Laurel. I am glad you like what you saw.
John
Way to go, John! I’m sure It’ll be a brilliant website full of quite interesting articles. Looking forward to reading them!
Cheers
Thank you, Bolt. More will be forthcoming in the near future, but fortunately, there are some meaty ones already uploaded. Notice the nested menus. Enjoy!
John
I just want to say I enjoy your poetry very much (in fact your poem “boogeyman” reminded me of one my failed poems that I just had to scaffold it).
I will definitely be reading more of your poems in the future to see if I can glean anything for my own.
Well thank you, Robert. I am pleased that you like my work. “Boogeyman” is an interesting piece and one that is outside the box for me. I have been diligently working on the Nightsongs multimedia project. It is an integrated poetry-sound-images-commentary DVD project about the preservation of the dark skies and the raising of awareness of the vagaries of light pollution. “Boogeyman” is one such poem. It addresses the belief that, with respect to security lighting, “the more light, the better.” Of course, this is foolishness. In any case, I am collaborating with a several visual and sound artists; I hope for a release sometime this year.
I mentioned that “Boogeyman” is not the typical kind of poetry I write (but I like this kind, too). Rhyming poetry is rare for me (and when I do it, I usually use no deliberate end-stopped lines and I try to avoid hard end rhyme like the plague, but slant rhyme is okay. I also avoid a fixed meter. “Boogeyman” seems to make me a liar on many counts. LOL. However, with multimedia, it seems to work quite well.
The overwhelming majority of my work (even when it is speculative fiction poetry) is written with attention to literary crafting. In the same issue of Liquid Imagination (linked above via Boogeyman), you will notice “A Passing Storm.” That represents more my style. Or you can see the one that just appeared (January 2011) in the prestigious venue, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, called “The Pines of Maunabo,” a love poem.
You might have seen my published work posted to sfplanet in hopes of getting a nomination for the 2011 Rhysling Poetry Award. The competition is tough.
John
This comment is related to your association with Silver Pen. I enjoyed your article in response to the question of flash fiction as posted on that site. Do you have an opinion on what some consider microfiction? I have seen examples of this on Twitter where the limit, of course, is 140 characters. I made a couple of attempts, it’s quite difficult.
Best regards,
Eva
Thanks. Eva, I am pleased that my comments were helpful.
I do have an opinion on what microfiction is—it’s any piece of prose lower in word count than what flash fiction is. Most people agree on the upper limit of flash to be 1000 words (though it might be administratively controlled to a lower word count), but the lower limit is more in debate. Some say 100, 200, or even 400. Personally, I like 250-300 words. So anything lower that that is microfiction, whether it be a six-word story that Hemingway set the standard for, or a one hundred-word drabble that’s become popular in both mainstream and speculative fiction circles. Of course, you know about the twitter fiction and the such, which is yet another special case of microfiction with a hard limit of a hundred and forty characters instead of words.
When there is such an economy of language, the lines between fiction and poetry are even more blurred than the trend today (as evidenced by anecdotal poems, which might be conversational, as opposed to imagery-rich lyrical poetry). However, even with all the prose elements sneaking into the poetry arena of these microfiction pieces, one of the important characteristics that separates them from each other is the impeccable rhythm that I would insist on being present in prose poetry.
I hope this helps,
John
John, are you a 1970 graduate of loyola? If so, how the heck are you? Just had dinner with another grad. Contact me if you want. Bernie
Love the cap, it’s such an unusual piece of haberdashery for a physics prof (at least the ones I know). I see your poems at least sometimes achieve similarly odd juxtapositions. This could be interesting. Think I’ll stick around a while to see…
Thank you, Marjorie. I appreciate that. I often claim that my right-brain came out of comatose in 2004 🙂 I have been recalcitrant in my postings, but one of my 2016 writing goals is to be a bit more faithful with the blog site.
Just finished your article “Commercialization of Christmas.” Great approach and perspective. Thank you for your diligent work with he feasts and Jewish holidays. Jesus is the greatest present indeed!
Thank you, Andrew, I appreciate that. I am most fortunate to have been invited to be a frequent contributor to GoodNews Christian Magazine. And because I identify myself as PoeticWord Ministries, I get to include poetry from time to time. See my last two contributions in July and August. My next one will be in December. Here’s an index of my contributions to date:
“We Are His Workmanship, His Poetry” (June 2016, page 46) is about our gifts and introduces my PoeticWord Ministries.
“Green Salad” (July 2016, page 44) is a recipe, poem and short theological discussion on church unification. (The publisher altered the formatting of my poem to look like a piece of prose because of space limitations.)
“Commercialization of Christmas: It Might Not Be A Bad Thing After All” (October 2016, page 46) brings attention to the likely birth of Christ being this time of year–during the Jewish holy days in the month Tisri on the Hebrew calendar (late September/early October on our calendars).
“Those Boring Genealogies…Not!” addresses Christ’s ancestry in Matthew and Luke in perhaps a unique or at least in a little known way. It is forthcoming in February 2017.
John, on the subject of ‘rhyme and rhythm/metre’ I am someone who feels that it is not only enjoyable for children, and adults, but for children it is such an important tool in the ‘literacy’ department. A good children’s poet will have excellent phonological awareness (ie the ability to break words down into sounds on paper) and this will, in turn, be transferred to the children and will help them greatly with reading and writing. I have just written about 1,400 poems for children (and adults) of all ages and about99~% of them are written with good rhyme and metre. You can see them by Googling JOSIE’S POEMS. They go out to children in 188 countries of the world I’m told by Google Analytics and I get approximately 1000 visitors a day during term time.
Hi again, Josie. I appreciate your return visits to echo your important message. Keep up the good work.
Looking forward to reading! Physics and Poetry is a heady combination.
John,
Writing to say I like your poems in the 2017-2018 Red Coyote, especially “Carrots.” Would you permit me to put it on my blog with comments? It’s something I’m just learning to do.
Also, we’ve published you before in Sin Fronteras Journal, of which I am an editor and would be happy to see more. See sinfronterasjournal.com for that.
Ellen Young, http://www.freethoughtandmetaphor.com
Hello Ellen, Sorry for the delay (Google seems to think all the responses to my WordPress is trash, which I check periodically because of that). Thank you for the nice words and invitation. For some reason, I needed that encouragement this morning! Yes, you may certainly blog my poem(s). My email address is domained with gmail with the usual dot com and the front part of it is jcmannone (the games we must play to thwart the spambots).