Ireland & Byzantium
Back from my recent trip to Ireland I wanted to set down some of my photos against a reading of Sailing to Byzantium. Fortunately, I think I had enough material to cover the first two sections of the poem. In the third and fourth sections of the poem, Yeats takes us on a speculative journey into the immortal realm of spirit. In contrast with Ireland we are presented with the static, timeless, world of Byzantium.
A trip to the National Gallery this week was almost fruitless. There are only two works of Byzantine art at the National Gallery and one of them is almost always out on loan. Someone on the staff, however, assisted me by producing a list of museums in D.C. and sure enough, the Dumbarton Oaks Museum in upper Georgetown was noted for having a specialized collection of Byzantine art. A short bike ride across town and I found enough material for the last two sections of the poem.
Here’s the video reading:
Tips for Getting a Poetry Manuscript Ready for Submission
As I’ve mentioned here a couple of times, setting up 6 by 9 pages with 1 inch margins will help visualize how a poem will actually appear in a book. Here are a few more things to consider:
I like to scan for double blank spaces. Many of us learned to type on typewriters and were taught to hit that spacebar twice after every period. Then there are em dashes to consider. “--” is not an em dash. Neither is “-”. A proper em dash is a bit longer: —. You can make an em dash in Word by hitting Ctrl, Alt and the minus sign in the numeric keypad. You can use the search and replace to root out all these mistaken em dashes. Finally, make sure you are using curly quotes and apostrophes: “ and ‘. Not " and '. Again, use search and replace if you have this issue.
It’s also a good idea to use styles in your manuscripts. I tend to use Heading1 for sections of a book and Heading2 for poem titles. Doing so will keep your sections and titles consistent and the document well organized. You can also create a custom style for the body of your poems and call it something like “Poem Text”. Again, this will make the type in all your poems consistent and allow you to change them all in one stroke.
Coming Up
July 20, 2024, 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm, Poetry Open Mic
at tghe New Deal Café, 113 Centerway Greenbelt, MD 20770
As always, feel free to email me with questions or comments at henrycrawfordpoetry@gmail.com. Stay creative!
If you’d like me to list an upcoming poetry event in Everyday Poet, please let me know by emailing me at henrycrawfordpoetry@gmail.com. Use the subject: “Coming Up”.