What I learned from Dr. A.V.Koshy's 'A Treatise on Poetry for Beginners'

I bought on Kindle 'A Treatise on Poetry for Beginners' by Dr. A.V.Koshy. I've written poems without having done literature or studying poetry.

I just love words and how they flow. So I have no idea how to write poems, but that doesn't stop me from reading, writing, and appreciating poems.

The title of the book indicates it is for beginners, and I consider myself one, so here I'm the right target audience.

This slim volume reproduced a series of Facebook posts by the author on poetry, complete with timestamps.

I learned that those who have a sound grasp of punctuation, spelling, and grammar, also known as the nuts and bolts, or the mechanics of writing in any language, are better equipped to write poetry. There's hope for me, yet!

Rhyme is an ornament of poetry. Types of rhyme include internal rhyme, slant rhyme, eye rhyme, and ear rhyme. Rhyme Schemes cover ab ab, etc.

Parallelism is a technique used in poetry. Incidentally( this is my 2 cents), the term parallelism is used in English grammar to cover how bulleted and itemized lists are written.

Sound and imagery are very important to poems. Musical, rhythmic, auditory, and onomatopoeic images, for example, "Faster than fairies, faster than witches, hedges and houses, bridges and ditches, and charging along like troops in a battle, all through the meadows the horses and cattle". (R.L. Stevenson/ From a Railway Carriage) are lines the author quotes. I was fascinated by these lines.

He also quotes and briefly discusses a poem or stanza from the work of T.S. Eliot, R.L.Stevenson, Emily Dickinson, Dylan Thomas, Robert Frost, Browning, Rimbaud, and others.

On the whole, the little book taught me something, the beginner that I am. It could have definitely used a round of copy editing, though.

I was also surprised to find that the same book goes by the name 'The Art of Poetry' - A self-styled verbal weaving, which has been released by AuthorsPress and is priced at Rs. 125 for a physical copy.

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