A Chat with Author Donn Taylor

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Greetings from Sarah Sundin from California, where we’re rejoicing in the smidgen of rain we’ve received. Today I have the honor of interviewing multi-published novelist Donn Taylor, who has put his careers in the military and in academia to use in his stories! Donn, tell us about your book, Murder in Disguise. Official verdict: Suicide. But why would that vigorous department chairman kill himself? When visiting professor Preston Barclay asks questions, he receives threats. The more things don’t add up, the more the threats increase, leading Press and his colleague Mara Thorn increasingly into danger. Why did you write this…

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Tips from the Pros: Donn Taylor

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A warm hello from Marti Pieper, writing from beautiful (and equally warm) Mount Dora, Florida. In this month of Thanksgiving, many of us are taking time to count our blessings.One of the blessings in my writing life is my friendship via social media and email with author Donn Taylor. We’ve never met in person but have enjoyed mutual support and encouragement over the past few years. I’m both grateful and delighted to share my friend with our CAN readers today. Greetings, Donn! I’m glad to welcome you to your encore interview with CAN. Let’s get started. How many books do you have published?…

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Making Poems Different III

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Hello, I’m Donn Taylor, back again after several months of alligators up to the ears. I’m still talking about ways to achieve the “higher voltage” that distinguishes poetry from most prose. We’re still looking at ways to make your poems different from many that editors will see. Most of the new poems I’m seeing are written in the poet’s own voice, with the poet as speaker (persona) of the poem and the poet’s self as the subject. It’s safe to assume that editors will see more of that kind of poem than any other. Previously we illustrated making your poem…

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Making Poems Different I

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Hello, I’m Donn Taylor, here again to talk about poetry and ways to achieve the “higher voltage” that distinguishes poetry from most prose. In my last few posts, I spoke of several basic ways to organize a poem. Now we turn to several ways of making your poem different than many, perhaps most, that editors will see. The vast majority of new poems I’m seeing are written in the poet’s own voice, with the poet as the speaker (persona) of the poem and one or more aspects of the poet’s self as the subject. It’s safe to assume that editors…

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Poetry Basics: Organizing the Poem III

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Hello. I'm Donn Taylor, here again to talk about poetry writing and ways to achieve the "higher voltage" that distinguishes poetry from most prose. We've talked about putting strong words in emphatic places, use of images, and a little bit about figurative language. On my last blog we began talking about ways to organize a poem. Those ways are infinite, of course, so we'll confine ourselves to some of the most common, and we'll deal only with lyric poetry (poetry that expresses the poet's thoughts or emotions). As before, I compare a short poem to a paragraph: it has a…

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Poetry Basics: Organizing the Poem II

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      Hello. I'm Donn Taylor, here again to talk about poetry writing and ways to achieve the "higher voltage" that distinguishes poetry from most prose. We've talked about putting strong words in emphatic places, use of images, and a little bit about figurative language. On my last blog we began talking about ways to organize a poem. Those ways are infinite, of course, so we'll confine ourselves to some of the most common, and we'll deal only with lyric poetry (poetry that expresses the poet's thoughts or emotions). As before, I compare a short poem to a paragraph: it has…

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Basics in Poetry Writing: Figurative Language I

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    Hello. I'm DonnTaylor, writing again about the basic elements of poetry writing. In previous blog sessions we've mentioned the late Lawrence Perrine's statement that poetry speaks "in higher voltage" with greater compression of meaning than most prose. We've also spoken of placing strong words in the emphatic positions of the poetic line, and we've discussed the necessity of using strong images. Now we move to one of the most important elements that achieve compression of meaning, often with striking effect: figurative language. In this session we'll look at personification, simile, and metaphor. We'll cover other figures later.  

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Basic of Poetry Writing II – Images

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                        by                   Donn Taylor     In my last poetry blog we talked about finding strong words and putting them in emphatic positions in the poetic line. The end of the line is most emphatic; the beginning, next-most emphatic. Now we go on to specific kinds of strong words.    As Lawrence Perrine wrote, poetry speaks in "higher voltage" than prose. One essential means of achieving that higher voltage is the effective use of images—words or phrases that appeal to one of the five senses. Why important? Because everything we know about the world we live in comes to us through one…

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Some Basics of Writing Poetry

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    Hello. I'm Donn Taylor. Last month I encouraged aspiring poets to write good-quality poetry that can be understood by ordinary readers. This month we begin on basic elements that can make that poetry good.     Ideally, poetry is more compact, more intense than prose. As the late Lawrence Perrine put it, poetry speaks in "higher voltage." William Baer says further that poetry emphasizes the line, the sound of words, and compression of meaning. All of these things are true, but accomplishing them is achieved only by attention to even the smallest elements. Oscar Wilde famously said he'd worked all…

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Toward Poetry Revival

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   I have loved poetry since the age of seventeen when I discovered Byron, Keats, and Shelley. As I matured, I came to love deeper masters like Virgil, Spenser, Donne, Milton, and Tennyson, as well as Homer and Dante in translation. But something bad happened to poetry about a hundred years ago, so that many of today's readers are completely turned off toward poetry. It doesn't have to be that way. In my CAN blogs I will encourage a revival of good-quality poetry that can be enjoyed by ordinary readers, and I'll describe and illustrate techniques that can make it…

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