Good Morning,

Thank you for visiting My News on this Good Friday and second day of National Poetry Month. 

When I taught, I often tried to reach out to reluctant poets by reminding them they loved music and song lyrics are poems. Taylor Swift demonstrated this in an exhibit at the Nashville Hall of Fame. (If you want to be a songwriter, you may wish to visit Nashville.)

A lyricist may choose to write the music of rebellion. In a recent interview, Gwen Stefani said she wrote her new hit “Slow Clap” to lift people’s mood.    

What is your mood right now? Could you capture it in a song or poem? Like music, poetry has beat or pulse–the main accent of a poem. Read a poem aloud to hear its beat.

A poem’s sound and structure can hint at its meaning.

Meter is the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in many poems. Meter creates a poem’s rhythm. While some poems have regular patterns of rhythm and rhyme, others don’t.

I often employ free verse to deliver my message. Free verse is poetry written without a regular rhyme scheme, meter, or form. Because I dislike forced rhyme, I rarely use rhyming, except in a couplet or quatrain, but occasionally, I challenge myself to write a form poem. I toy with pantoums and sestinas. Right now I’m working on a pantoum. 

Today’s challenge is to write a song or poem with a definite beat or rhyming pattern. I’m planning to let my mood show. Try it. Write a song or poem. Let your mood show–upbeat, blues, jazz.  Could you write a song to change people’s moods as Gwen Stefani did with “Slow Clap”?

I wrote a blues song called “Ain’t It a Shame?” that became the title of my play. When the pandemic is over, I hope it will be produced on stage. Until then, I’m going to keep on writing my mood.