Other Poetry Pages

• Gwenllian's Poetry Primer — About Welsh poetic forms
• Forgotten Ground Regained — Accentual-alliterative poetry
• Poetry Gnosis: A Resource for Learning and Teaching Poetry — A site with a considerable amount of technical information.

Writing and Poetry Blogs

• Genreality — A blog about writing genre fiction by several professional writers.
• Storyfix.com — Author Larry Brooks' writing site. I found his Story Structure series particularly helpful.

Blackwood's Writing Articles on Other Sites

• Understanding Poetry — Accentual-Syllabic, Accentual, and Syllabic Meters — All about the difference between Old English- and Norse-style meter, the more familiar meter of most rhyming poetry, and haiku.
• Tips for Writers — How to Evaluate Critiques — How to make sense out of the feedback you get, even if you don't have an editor's attention and haven't found the perfect critique partner.
• How to Write a Petrarchan Sonnet — In which I describe the form and analyze Milton's "On His Blindness" as an example
• How to Write a Shakespearean Sonnet — I describe the form and analyze Shakespeare's Sonnet 3. Also a mention of Spenserian variations, and Vikram Seth's.

Reference Articles in Blackwood's Journal

Old Germanic Poetic Forms

• Tolkien's Sigurd and Gudrun: The Verse Form (Fornyrðislag) — An article explaining accentual poetry, alliteration, and the most common verse form in Old Norse and Old English poetry. Explains the meter of Beowulf.
• Old Norse Poetic Forms: Málaháttr. Maybe. — In which I describe an Old Norse accentual verse form in which lines have five syllables. A variant of fornyrðislag.
• Old Norse Poetic Forms: Ljóðaháttr — An explanation of an Old Norse form in which four-stress lines alternate with three-stress lines.
• Old Norse Poetic Forms: Kviðuháttr — An Old Norse form where alternating lines have three or four syllables. Another variant of fornyrðislag.
• Old Norse Poetic Forms: Galdralag — An Old Norse variant of ljóðaháttr with an extra line that echoes and varies the previous line.
• Old Norse Poetic Forms: Runhenda — A rhyming variant of fornyrðislag.
• Old Norse Poetic Forms: Dróttkvætt — An elaborate courtly form with alliteration, internal rhyme, and consonance or assonance.

Other Accentual or Alliterative Poetry

• Accentual-Alliterative Poetry: Gerard Manley Hopkins — An explanation of sprung rhythm, and discussion of the scansion of "God's Grandeur."
• Accentual Poetry: Christabel — Discussion of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's accentual rhyming poem.

Approaches to Writing

• Stomping on the Rules of Writing: Show, Don't Tell — The lasting power of H.P. Lovecraft's horror depends on his breaking modern rules of writing.B Begins a series.
• Stomping on the Rules of Writing: No Backstory — How "Show, Don't Tell" and "No Backstory" are related, and why Lovecraft's success depends on breaking both rules.
• Stomping on the Rules of Writing: Few Modifiers — How Lovecraft's writing depends on the use of adjectives for atmosphere and characterization.
• Showing, Telling, and Lovecraft's Horror — How "Show, Don't Tell" emphasizes the character's reactions, while Lovecraft's descriptions emphasize the entity feared.
• The Story Conceit, Then and Now — Old-fashioned and modern stories differ in what they purport to be, which affects choice of techniques. Older techniques are falsely deprecated as bad writing. Lovecraft, Hodgson, and Dunsany.
• Stomping on the Rules of Writing: Tolkien 1— If Show Don't Tell is really a rule of writing, how do you explain Tolkien's broad appeal? The Lord of the Rings opening is pure telling.
• Stomping on the Rules of Writing: Tolkien 2 — The first reason why Tolkien's opening in The Lord of the Rings works: voice.
• Stomping on the Rules of Writing: Tolkien 3— The second reason why Tolkien's opening in The Lond of Rings works: story questions. The difference between tell and tell-all.
• The Rules of Writing and How They Grew 1— Groups love to make rules, and writing is a subjective enough art to let them easily make bad ones.
• The Rules of Writing and How They Grew 2— The Rulemakers' rejoinders, and why I don't think they work.