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The Rhythm Method, Razzmatazz and Memory: How To Make Your Poetry Swing
Trace Poetry's Long Blue Line and Discover the Power and Music in Your Own VoicePoems are made of words, not ideas. Those words are rhythmic and, when chosen and composed properly, are capable of entering a reader's or listener's body and resonating. "The Rhythm Method, Razzmatazz, and Memory" explains the historical connections between word, image, and sound to empower you to create work that is dynamic, vital, and musical–to create poems that live in the air.
The first section, Learning to Listen, begins by reflecting on the birth of the American poetic voice, teaching your to find your own voice by dissecting a poem's line, sound by sound, rediscovering not only the power of their poetry but also where that power comes from.
The second section, Learning to Observe, outlines the history of foreign influences–from the surrealism of French writers Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud to that of Spanish artists Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali–inspiring you to explore your experimental impulses and discover new ways of seeing.
The third section, Learning to Speak, focuses on the influence of music on twentieth-century poetry, beginning with the troubadour and the slave experience, through the eras of jazz and blues, and onto the slam stages of the modern city. The different strategies of these performers offer insight into your development as a creator and prepare you to act as a vocal interpreter of your work.
"The Rhythm Method" equips you with the tools you need to extract the sparks of language, art, and music that have always stimulated and nourished our poetic vernacular and to use the fire to forge your own unique voice and your own style of performance.
The first section, Learning to Listen, begins by reflecting on the birth of the American poetic voice, teaching your to find your own voice by dissecting a poem's line, sound by sound, rediscovering not only the power of their poetry but also where that power comes from.
The second section, Learning to Observe, outlines the history of foreign influences–from the surrealism of French writers Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud to that of Spanish artists Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali–inspiring you to explore your experimental impulses and discover new ways of seeing.
The third section, Learning to Speak, focuses on the influence of music on twentieth-century poetry, beginning with the troubadour and the slave experience, through the eras of jazz and blues, and onto the slam stages of the modern city. The different strategies of these performers offer insight into your development as a creator and prepare you to act as a vocal interpreter of your work.
"The Rhythm Method" equips you with the tools you need to extract the sparks of language, art, and music that have always stimulated and nourished our poetic vernacular and to use the fire to forge your own unique voice and your own style of performance.
- GenresPoetry
328 pages, Paperback
First published March 12, 2007
4 people are currently reading
18 people want to read
About the author
Keith Flynn
17 books4 followersAs a widely traveled poet and performer, Flynn has always used different voices to accomplish his aims. Serving as lyricist and lead singer from 1986 to 1998, Flynn’s poems were blasted to full effect by the double-barreled sonic accompaniment of The Crystal Zoo, which produced three albums: Swimming Through Lake Eerie (1992), Pouch (1996) and Nervous Splendor (2003), an innovative compilation of music and spoken word. Flynn is currently on hiatus with his most recent group, 3-man combo, The Holy Men, whose first album, LIVE at Diana Wortham Theatre, was released in 2011.
Flynn is also the author of five collections of poetry: The Talking Drum (1991), The Book of Monsters (1994), The Lost Sea (2000), The Golden Ratio (2007), and Colony Collapse Disorder (2013). His first collection of essays, The Rhythm Method, Razzmatazz and Memory: How To Make Your Poetry Swing, was published by Writer’s Digest Books in 2007.
His poems have appeared in hundreds of magazines, journals, and anthologies in the United States and Europe, including The American Literary Review, Ecotone, Cave Wall, The Poetics of American Song Lyrics, The Carolina Quarterly, The Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, The Cuirt Journal (Ireland), Earth and Soul: The Kostroma Anthology (Russia), The 20th Century Anthology of NC Poets, Poetry Wales, Takahe (New Zealand), Margie, Shenandoah, Quarterly Review (Singapore), Rattle, and The Southern Poetry Review.
He has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Award, was awarded the Paumanok Poetry Prize in 1996, and the 2013 North Carolina Literary Fellowship. Flynn has given thousands of performances from his work across North America and abroad. In 2005 and 2006, Flynn served as the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet for North Carolina, working to promote the cultural importance of poetry in his home state. He is also the founder and editor of The Asheville Poetry Review, a literary journal established in 1994 that has published over 1,500 writers from 22 countries.
Flynn is also the author of five collections of poetry: The Talking Drum (1991), The Book of Monsters (1994), The Lost Sea (2000), The Golden Ratio (2007), and Colony Collapse Disorder (2013). His first collection of essays, The Rhythm Method, Razzmatazz and Memory: How To Make Your Poetry Swing, was published by Writer’s Digest Books in 2007.
His poems have appeared in hundreds of magazines, journals, and anthologies in the United States and Europe, including The American Literary Review, Ecotone, Cave Wall, The Poetics of American Song Lyrics, The Carolina Quarterly, The Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, The Cuirt Journal (Ireland), Earth and Soul: The Kostroma Anthology (Russia), The 20th Century Anthology of NC Poets, Poetry Wales, Takahe (New Zealand), Margie, Shenandoah, Quarterly Review (Singapore), Rattle, and The Southern Poetry Review.
He has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Award, was awarded the Paumanok Poetry Prize in 1996, and the 2013 North Carolina Literary Fellowship. Flynn has given thousands of performances from his work across North America and abroad. In 2005 and 2006, Flynn served as the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet for North Carolina, working to promote the cultural importance of poetry in his home state. He is also the founder and editor of The Asheville Poetry Review, a literary journal established in 1994 that has published over 1,500 writers from 22 countries.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 27, 2016
I heard this author speak, referring to sections of this book; his inspired presentation made me think his students must be lucky to have him as a teacher. So, I bought the book: a guided tour, at a gallop, of the history of poetry, how cultures and movements--and the non-literary arts, particularly jazz--influence writing and each other. Sample chapter: "The Troubadors and the European Diaspora." Another sample chapter that sounds more oriented toward the practicing writer, "Dynamism and Vibratory Space: What Editors Want," draws upon Keats, Jean Cocteau, and Voltaire in reaching the (unsurprising) conclusion that you need to do your research before submitting to a particular editor. Flynn has managed to amalgamate a lot of material, and infuse it with his own experience as a journal editor, a poet, and musician. So, for poets looking for a philosophical "how to," there might be too much history; for folks interested in literary history, there might be too much subjectivity and flair, as fun and well-written as it is. The abundance of appropriate quotations from a wide array of authors--from Andre Breton to Bob Dylan--will make you fold down a few pages for future reference.
January 30, 2010
Razzmatazz and the Rhythm Method
By Keith Flynn
Writers Digest Press
ISBN #13: 978-1-58297-404-0
By far the best book I’ve ever read on writing poetry. Not only does Flynn break it down into practical workable techniques in memorable original language, but he offers a host of references that inspire as well as teach. Luckily, Keith writes prose like he speaks, full of drama, enthusiasm, energy and with that sometimes off-kilter glint in his eye that dares you to do it too.
"...What the reader craves, and I've spoken here already about the reader's primacy, are beautiful accidents, surprise and astonishment in the poem, doors opening outward to true vistas for the first time. Something built up from within, not merely extracted from the exterior. The connective tissue is the evanescent need to become part of something that is larger than humans or mere language, but parts of both compressed into radioactive poetry; the right words in the right order, lending light. A poem is an animal big enough to ride, teeming with unexpected energy, charting a course into the unknown, moments of agility and delight that do not throw the rider off its back, but serve as reminders of the exquisite muscularity and nimbleness of the animal, and the reader is made more beautiful as well, by having ridden it."
--Excerpt from Chapter 5
The Rhythm Method, Razzmatazz and Memory:
How To Make Your Poetry Swing
Keith was one of my main inspirations, maybe 15 years ago, when I saw him perform, charismatic passionate rocker guy at Al’s Pumphouse in Greenville, SC and there he was selling his slim volumes of poetry from the back of the club which always smelled like beer and sweat and when I took the book home and read it, I was blown away. How could one person be so good at two very diverse creative pursuits?
His poetry is intelligent, quirky, original, challenging us to open our minds, while as a singer and performer he’s a fun and dynamic but rather down to earth guy, always smiling out of a strange little grin that makes you feel like he knows more than you do. Well, he does.
But he’s willing to teach if you’re willing to listen – actually he demands that you listen and you do and you are stirred. And after this book, even portions of it, you will write better poetry than you believed you could ever write and you’ll take chances and you’ll find your voice and your words will inspire others.
And underlying it all, is a message, intended or not – the same message I hope underlies every issue of Fissure – once you truly wake up to the fact of your unique nature and individuality
and once you are tuned into how much personal power such an enlivening belief offers, you will be forever changed into a shaker and mover – no matter what form you choose. And how there is so much more to the world than we are taught and how once we pull away the veil…
"...We have been conditioned to believe that our external reality is true, but does not match our internal reality; however, there is an infinite sea of potential. Our brains are lit by what we see and by what we think we see, making the process of the past just as real as the lived moment viewed by the eyes. The brain processes 400 billion bits of information per second, but we're only aware of about 2000 of those. We spend the majority of our time eliminating waste, disposing of random sensory projections, accepting the symbols and images that occur the most or serve our bodies best. The integration of reality is always slower than its actuality. We need patterns to promote the reality we want most, and routines are formed, expectations established, leaving the unconscious acceptance of the lowest common denominator.
But the universe is essentially empty with cell particles
disappearing and reappearing over and over at the subatomic level.
A particle can be in one or more positions at the same time, but is
fixed by our brain into a single place. When we look away, there are waves of possibility, when we look back, the particles of experience are fixed. 'Atoms are not things,' said Heisenberg, 'They are only tendencies.' The real trick to life, that which the Surrealists
understood intuitively and without benefit of physics, is not to be in
the know, but to be in the mystery. Most of our assumptions about the world are proven over and over again to be false, but the tangible reality of the body is almost always true--gloriously, mysteriously present."
--Excerpt from Chapter 24
The Rhythm Method, Razzmatazz and Memory:
How To Make Your Poetry Swing
– Gail Gray
By Keith Flynn
Writers Digest Press
ISBN #13: 978-1-58297-404-0
By far the best book I’ve ever read on writing poetry. Not only does Flynn break it down into practical workable techniques in memorable original language, but he offers a host of references that inspire as well as teach. Luckily, Keith writes prose like he speaks, full of drama, enthusiasm, energy and with that sometimes off-kilter glint in his eye that dares you to do it too.
"...What the reader craves, and I've spoken here already about the reader's primacy, are beautiful accidents, surprise and astonishment in the poem, doors opening outward to true vistas for the first time. Something built up from within, not merely extracted from the exterior. The connective tissue is the evanescent need to become part of something that is larger than humans or mere language, but parts of both compressed into radioactive poetry; the right words in the right order, lending light. A poem is an animal big enough to ride, teeming with unexpected energy, charting a course into the unknown, moments of agility and delight that do not throw the rider off its back, but serve as reminders of the exquisite muscularity and nimbleness of the animal, and the reader is made more beautiful as well, by having ridden it."
--Excerpt from Chapter 5
The Rhythm Method, Razzmatazz and Memory:
How To Make Your Poetry Swing
Keith was one of my main inspirations, maybe 15 years ago, when I saw him perform, charismatic passionate rocker guy at Al’s Pumphouse in Greenville, SC and there he was selling his slim volumes of poetry from the back of the club which always smelled like beer and sweat and when I took the book home and read it, I was blown away. How could one person be so good at two very diverse creative pursuits?
His poetry is intelligent, quirky, original, challenging us to open our minds, while as a singer and performer he’s a fun and dynamic but rather down to earth guy, always smiling out of a strange little grin that makes you feel like he knows more than you do. Well, he does.
But he’s willing to teach if you’re willing to listen – actually he demands that you listen and you do and you are stirred. And after this book, even portions of it, you will write better poetry than you believed you could ever write and you’ll take chances and you’ll find your voice and your words will inspire others.
And underlying it all, is a message, intended or not – the same message I hope underlies every issue of Fissure – once you truly wake up to the fact of your unique nature and individuality
and once you are tuned into how much personal power such an enlivening belief offers, you will be forever changed into a shaker and mover – no matter what form you choose. And how there is so much more to the world than we are taught and how once we pull away the veil…
"...We have been conditioned to believe that our external reality is true, but does not match our internal reality; however, there is an infinite sea of potential. Our brains are lit by what we see and by what we think we see, making the process of the past just as real as the lived moment viewed by the eyes. The brain processes 400 billion bits of information per second, but we're only aware of about 2000 of those. We spend the majority of our time eliminating waste, disposing of random sensory projections, accepting the symbols and images that occur the most or serve our bodies best. The integration of reality is always slower than its actuality. We need patterns to promote the reality we want most, and routines are formed, expectations established, leaving the unconscious acceptance of the lowest common denominator.
But the universe is essentially empty with cell particles
disappearing and reappearing over and over at the subatomic level.
A particle can be in one or more positions at the same time, but is
fixed by our brain into a single place. When we look away, there are waves of possibility, when we look back, the particles of experience are fixed. 'Atoms are not things,' said Heisenberg, 'They are only tendencies.' The real trick to life, that which the Surrealists
understood intuitively and without benefit of physics, is not to be in
the know, but to be in the mystery. Most of our assumptions about the world are proven over and over again to be false, but the tangible reality of the body is almost always true--gloriously, mysteriously present."
--Excerpt from Chapter 24
The Rhythm Method, Razzmatazz and Memory:
How To Make Your Poetry Swing
– Gail Gray
February 29, 2016
I like this book. It's got destinct parts.
The first part is about how good poetry is and how to make good poetry. The author, Keith Flynn, can really talk about poetry and how good it is. He must write all kinds of metaphore spinning it for his great love in his life, poetry. His admiration is inspiration (hopefully for my songs).
The middle part is a history lesson, which is good on the one-hand, other times it is a complete bore (i.e. French Prose Poetry). He continues with more history on Surrealism and other art movements of Europe. His point is to show the connection between the poets of that time and the artists they admired and wrote about. It is completely different from the first part of the book and the least interesting.
The third part is contemporary history, the driving force of creativity in poetry now, the folk song and hip hop (AKA Slam). The author speaks a lot about the blues and it's progressions from one decade to the next. He writes about many different genres, but they are often too brief and like the last part, the connection to poetry is often very loose.
All and all I liked it but was expecting a book more about poetry than I was presented.
The first part is about how good poetry is and how to make good poetry. The author, Keith Flynn, can really talk about poetry and how good it is. He must write all kinds of metaphore spinning it for his great love in his life, poetry. His admiration is inspiration (hopefully for my songs).
The middle part is a history lesson, which is good on the one-hand, other times it is a complete bore (i.e. French Prose Poetry). He continues with more history on Surrealism and other art movements of Europe. His point is to show the connection between the poets of that time and the artists they admired and wrote about. It is completely different from the first part of the book and the least interesting.
The third part is contemporary history, the driving force of creativity in poetry now, the folk song and hip hop (AKA Slam). The author speaks a lot about the blues and it's progressions from one decade to the next. He writes about many different genres, but they are often too brief and like the last part, the connection to poetry is often very loose.
All and all I liked it but was expecting a book more about poetry than I was presented.
August 3, 2014
Keith Flynn is a masterful teller of tales on the subject of Rhythm and music in poetry. He starts you off with his forte, the surrealists, and works upward through time, weaving stories of artists and poets that are intriguing and funny. He speaks on the zeal and subject of spicing up verse and poetry and then speaks on the many subjects and ideas of not just poetry, but other mediums and influences. A wonderful book, filled with many surprises.
March 4, 2009
Very well written, combining knowledge, insight, research and the author's own poetry to decipher, no, to reveal ways of poetry's rhythms.
May 1, 2017
I love the way Keith Flynn put this book together. This is one of the few books I've read more than once.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews