its great that you want to write poems that frequently :]

i usually just write it when the mood strikes, which isn't very oftenxD

i'm new aha.  

you guys should read the new poems i sent in      hopefully you guys like it!

I hope my site suggestions are not getting annoying; I'm just trying to offer upgrade recommendations which will enhance the PoetryOnly.com experience, which no one seems to be doing—that I can see.

Years ago a friend and I wrote a poem together. We traded off lines and eventually made a complete poem. Actually we made two but the other got silly. 

Here's how to do it:

- You first need to start a thread here in the forum.

- Give your thread a poem name or subject to be named later.

- If you started the thread you are [the conductor]. Like in a band (I am a seasoned musician) you the conductor entertains ideas and suggested poem lines from other members and leads the composition, deciding which verses will make it into the final poem. You can also take recommendations for the poem's title if you wish, or start it off with a title; or give it a title with no subject direction and see where it goes. It's up to the poem's head.

- Everyone should respect the decisions of the leader, the poet who started the thread, understanding that the leader may choose to reject certain ideas while grabbing on to ideas that are in line with their thoughts (or whim). Don't take a line rejection as a personal rejection.

- A complete poem should be recognized as a group effort no matter who started the poem. Any member who's line was used or adapted for the poem should be mentioned as poem co-owners who have rights to use the poem, but there will have to be group consensus to receive money for it unless it is agreed that the one who started it has full rights to publishing; the other contributers can still use it at readings and attach their name to the group who wrote it; however all names must be credited and attached to the final product. We can discuss the particular rules here. It could also be viewed like a team trophy which stays at the school so to speak.

This could even be made into a separate forum. We could have poem compilations written by the members of P.O.

The poem my old friend and I wrote together turned out real good. Most of the lines are mine, but Bert really helped pull the thought along to what it is. Here it is. It's poem #17 of 63 in my first compilation. I gave it a five star rating which I had already been doing to my poems. I will enter it in the poems archive later.

All my works are copyright protected.

"The Chase"

To her eyes I delve within

Though in my heart I see no sin

Would that I in her heart see

To know she sees the same as me

If I could see the end result

To time I'd give no haste

For to hurry love unto it's end

Would seem a bitter waste

Though if an end exist at all

Whatever it may be

I think I'll give this no more thought

For to spoil the beauty of the chase

What worth the end to reach

—Jules T. Roberts

It doesn't have to be absolutely necessary but I am a big fan of meter, that is, I like to feel some sense of underlying beat. It doesn't have to be constant, but I like to feel some rhythm. There are definite exceptions.

A poem may have form that is OK, not great, but it may speak to my heart and I am compelled to up it by a star.

A poem that has no meter and bad or no punctuation and sounds more like something an average person thinks or speaks out loud than a poem will probably get two stars from me.

I have a hard time giving only one star; I have yet to do so, it will happen eventually but I know some effort went into writing it.

I have given three stars to some poems already, either well written poems or those which have been bumped up a notch for deep, heartfelt content.

I am reserving four or five stars for real good or masterpiece works.

Those are my thoughts. What are your thoughts on ratings?

1) Suzanne Vega. Recognized as a living poet as well as song writer.

2) Neil Peart of Rush. I have also read most of his book Ghost Rider.

There are others like Sting, but I want to hear what you have.

1) The Tiger and the Snow (a.k.a. La tigre e la neve) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0419198/

Awesome movie! You can get lost in the way this guy breaths poetry in daily life.

2) Cyrano de Bergerac — http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099334/

Also Awesome! I own Cyrano but not Tigers. They both have subtitles; but hay, we are all readers here right.

You may have a hard time finding them in America as they are foreign imports, you can probably get them from netflix.com, but rent them and post your thoughts. You may end up owning them.

What I recommend:

1) Get a good book that covers proper punctuation, style and grammar usage. Don't WIKI punctuation for the same reason that colleges discourage it's use—because WIKI is edited by persons who may not have credible sources for their entries. Educated people in this world take others more serious and treat them with higher initial respect when they speak proper, write proper, and spell proper. Learning to use commas, or how to avoid their overuse; or to insert a semicolon, em-dash, or ellipsis points (three not four or five), or when to put a period within quotes or after them will make you look good—and annoy editors less. . . and for goodness sake, please use some punctuation, at least periods. Ending a line in a poem without a period or comma can be acceptable and common practice by novice and pro alike if one is sure to begin the trailing line on a new line, not connected within one long line without any indication where to break the meter. 

2) Continue to devote yourself to correct spelling. When I read poems online I have a hard time giving a good rating to a poem with broken english and full of slang, gansta/rap, or the abbreviations too common to internet chat (or a poem which lacks any and all punctuation). "Poetic License" can get a person by to a degree; however it can easily become a crutch and an excuse. Intentional word errors will have more impact when used sparingly and contrasted with good form. If someone submitted to me a resume filled with these I could not view them as taught, or well educated. For me, I learned the value of laying off the spellcheck. Let spellcheck highlight spelling mistakes, but instead of letting spellcheck  correct your error and replace it, exercise your brain muscle by first trying to figure out where you went wrong. After you have thought your way through a trouble word in your vocabulary a number of times you will come to find when you look back that you are not any longer misspelling that word. I know this from my experience. It can also be a good practice to write poems on a word processor native to your home computer on which you can correct and perfect, and then transferring it to the web not in a rough draft form. We each must continue to learn proper spelling well after we leave entry level schools because, dispite what they may have taught you, there are no hard fast rules to english language with it's roots in so many distant languages—it's a mutt language and at one time spelling was more phonic than than rudimentary. So says the book Painless Spelling, —Mary Elizabeth Podhaizer

This is not an end all to this subject, yet I can guarantee that the higher in the chain of authoritative voice in the world of verse, the greater, and steadier the consensus; this includes the guy who matters when you submit it to be published.

My goal with this thread is only to encourage good form. Please chime in on this discussion. I hope this is helpful and informative. —Jules

Soon to be outdated by that guy down there .