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A collection of poems by and about the various inhabitants of Ponyville, Equestria, and beyond.
For more information on the types of poems included, here are some links: Sestina, Sonnet, English Haiku, Chant Royal, Limericks, Rondeau Redouble', Epyllion in "fourteeners," Rhapsody in hendecasyllables, Glosa, Villanelle, Triolet, Ballade, Rondeau, Ode in terza rima, Elegiac couplets, Military cadence, Pantoum, Free verse, Virelai nouveau, Blank verse, and Virelai ancien.
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Hey, this is really good stuff. I'm loving these so far.
Like... wow. I'm stunned and extremely jealous.
Can you, like, tell me a bit about your writing process for poetry? How much time do you spend on these, how much of a poem changes in revision, how concrete of an idea do you need to begin writing a poem, that sort of stuff? Anything else you'd have to say regarding poetry, too, would be amazing to hear... I mean, I like writing poetry and I thought I was halfway competent at it, but these three chapters alone blow away everything I've ever written.
3474731
To start:
Lemme link you to some pages I did for my webcomic Terebinth some six years ago now where I have the characters talk about putting poems together. There's a whole story going on around these sections, but the first relevant part runs from page 507 to page 518, then the second part picks up on page 523 and runs through page 529. The third stretch goes from page 537 to page 542 and there's one last little piece of advice on page 544.
Give me a couple days, though, and I can probably put together some slightly more coherent comments on the subject....
Mike
Wow, interesting concept ya got here! Haven't read them yet, but I too have done a Poetry Pony collection called "Sentimentality: The Poems of Equestria", to varying degrees of success. I'll be sure to read these individually in time! And maybe (but probably) your poetic flourishes shall touch the ebbing feelings of my heart more so than my exasperatedly drivel I call poetry. Maybe. But probably.
Love always and forever,
-Ghost
Well done in keeping in iambic pentameter.
3484779
Thanks!
I can just see Twilight's glinting grin the first time she read all the rules and regulations for writing a sonnet...
Mike
3484737
Maybe:
It'll get you back in the mood for your own poems? Maybe?
Mike
3484893
I never really considered that before, but...
It's literature with a strict ruleset! It was practically made for her!
Ohh I remember learning about this kind of poem in a creative writing class....I forget what it was called, but this was BEAUTIFUL!
Mind you when I wrote that kind of poem for homework, I failed. I repeated too much, in a literal sense.
3485378
All the fixed verse forms:
Would appeal to her for this reason, I figured, but the sonnet seems to me to have the most barnacles on it as far as regulations go. A lot of the other verse forms I'm using in this collection give you a rhyme scheme, but not a rhythm pattern, so I'm, of course, making up additional rules for them that I then hafta follow. Because that's my idea of fun!
Mike
3485390
I have kind of a:
Mixed relationship with the whole sestina concept. On more than one occasion, I've called it the "beer pong" of formal verse, something that's more a drinking game than a poetic form. But as has turned out to be the case with most everything, when you add Ponies to it, it gets much more fun. And, well, there are six Elements of Harmony, right? So a sestina was just natural!
Mike
Ah, the sonnet: the checklist of poems!
Oh wow. The Ponyville sestina was nice, and Twilight's sonnet was perfectly in character for her, but this section really impressed me. Rainbow Dash has unsuspected heights, clearly. (My favorite line in the whole mess of haikus? "Cyclones? No! Just clouds!"
)
3487072
For extra credit, then:
You try to use polysyllabic words at the beginning and end of as many lines as possible. Conservation of verbiage, I believe Twilight would call it...
Mike
3487084
The fifth section:
Will be a similar collection of limericks from Applejack.
Mike
3487809
I'm looking forwards to seeing those!
I love fixed-form poetry so much. I've written around four notebook pages for an epic poem that shall never be made. It was in tribute to Dwarf Fortress, actually. Inspired by the form of the Canterbury Tales. Too bad the CT is illegible now.
This sonnet is beautiful.
'Twould that poetry could blush, it would.
I can't say I'm a fan of repeating words at the end of lines, or stanzas, in this case. Sorry, to be honest, the sestina (all sestinas, probably), and this procession of haiku grated on me. No accounting for taste. Alone, each of these would probably be swell.
But together, all I can see is clouds!
Clouds clouds clouds!
Clouds.
I was intrigued at saraband, but alas, it was to be used as a synonym for dance. Okay, I guess.
Good job, when will there be moar?
3488927
Thanks!
I've got a Pony mini-epic on the site here, too--an epyllion, if you will--called "The Laughter and the Night" if you're interested in that sort of thing...
Sonnets will always my favorite of the fixed forms. My current plan is to give Spike a Petrarchan one at the end of this collection, actually!
Mike
3488942
I've never much cared for:
Sestinas myself, but it was the realization that the six Elements of Harmony could be used as a sestina's keywords that sparked this whole idea in the first place. With these haiku, I wanted something to tie the whole group of 'em together, and, well, when you're a weather pony, just about ev'rything is a cloud!
Mike
3488955
Is a saraband:
Ever anything other than a dance?
The next update will be in a few days and will feature a cycle of limericks from Applejack.
Mike
3489647
I remember that! I only read the first chapter, it fell off my radar...
Yeesh!
I did not think AJ could go on for 30 limericks and over a thousand words! Yeesh, I say again!
Mike
I couldn't help myself... I read the whole thing aloud to myself... it was beautiful
I'll be honest, I was expecting a Bel-Air here.
I love this one! Limericks are hard, and you wrote a sweet little story with them, to boot.
I love your take on the CMC's cutie mark reveals!
3501579
This comment:
Makes me very happy 'cause I read all my stuff aloud in character voices before I send it out just to make sure it flows right. Thank you!
3501778
Not at all sure:
What "Bel-Air" means in this context, but I'm glad you enjoyed the piece! I had to restart this one a couple times before I got it to work: AJ kept wanting to turn the whole thing into a meditation on the inevitability of death. Which, granted, would make an interesting set of limericks, but it wasn't anything I was willing to spend my time writing...
Mike
3502741
Why do you write your comments:
Like this?
I really like this line in particular. Couldn't tell ya why, but there you have it.
3503072
That line:
Is a prime example of the wonderful serendipity of poetry writing.
See, with a sestina, once you choose the six words that're gonna end each line, there's a set swirling pattern for the subsequent stanzas. The one at the end of the first line, for instance, will end the second line of the next stanza, and the one in the last line will end the first line next time. So I set to work writing a first stanza using the six Elements of Harmony--and when I'd finished, I realized that I couldn't use it as the first stanza. It needed a stanza before it to set it up, so I had to do the swirling pattern in reverse to figure out what words would end the lines in a preceding stanza.
Doing this got me "kindness" at the end of the first line, and I remembered that the word at the end of the first stanza's first line is also the last word of the whole poem. And my brain piped up with the helpful suggestion that I could then end the whole thing with the phrase "kill 'em with kindness" as a way of summing the whole thing up.
And we all lived happily ever after!
Mike
3474731
OK:
I ended up writing a blog post about this because it turns out I can really bloviate on this subject!
Mike
3502834
I was asked this question:
Over on one of my other stories, too, so I'll repeat the answer here as well. I do it for two reasons, one of which, I've just recently realized, doesn't apply on this message board. See, when I was a wee sprat learning on a manual typewriter how to compose letters, we were told that a letter should begin with the salutation, something like "Dear Mr. Dazzle" followed by a colon. One would then work the carriage return twice, hit the "Tab" key and begin the body of the letter.
I kept the practice even when typewriters vanished from the natural world, but online, I usually don't know the actual name of the person I'm addressing. So I took to taking the first few words of whatever I was typing and using them as the salutation like I did with the words "I was asked this question" at the top of this.
But in all actuality, Fimfiction's board supplies a nice, green salutation-equivalent when you click the "reply" button on someone else's comment. Which means I could stop doing my silly little thing here if I wanted to.
The second reason I do it, though, has gotten more and more valid as I've gotten older and my stutter has gotten more pronounced. See, I also put that stutter-step at the beginning of my posts to replicate in some small way the slightly herky-jerky rhythm of my usual speech pattern.
That's all.
Mike
Next up:
Pinkie Pie's epic rendition of How Equestria was Made!
Mike
3515635
Yespls
Well it was about Apples, so naturally I read it in AJ's voice. I loved this one, it's cute and funny and poetic all at once!
Not sure if I've given you one before, but even if I have you can still have another one.
A happy Pinkie Pie as a prize!
Edit: I checked and I haven't given you one yet. I am very ashamed of myself. So here's another one
Awwwwwwwwww, this one was kinda sad but it was beautiful! JUST BEAUTIFUL
In a good way that is
3519591
Thanks!
I shall happily accept however many
s you have to offer!
Mike
3515969
I promise:
That I will do my ding-dangedest not to let Pinkie turn it into some Pony version of Gustav Mahler's ever-so-slightly-depressing song-cycle "The Song of the Earth."
3519595
I'm gonna give Fluttershy a more cheerful one later, but this one had to be done first.
Mike
I really enjoyed these, good work!
Now how were alicorns made?
3551206
That is another story:
And shall be told another time.
Oh, wait. I already did tell that story. Never mind the "Neverending Story" reference, then!
Mike
3533076
Thanks!
I've got a couple more planned, but then this whole poetry thing kinda took me by surprise, so I'll probably just keep it "Incomplete" so I can add things to it whenever the mood strikes me.
Mike
3574879
This needs to be what happens in the show.
3580348
If they do it in rhyme:
They can have the idea free of charge!
Mike
There's some collision between the vocabulary here and the character voice. It was hard for me to read this in Applejack's voice throughout. But for this line, which made me laugh out loud:
> Broken bones, whooping cough, or ennui
… you are forgiven that dissonance.
Even if the words don't feel consistently hers, the story itself is. Solid characterization. There's a few clever subversions ("And I stared and I stared and I stared"), and a thousand words of consistent rhymes is always impressive.
3618195
Thanks!
In my series of stories with "Romance" in the subtitles, I give Applejack a certain flair for words in order to create a contrast to Fluttershy's consistent inability to find the right word when she wants it. I think I must've carried that bit of characterization through to the limericks here...
Mike
Reading this right after reading Past Sins, I can't help but think this is about Nyx. Am i right in saying this?
3625971
Just plain ol':
Princess Luna, actually.
Here, though, is where I shift uncomfortably in my seat and admit that I've never managed to finish "Past Sins." I've tried three or four times, but the way Pen Stroke structures the scenes in the first couple chapters kicks me so hard in the head, I just can't continue. I'm sure it's because he wants to get to Nyx actually showing up in the story, but the way he rushes through the opening, it's as if he's deliberately trying to dispel any possible suspense, and that just makes me grind my teeth.
Mike