The Write Focus

5:45 / Fall into Poetry / Writing Public vs. Private

“Share your innermost life,” marketing gurus advise writers, “with your readers, your newsletter folks, with everyone. Make it all public Make it pop-ular.”

That’s a certain way to burn out most of your audience, who just want the knowledge you have or just want to be entertained.

“Open the window. Let them see into part of your life.” That’s reasonable and rational marketing advice.

A window doesn’t give access to every room of your home, and it certainly doesn’t give access to what you’ve stored in closets or tucked deep in drawers or hidden in old boxes in the attic.

We writers have a constant push-pull dynamic of revealing ourselves. Heartfelt emotion is one of the four requirements of song, applicable to all writing. It speaks to us, touches us soul-deep, and leaves us weeping because we have a similar wound.

In this segment we have two poems by a man who wrote for public consumption but also purged his private anguish in a poem meant only to be published posthumously.

TIMINGS

00:00 Welcome

00:40 Introduction / Public vs. Private

2:20 Deceit with Reader / Heartfelt Emotion

4:23 Longfellow / Long Rant

7:05 HWL Public vs. Private Poems

8:53 Lessons 1, 2, and 3

9:50 “The Harvest Moon”

11:00 Lessons 4 and 5

12:30 “Mezzo Cammin”

14:45 Lesson 6

15:50 Last Words / Closing

Total Run Time = 17:58

 

Analysis is All Original Content / No AI Used

 

#henrywadsworthlongfellow #marketingadviceforwriters #harvestmoonpoem #mezzocamminsonnet #sonnet

LINKS

Bio on Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Wadsworth_Longfellow

“Harvest Moon” https://poets.org/poem/harvest-moon

“Mezzo Cammin” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50629/mezzo-cammin

 

Link to Website https://thewritefocus.blogspot.com/2024/11/fall-into-poetry-writing-public-vs.html

 

Thanks for listening to The Write Focus. We focus on productivity, process, craft, and tools. Our podcast is for newbies who want to become writing pros and veterans who are returning to writing after years away.

Our current focus is Fall into Poetry. Here’s a link to the first episode: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXi3M_aM-d7K1x02UAlihWKKom_5keJrg   

Support the podcast with a cup of coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/winkbooksr

• You can find workbooks and templates at Buy Me a Coffee. Available is the Enter the Writing Business Workbook and templates from the Discovering Characters
• Available Now: worksheet templates and a video trailer script for Discovering Your Author Brand.

For more links and resources, visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com  .

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

If you find value in this podcast, please share with your writing friends or write a review. (We’re small beans. We don’t have the advertising budget of the big peeps. You can make a difference.)

5:44 / Fall into Poetry / Deceptive Monsters

Monsters of all sorts inhabit literature, for they crowd into people’s consciousness whenever we face trials and tribulations.

The unnatural monsters, goy and terrifying, gorging themselves without mercy or conscience, these are our nightmares, rarely encountered.

The deceptive monsters, the ones that camouflage who and what they are, still gorging themselves, relishing each victim, these inhabit our everyday lives. We should be wary of them, but we still find ourselves caught in their devastating traps, even after we finally recognize them. Only when we are burned enough or wounded enough do we manage to escape, scarred for all future encounters with people who aren’t monsters.

These deceptive monsters are alluring, beautiful enticements that we can’t quite let go. And that unwillingness to escape is truly the monstrous behavior.

Join The Write Focus as we offer 6 Lessons for all Writers as we examine the famous deceptive monster of the wild fairy in two poems by John Keats and e.e.cummings.

 

TIMINGS

• 00:00 Welcome
• 00:40 Introduction / Deceptive Monsters
• 02:40 Keats’ “La Belle Dame sans Merci”
• 4:00 Lessons 1 2, and 3 for All Writers
• 11:26 Lessons 4 and 5
• 14:00 e.e.cummings’ Wild Fairy
• 17:00 Lesson 6
• 18:45 Last Words / Closing

Total Run Time = 20:51

 

#wildfairy #labelledamesansmerci #johnkeats #eecummings #allingreenwentmyloveriding #dreams #writingtips #artasinspiration #4requirementsofsong #writingtheseasons

Analysis is All Original Content / No AI Used

LINKS

Keats’ bio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Keats

“La Belle Dame” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44475/la-belle-dame-sans-merci-a-ballad

The Artwork https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Belle_Dame_sans_Merci

e.e.cummings bio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._E._Cummings

[all in green went my love riding] https://allpoetry.com/all-in-green

 

Link to Website https://thewritefocus.blogspot.com/2024/10/fall-into-poetry-deceptive-monsters.html

 

Thanks for listening to The Write Focus. We focus on productivity, process, craft, and tools. Our podcast is for newbies who want to become writing pros and veterans who are returning to writing after years away.

Our current focus is Fall into Poetry. Here’s a link to the first episode: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXi3M_aM-d7K1x02UAlihWKKom_5keJrg   

Support the podcast with a cup of coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/winkbooksr

• You can find workbooks and templates at Buy Me a Coffee. Available is the Enter the Writing Business Workbook and templates from the Discovering Characters
• Available Now: worksheet templates and a video trailer script for Discovering Your Author Brand.

For more links and resources, visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com  .

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

If you find value in this podcast, please share with your writing friends or write a review. (We’re small beans. We don’t have the advertising budget of the big peeps. You can make a difference.)

5:43 / Fall into Poetry / Unexpected Monsters

Love. Betrayal. Death. Those subjects we discussed in our story-song and in other recent poems, including Christina Rossetti’s particular version of false love and twisted betrayal—Lust that isn’t love, summer friends abandoning her in her self-exile, her false love leaving her to face her trouble alone.

When we’ve endured betrayal, our memories of that traitors are as a monster.

Monsters need not have venom-dripping fangs and wicked-sharp talons. The worst monsters are in our own selves, the ones who want to stay with that “dragon who keeps so fair a cave” (Shakespeare).

As we near All Hallow’s Eve, we look for stories and poems and blogs about monsters. The horror genre gives us unreal monsters while the thriller genre gives over-the-top monsters, like Hannibal. We have fantasy monsters and domestic villains as monsters. We writers bend tropes.

The best monsters, though, never seem like monsters until we fall into their clutches.

 

TIMINGS

• 00:00 Welcome
• 00:40 Introduction / Monsters
• 03:55 Heinrich Heine’s “The Lorelai” / the femme fatale
• 08:10 Lessons for all Writers #1 and #2
• 11:48 Lesson #3 Find your Monster
• 15:00 Last Words / Closing

Total Run Time = 17:04

 

#heinrichheine #lorelai #femmefatale #blackwidow #theme #thesis #womenasmonster #goddessofrevenge #nemesis #siren #gorgon #graiae #odysseus #mythology #revenge

LINKS

Heine’s bio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Heine

“Lorelai” http://www.poetryatlas.com/poetry/poem/2255/the-lorelei.html#:~:text=The%20Lore-lei%20has%20done!%20The%20American%20Poet%20Thomas%20Bailey

Analysis is All Original Content / No AI Used

 

Link to Website https://thewritefocus.blogspot.com/2024/10/fall-into-poetry-unexpected-monsters.html

Thanks for listening to The Write Focus. We focus on productivity, process, craft, and tools. Our podcast is for newbies who want to become writing pros and veterans who are returning to writing after years away.

Our current focus is Fall into Poetry. Here’s a link to the first episode: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXi3M_aM-d7K1x02UAlihWKKom_5keJrg   

Support the podcast with a cup of coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/winkbooksr

• You can find workbooks and templates at Buy Me a Coffee. Available is the Enter the Writing Business Workbook and templates from the Discovering Characters
• Available Now: worksheet templates and a video trailer script for Discovering Your Author Brand.

For more links and resources, visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com  .

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

If you find value in this podcast, please share with your writing friends or write a review. (We’re small beans. We don’t have the advertising budget of the big peeps. You can make a difference.)

5:42 / Fall into Poetry / Rossetti's 3 Cold Poems

October is a month of changes, of transitions, anticipation of the colors even as summer gives us a few reminders of his warmth.

And October ends with All Hallow’s Eve, the evening before a holy day ~ a time of riotous revelry by the forces defiant against God, Father, Creator, Savior.

Creeping upon me with the early chill of October mornings was the realization that Christina Rossett should be next in our Fall into Poetry series. Born 1830 and died 1894, Rossetti is sister to the artist-poet Dante Rossetti of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the Victorian painters who reached into the past and into mythology for the primary subjects of their lush artwork.

Most know Christina Rossetti for “Goblin Market”, a long narrative poem of two sisters. One sister succumbs to temptation and tastes the fruit sold by the goblins. We’re not going to look at “Goblin Market”. I know you’re disappointed.

Instead, we’re looking at three other poems, two straight-forward and people-pleasing, one personal and puzzling, all three with lessons for all writers, not just poets.

TIMINGS

• 00:00 Welcome
• 00:40 Introduction / C.Rossetti
• 03:30 First Poem / First Lesson
• 07:25 Second Lesson
• 08:30 Second Poem / Cold Poems
• 11:00 Third Poem
• 17:02 Last 2 Lessons
• 19:00 Last Words / Closing

Total Run Time = 21:06

 

Analysis is All Original Content / No AI Used

LINKS

• Biography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christina_Rossetti
• “January Cold Desolate” https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/january-cold-desolate
• “A Year’s Windfalls” https://allpoetry.com/A-Years-Windfalls
• “From Sunset to Star Rise” https://genius.com/Christina-rossetti-from-sunset-to-star-rise-annotated
• “Goblin Market” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44996/goblin-market
• “A Birthday” https://poets.org/poem/birthday

Link to Website https://thewritefocus.blogspot.com/2024/10/fall-into-poetry-rossettis-3-cold-poems.html

Thanks for listening to The Write Focus. We focus on productivity, process, craft, and tools. Our podcast is for newbies who want to become writing pros and veterans who are returning to writing after years away.

Our current focus is Fall into Poetry. Here’s a link to the first episode: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXi3M_aM-d7K1x02UAlihWKKom_5keJrg   

Support the podcast with a cup of coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/winkbooksr

• You can find workbooks and templates at Buy Me a Coffee. Available is the Enter the Writing Business Workbook and templates from the Discovering Characters
• Available Now: worksheet templates and a video trailer script for Discovering Your Author Brand.

For more links and resources, visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com  .

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

If you find value in this podcast, please share with your writing friends or write a review. (We’re small beans. We don’t have the advertising budget of the big peeps. You can make a difference.)

5:41 / Fall into Poetry / Dances of October

We have a theme of Dances of October for this episode ~ although one of our two poems doesn’t mention dancing and the other doesn’t mention October. How are we connecting these two works to that theme?

Well, my brain said “Put them together”, and here we are.

The first poem is by African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. He’s barely anthologized anymore, but that doesn’t mean he should be neglected. Dunbar is an excellent writer with diverse style in different forms, including prose and plays. His verse elevates him above the one-trick ponies who are studied because they represent a type (Louise May Alcott, e.g.).

Our other poem is a lesser-known work by the famous William Butler Yeats.

Follow along as we find unexpected connections with these two unconnected poems. We’ll also add in a few writing lessons that will help all writers.

TIMINGS

• 00:00 Welcome
• 00:40 Introduction
• 01:35 Dunbar’s “October”
• 07:09 First Lesson for All Writers
• 08:46 Yeat’s “To a Child Dancing in the Wind”
• 12:44 Second Lesson for All Writers
• 15:35 Reaching New Meaning / Dunbar & Yeats
• 17:25 Third Lesson for all Writers, A & B
• 18:25 Last Words / Closing

Total Run Time = 20:32

 

LINKS

Paul Laurence Dunbar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Laurence_Dunbar 

“October” https://poets.org/poem/october-2

William Butler Yeats https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._B._Yeats

“To a Child …” https://www.poetryverse.com/william-butler-yeats-poems/child-dancing-the-wind

#paullaurencedunbar #williambutleryeats #writingadvice #dirtydozen

Analysis is All Original Content / No AI Used

 

Link to Website https://thewritefocus.blogspot.com/2024/10/fall-into-poetry-dances-of-october.html

 

become writing pros and veterans who are returning to writing after years away.

Our current focus is Fall into Poetry. Here’s a link to the first episode: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXi3M_aM-d7K1x02UAlihWKKom_5keJrg   

Support the podcast with a cup of coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/winkbooksr

• You can find workbooks and templates at Buy Me a Coffee. Available is the Enter the Writing Business Workbook and templates from the Discovering Characters
• Available Now: worksheet templates and a video trailer script for Discovering Your Author Brand.

For more links and resources, visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com  .

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

If you find value in this podcast, please share with your writing friends or write a review. (We’re small beans. We don’t have the advertising budget of the big peeps. You can make a difference.)

5:40 / Fall into Poetry / Two Autumn Poems

What sparks a love of poetry?

The highbrow puzzles of e.e. cummings or the imagism of Ezra Pound. The lyrical music of John Keats or Christina Rossetti. The logical jumps and intellectual gymnastics of the metaphysical poets. The gimmick that marks Ferlinghetti. The emotions that lurk in a Longfellow sonnet. The intriguing story-songs that we just examined last month.

None of the above sparked my love of poetry. They deepened my love and enriched it, teased me by simultaneously engaging mind and heart.

My love of poetry was sparked by my mother. She gifted her daughters with a love of birds, of flowers, of nature itself. She quoted poems that she’d memorized over the years, poems that echoed with her love of nature, and those poems still echo for me. When I saw poetic lines expressed in nature, poetry lived for me.

Over my years, I’ve found more poems that live, some highbrow, some with a lowbrow snicker, some middlebrow which are frowned upon by intellectuals as “not clever enough”. I say if the poem is to a person’s taste, then who has a right to disrespect their choice?

And so we come to this episode’s poems, two that reveal autumn’s glory, both with marketing and writing ideas for anyone interested in a writing-focused life.

TIMINGS

• 00:00 Welcome
• 00:40 Introduction / Taste in Poetry
• 02:16 Writer’s Growth / Marketing Lesson
• 03:34 Helen Hunt Jackson
• 03:51 “September”
• 05:39 Easter Eggs and Secrets
• 08:41 “October”
• 13:25 Famous Love Story / Clever Word Choice
• 16:05 Marketing Genius / Audience-Focused
• 18:00 Last Words / Closing

Total Run Time = 20:07

 

Links

Helen Hunt Jackson bio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Hunt_Jackson

Her poetry  https://www.poemhunter.com/helen-hunt-jackson/

#helenhuntjackson #writergrowth #marketingforwriters #septemberpoem #octoberpoem #octobersonnet

 

Analysis is All Original Content / No AI Used

 

Link to Website https://thewritefocus.blogspot.com/2024/10/fall-into-poetry-two-autumn-poems.html

 

Thanks for listening to The Write Focus. We focus on productivity, process, craft, and tools. Our podcast is for newbies who want to become writing pros and veterans who are returning to writing after years away.

Our current focus is Fall into Poetry. Here’s a link to the first episode: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXi3M_aM-d7K1x02UAlihWKKom_5keJrg   

Support the podcast with a cup of coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/winkbooksr

• You can find workbooks and templates at Buy Me a Coffee. Available is the Enter the Writing Business Workbook and templates from the Discovering Characters
• Available Now: worksheet templates and a video trailer script for Discovering Your Author Brand.

For more links and resources, visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com  .

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

If you find value in this podcast, please share with your writing friends or write a review. (We’re small beans. We don’t have the advertising budget of the big peeps. You can make a difference.)

5:39 / Fall into Poetry / Sweet Wine

Wine is heady stuff. A simple goblet of wine relaxes us; a mega-pint or a bottle can tip us into trouble.

Do you prefer the creamy full-body of a fine cabernet or the bite of a sauvignon blanc? Perhaps a medium red like a spicy Zinfandel or a lighter Riesling? Or a fruiter, sweet-forward wine, like a strawberry wine? Homemade, requiring only fresh strawberries, sugar, yeast, and water?

Hi, everyone. This week’s episode is another story-song, not a ballad of love, betrayal, and death. This is a sweet song which still has a bite, a rite of passage that leaves a heady memory in the speaker. It’s “Strawberry Wine,” launched into country music in 1996 but still speaking to all of us.

TIMINGS

• 00:00 Welcome
• 00:40 Introduction / “Strawberry Wine”
• 02:42 Song Structure / 4 Requirements of Song
• 06:28 Impact Events / Chorus
• 08:27 Second Stanza / Bridge
• 10:51 Speaker’s Dilemma / Inherent Drives
• 14:20 Last Words / Closing

Total Run Time = 16:29

 

LINKS

Song Lyrics https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/deanacarter/strawberrywine.html

Video Performance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Up06CryWQpE

Bio of M. Berg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matraca_Berg

Bio of G. Harrison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Harrison

Analysis is All Original Content / No AI Used

 

Link to Website https://thewritefocus.blogspot.com/2024/09/fall-into-poetry-sweet-wine.html

 

Thanks for listening to The Write Focus. We focus on productivity, process, craft, and tools. Our podcast is for newbies who want to become writing pros and veterans who are returning to writing after years away.

Our current focus is Fall into Poetry. Here’s a link to the first episode: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXi3M_aM-d7K1x02UAlihWKKom_5keJrg   

Support the podcast with a cup of coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/winkbooksr

• You can find workbooks and templates at Buy Me a Coffee. Available is the Enter the Writing Business Workbook and templates from the Discovering Characters
• Available Now: worksheet templates and a video trailer script for Discovering Your Author Brand.

For more links and resources, visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com  .

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

If you find value in this podcast, please share with your writing friends or write a review. (We’re small beans. We don’t have the advertising budget of the big peeps. You can make a difference.)

5:38 / Fall into Poetry / Sweet Lies

Here’s an odd way to start a conversation about a song: the word moron.

Hi all. It’s the third episode in our autumn series Fall Into Poetry. We’ve featured two story-songs (narrative poems) that are ballads, not the modern power ballad of the music world but the literature-based ballad with its focus on the subjects of love, betrayal, and death.

This episode’s song is not a ballad, even though it concerns love and betrayal and the death of a relationship. It’s not even a story-song. It’s a lyric poem, which means that it expresses an emotion. We do have hints of a story but not really.

And we’re delving into the song by looking first at the word moron. Odd, I know. A little weird. But there you are.

TIMINGS

• 00:00 Welcome
• 00:40 Introduction
• 03:44 Oxymoron / Shakespeare
• 07:52 Oxymoronic Characters
• 08:03 “Little Lies”
• 11:00 Stanza 2 Twist
• 13:23 Summation for Writers
• 14:20 Last Words / Closing

Total Run Time = 16:26

LINKS

“Little Lies” performance https://youtu.be/uCGD9dT12C0

“Little Lies” lyrics https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/fleetwoodmac/littlelies.html

#fleetwoodmac #christinemcvie #littlelies #oxymoron #hamlet #romeoandjuliet #poets #fictionwriters #indiepublishingforwriters

Analysis is All Original Content / No AI Used

Link to Website https://thewritefocus.blogspot.com/2024/09/fall-into-poetry-sweet-lies.html 

Thanks for listening to The Write Focus. We focus on productivity, process, craft, and tools. Our podcast is for newbies who want to become writing pros and veterans who are returning to writing after years away.

Our current focus is Fall into Poetry. Here’s a link to the first episode: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXi3M_aM-d7K1x02UAlihWKKom_5keJrg   

Support the podcast with a cup of coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/winkbooksr

• You can find workbooks and templates at Buy Me a Coffee. Available is the Enter the Writing Business Workbook and templates from the Discovering Characters
• Available Now: worksheet templates and a video trailer script for Discovering Your Author Brand.

For more links and resources, visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com  .

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

If you find value in this podcast, please share with your writing friends or write a review. (We’re small beans. We don’t have the advertising budget of the big peeps. You can make a difference.)

 

5:37 / Fall into Poetry / Clown Faire

Story-songs, like last episode’s “Read my Mind” by Gordon Lightfoot, leave a mark in our memories. Very little is needed to return them to the foreground of our mind.

That’s also the case with this episode’s story-song, another ballad, this time for Broadway, written by the fantastic Stephen Sondheim, a great in American stagecraft.

I first encountered this song in 1976 as part of my chorus class, not on the radio. It requires a maturity of experience, which I didn’t have then. I caught the song’s cosmic irony but didn’t truly comprehend the personal devastation of the character who sings it. Nor did I catch the revealing epiphany of the last line.

Many greats have performed it: Frank Sinatra, Judy Collins, Barbra Streisand, Judy Dench. The version in my head harkens to Bernadette Peters’ performance. First to perform it, though, and the singer for whom it was intended was Glynis Johns.

If you know Sondheim’s work, you’ve already guessed the song: “Send in the Clowns”.

TIMINGS

• 00:00 Welcome
• 00:40 Introduction to “Send in the Clowns”
• 02:58 Clear Communication
• 03:30 Strong Imagery and Emotion
• 08:52 Powerful Lines / Ballad
• 13:10 Four Lessons for Fiction / Nonfiction Writers
• 15:52 Last Words / Closing

Total Run Time = 18:02

 

LINKS

Lyrics https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/judycollins/sendintheclowns.html

Performance by Bernadette Peters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOZhmsp6iBQ

& by Glynnis Johns https://youtu.be/OAl-EawVobY

#stephensondheim #cosmicirony #ballad #sendintheclowns #writingpoetry #writingfiction #writingnonfiction

Analysis is All Original Content / No AI Used

[Fair Use declares that we can quote from copyrighted works by other writers as long as we use those quotations for analysis, explication, and teaching examples.]

Link to Website https://thewritefocus.blogspot.com/2024/09/fall-into-poetry-clown-faire.html

 

Thanks for listening to The Write Focus. We focus on productivity, process, craft, and tools. Our podcast is for newbies who want to become writing pros and veterans who are returning to writing after years away.

Our current focus is Fall into Poetry. Here’s a link to the first episode: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXi3M_aM-d7K1x02UAlihWKKom_5keJrg   

Support the podcast with a cup of coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/winkbooksr

• You can find workbooks and templates at Buy Me a Coffee. Available is the Enter the Writing Business Workbook and templates from the Discovering Characters
• Available Now: worksheet templates and a video trailer script for Discovering Your Author Brand.

For more links and resources, visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com  .

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

If you find value in this podcast, please share with your writing friends or write a review. (We’re small beans. We don’t have the advertising budget of the big peeps. You can make a difference.)

5:36 / Fall into Poetry / Read my Mind

Every writer is after memorable writing, whatever will strengthen our words and ideas so they haunt our audience.

We want our audience to return again and again to our writing, either to recapture that original impact or to puzzle out a question that wasn’t answered.

Capture our audience, and they stay with our writing to the end.

Satisfy our audience, and they seek more of our writing.

This is our goal: win-win, us and them.

Our series Fall into Poetry would seem to appeal only to poets—but that’s a surface glance. We writers can learn from any writing style, poetry teaching fiction, dramas teaching nonfiction, any mix-up we can contemplate.

We begin with a story-song from the realm of popular music. This song’s endurance proves that it is memorable writing by one of our greatest modern songwriters, now sadly gone: “If You Could Read my Mind, Love” by Gordon Lightfoot, a ballad when most songs are lyrics.

If you’re unfamiliar with “Read my Mind”, then pause this podcast and head off to find a new song to add to your favorites list. Come back to hear our analysis. (Links Below)

Join The Write Focus all through autumn as we examine great poems that teach a multitude of lessons for all writers.

TIMINGS

• 00:00 Welcome
• 00:40 Word Count Challenge / Final Check-in
• 03:10 Fall into Poetry introduction
• 05:40 “If You Could Read my Mind, Love”
• 07:00 Four Requirements of Song
• 13:57 “Read my Mind” as a Ballad
• 14:55 Two Special Touches
• 18:47 Closing

Total Run Time: 19:49

LINKS

Lyrics for “Read my Mind” https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/gordonlightfoot/ifyoucouldreadmymind.html

YouTube performance of “Read my Mind” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DK--A-IaZnA

Rick Beato’s analysis of the music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X33YyowZZxQ

Link to The Write Focus website https://thewritefocus.blogspot.com/2024/09/fall-into-poetry-read-my-mind.html 

#writing poetry #poetry #GordonLightfoot #Ifyoucouldreadmymind

Analysis is All Original Content / No AI Used

[Fair Use declares that we can quote from copyrighted works by other writers as long as we use those quotations for analysis, explication, and teaching examples.]

Thanks for listening to The Write Focus. We focus on productivity, process, craft, and tools. Our podcast is for newbies who want to become writing pros and veterans who are returning to writing after years away.

Our current focus is Fall into Poetry. Here’s a link to our YouTube channel:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC73Pe3yKV5HixAUjBNOg47A

Support the podcast with a cup of coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/winkbooksr

• You can find workbooks and templates at Buy Me a Coffee. Available is the Enter the Writing Business Workbook and templates from the Discovering Characters
• Available Now: worksheet templates and a video trailer script for Discovering Your Author Brand.

For more links and resources, visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com  .

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

If you find value in this podcast, please share with your writing friends or write a review. (We’re small beans. We don’t have the advertising budget of the big peeps. You can make a difference.)