Question

Appreciation of poem tansen in paragraph

Answer 1

Tenses
date
Poets have used verb tenses to manipulate time in their poems. The English language has many verb tenses to choose from, and a poet is always deciding when she begins a poem which tense is the best (or correct) verb tense to use. Focusing on choosing the right tense and knowing how and when to shift verb tenses is a technique that can add immediacy, or introduce tension.

Tense is the grammaticalisation of time. The basics are often all you need: past, present, future. But sometimes we need, or we accidentally slip into, present perfect, past perfect, future perfect or use simple or progressive verb forms.

I don't want to be the language teacher here, because, ultimately, that's not the prompt or point. And I have found that grammar is an almost sure way to lose the interest of the student. But, here's the lesson in brief:

Present I run (simple) - I am running (progressive)
Past I ran - I was running
Future I will run - I will be running
Present Perfect I have run - I have been running
Past Perfect I had run - I had been running
Future Perfect I will have run - I will have been running

On our blog, we have a quick poetry and tenses lesson using William Blake's "The Tyger."

If you are familiar with with other languages, you know that some things about our English verb tenses are the same and other things are quite different.

For this month's prompt, you need to try a poem which very deliberately plays with tenses. But rather than create a verb tenses poem,

In the language the little boy spoke,
there was a promise the little boy broke.
In the letter the little boy sent,
there was a truth the little boy bent.

it would be far better to consider the bigger implications of time and tense, as Chloe Yelena Miller does in her poem "No Infinitive."

I like it right off that they met in Esperanto. Not a place, but a language, and a word that translates as "one who hopes." We could follow the thread of Esperanto's three tenses and three moods. Maybe your poem can work with the poetic and non-English jussive mood that is used for wishes and commands.

And her poem ends "reflexively" - a form that cause problems for English speakers learning a new language since this feature is practically absent in English. The literal reflexive means the agent is simultaneously the patient. That's grammar class talk meaning we do it to ourselves. How poetic is the reflexive: to enjoy oneself, hurt oneself, kill oneself, convince, deny or to encourage oneself.

Try a poem that deals with Time through tenses and grammar and that might play with time, as in the time traveling of past, present and future tenses, or it might play with the language of tenses changing in English or other languages.

For more on this prompt and others, visit the Poets Online blog.