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Stridulation [1]

Poetry [2]
12.8.20

“Everybody’s got a song / they’ve gotta sing. / So they say. So they / think,” begins Rita Dove’s poem “The Spring Cricket’s Discourse on Critics [3],” published in the Believer this month. The deftly enjambed poem uses the perspective of a cricket and its ability to use its legs to chirp, known as stridulation, to discuss an artist’s defense against critics believing “they can / just… crank out the golden / tunes.” Use the perspective of an insect or an animal whose abilities come naturally to examine an aspect of being a poet. Try enjambment in your poem to emphasize particular words.


Source URL:https://www.pw.org/content/stridulation

Links
[1] https://www.pw.org/content/stridulation [2] https://www.pw.org/genre/poetry [3] https://believermag.com/the-spring-crickets-discourse-on-critics/