What do we write about?

[PoetGuy]

Ourselves, of course, our concerns, our histories, those things that have made us what we are.

Poet Guy has recently been sick, which is not important, and during that time has been reading poetry, which he hopes is. Important. At least as discussion topic. Take Dorianne Laux, specifically, whom he has been reading.

Ms. Laux's first book of poems has a lot of abuse in it. The author is sexually abused by her father. Her sister is abused by her father--hit in the mouth with a belt buckle. Her neighbors are abused. Her mother is abused.

Poet Guy would like to point out that he was not abused. By parents or by teachers. By anyone, in fact.

So, his question. Poet Guy has had a very happy life. Is he handicapped as a poet by the fact that he's had a happy life? So much modern poetry seems to focus on awful things. How does one write poems about happiness? Is that even possible?

What does a happy poet write about?

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

I'm a happy poet - most of the time. In fact, if I'm not happy I tend not to write. Are my poems happy, you tell me. If I write about negative things - like MS for instance - it usually has a positive slant. I don't think I'm a sweep-everything-under-the-rug Pollyanna, or AM I?

Perhaps it takes strife and pain to make a GOOD poet.

 

[Maria2394]

Hi PoetGuy

I have had some awful things happen in my life, which I tend to look at as learning experiences because I inherently believe that everything happens for a reason. That being that, I am sort of like Tess, if I do write about some thing that has a negative connotation, I at least try to give it a positive wall to bounce off of to balance things out.

You may have something that bothers you that you do not even realize; the Earth and her people and their problems. I am sure you feel empathy towards people in awful predicaments, don't you?

If you haven't found it yet, eventually, you will. I just know it. Not all muses come from identical situations. It is all perspective, don't you think?




~ maria

 

[vrosej10]

i love Ms Laux's work. I tend to run to the dark side which is strange given that currently i have a really happy settled life. HOWEVER, I spent most of my life up till twenty five seriously mentally ill. I was emotionally abused and neglected as a child and I suffered severe bullying at school. When I looked like I was pulling out of this, I got married only to have my husband leave me for my father. I was homeless for a while after that. I have attempted suicide several times. I think this is what surfaces in my work. You wouldn't call my poems cute or happy.

 

[Black13]

Whether it's happy or not is irrelevant, I think. Poetry -- well, any art really -- has for quite some time been a method of getting out of you what needs to be exorcised. If that is sharing your darkest secrets, spreading your love for life, exposing the undercurrents of man, or simply pointing out what is amusing... it's all good. I don't really try to have a goal while I'm writing, I just write... then I try to make sense of it, rearrange it, maybe give it a rhyme scheme. You know, make it presentable.
I'm glad you're (relatively) happy, and that you weren't royally fucked up as a child. It sucks that the modern paradigm tends to imply that good poetry and bad childhood are synonymous. Honestly, I've read some horrible, meaningless drivel from kids who were so messed up in the head, they couldn't compose a coherent thought. Just write when you feel like writing, and what you're feeling will come out in what you put down. Then you can play dress-up with it.

 

[Angeline]

We're all human and therefore capable of feeling (and theoretically of communicating) the full range of human emotions: passion and joy and despair and envy, etc. And whether we're happy or not we all share our human experiences like unrequited love or personal loss and so on. Person x may have lost a dog and Person Y a parent and Person Z all their money, but who's to say who feels the loss most keenly? I don't think personal tragedy necessarily gives one some kind of upper hand as a writer, like a better connection to the world's heart of darkness.

If anything I think personal tragedies are sort of a handicap when one writes because it's easy to be eternally dark and sad. It's harder to write from a more balanced perspective, imo. Maybe that balance is an advantage for people whose lives have been relatively unmarred by pain and loss.

 

[theognis]

Ourselves, of course, our concerns, our histories, those things that have made us what we are.

Poet Guy has recently been sick, which is not important, and during that time has been reading poetry, which he hopes is. Important. At least as discussion topic. Take Dorianne Laux, specifically, whom he has been reading.

Ms. Laux's first book of poems has a lot of abuse in it. The author is sexually abused by her father. Her sister is abused by her father--hit in the mouth with a belt buckle. Her neighbors are abused. Her mother is abused.

Poet Guy would like to point out that he was not abused. By parents or by teachers. By anyone, in fact.

So, his question. Poet Guy has had a very happy life. Is he handicapped as a poet by the fact that he's had a happy life? So much modern poetry seems to focus on awful things. How does one write poems about happiness? Is that even possible?

What does a happy poet write about?

There is no doubt most great artists throughout history have been troubled people. My guess is unless one has personal experience with the darker side of life one is limited, just as one would be limited if the brighter side of life had never been experienced.

 

[bronzeage]

I have led a life of very bad behavior.

This has left me a rich field to mine for material. Every once in a while a memory surfaces which makes me shiver.

The real problem happiness and writing is there are so many outlets for happiness. When we are happy, the world is glad to see us. It's not that happy people cannot write poetry, they just don't have time.

 

[NeonSubtlety]

Poetry, for most people, begins as catharsis. I was instructed that you only really become a good writer once you've healed all of the wounds which first caused you to start writing. I was told that once you've left your bias at the front door, you can be genuine in a way that's required for truly great writing. I could take that advice or leave it because, still to this day, some of the rawest writing I've ever done came in times of true turmoil. I like to think that some of what I've read was the result of the same. But I definitely see how an unbiased perspective can aid in good writing.

Once I got through all of my issues, i did start writing about other things. I think that people write about what they feel. And if you never feel anything but pain, I'd argue that you aren't really human. Even the slightest flicker of joy, curiosity, or hope is easily enough to inspire lines upon lines of poesy. I found that it's less a matter of feeling positive things than learning to focus on them enough to construct a piece.

 

[vrosej10]

Poetry, for most people, begins as catharsis. I was instructed that you only really become a good writer once you've healed all of the wounds which first caused you to start writing. I was told that once you've left your bias at the front door, you can be genuine in a way that's required for truly great writing. I could take that advice or leave it because, still to this day, some of the rawest writing I've ever done came in times of true turmoil. I like to think that some of what I've read was the result of the same. But I definitely see how an unbiased perspective can aid in good writing.

Once I got through all of my issues, i did start writing about other things. I think that people write about what they feel. And if you never feel anything but pain, I'd argue that you aren't really human. Even the slightest flicker of joy, curiosity, or hope is easily enough to inspire lines upon lines of poesy. I found that it's less a matter of feeling positive things than learning to focus on them enough to construct a piece.

Catharsis can be a dangerous animal in poetry leading one down the path of the soppy and overly emotional. My stuff is not cathartic; I long ago sublimated my dark shit and it now tends arise spontaneously from the shit floating round my subconcious mind... it doesn't help with the issues.

 

[twelveoone]

Ourselves, of course, our concerns, our histories, those things that have made us what we are.

Poet Guy has recently been sick, which is not important, and during that time has been reading poetry, which he hopes is. Important. At least as discussion topic. Take Dorianne Laux, specifically, whom he has been reading.

Ms. Laux's first book of poems has a lot of abuse in it. The author is sexually abused by her father. Her sister is abused by her father--hit in the mouth with a belt buckle. Her neighbors are abused. Her mother is abused.

Poet Guy would like to point out that he was not abused. By parents or by teachers. By anyone, in fact.

So, his question. Poet Guy has had a very happy life. Is he handicapped as a poet by the fact that he's had a happy life? So much modern poetry seems to focus on awful things. How does one write poems about happiness? Is that even possible?

What does a happy poet write about?

Is this an advertisement, like the Monty Python sketch?

The numbered one would like to point out to the Poet Guy, that the numbered one has no life at all, and does not feel handicapped, rather liberated, and thus prone to verse libre. So in the great tradition of learning from one another, and the fact I've never had an original thought in my head, here is what I offer:
Divine Inspiration
somewhere in a broken AC motel
somewhere in southwest USA
someone sees life in a candy bar wrapper
and forgoes the chewy caramel center
and lays it on a Gideon page
but what page?
(this may be important folks
for the course of the story depends on this)
Screw it, he looks out the window
on a boulevard of diamond vaginas
and remembers he's not in Virginia no more

but in a completely different state
of mind, wonders just whether
a virus_vector got into trismegistus

this came to me, after reading new poems, a dynamic tension is created when you lay a candy bar wrapper on a hot day on a random bible page.
Sort of a found poetry thing.
What passage?
What words were covered by chocolate?
What was the candy bar?

Obviously you will get a different poem from a Hershey's Kiss, than you would from a Mars Bar, it is that simple, I think K. Koch had a similar idea when a bra fell on his head, but in that the dynamic tension is set up between the bra and cup size vs hat size. I think there is some higher order math and a few grammer type things involved...
But happy writing..and
let's put a smile on that face



what is so special about the number 1201?

 

[UnderYourSpell]

I was writing poetry before I knew I was abused which may sound like an idiotic statement but how are you to know as a child if nobody tells you that everyone isn't treated like that.
Everybody has up times and down times just some of us learn earlier than others, so did the poetry come from the suffering or was it there all the time? I do know that I escaped into the world of books every chance I got

 

[twelveoone]

We're all human and therefore capable of feeling (and theoretically of communicating) the full range of human emotions: passion and joy and despair and envy, etc. And whether we're happy or not we all share our human experiences like unrequited love or personal loss and so on. Person x may have lost a dog and Person Y a parent and Person Z all their money, but who's to say who feels the loss most keenly? I don't think personal tragedy necessarily gives one some kind of upper hand as a writer, like a better connection to the world's heart of darkness.

If anything I think personal tragedies are sort of a handicap when one writes because it's easy to be eternally dark and sad. It's harder to write from a more balanced perspective, imo. Maybe that balance is an advantage for people whose lives have been relatively unmarred by pain and loss.

poetguy deals with loss of self, check it out

 

[ishtat]

What's in a name.

what is so special about the number 1201?

1201 is the name of the halogenated hydrocarbon,Bromodiflouromethane. It, the chemical not the poet, was banned by the Montreal protocol in 2000. Some believe the decision to have been misapplied.

 

[butters]

1201 is the name of the halogenated hydrocarbon,Bromodiflouromethane. It, the chemical not the poet, was banned by the Montreal protocol in 2000. Some believe the decision to have been misapplied.

the devil's in the detail

 

[twelveoone]

1201 is the name of the halogenated hydrocarbon,Bromodiflouromethane. It, the chemical not the poet, was banned by the Montreal protocol in 2000. Some believe the decision to have been misapplied.

Now, when was the last time you seen me in Montreal?

 

[PoetGuy]

what is so special about the number 1201?

Poet Guy used to think that it described twelveoone's attitudes about copyright, but he now suspects that USC Title 18 is more relevant.

 

[CharleyH]

What does a happy poet write about?

Passion.

 

[PoetGuy]

Passion.

That could pose a significant problem, as Poet Guy is not passionate. Is methodical an acceptable substitute?

 

[twelveoone]

Poet Guy used to think that it described twelveoone's attitudes about copyright, but he now suspects that USC Title 18 is more relevant.

I only borrowed chipper's av, or are you refering to your threads
I only do so to:
1.) add much needed levity
2.) raise the intellectual level of the discourse

Oh, ahem, you did see I picked up on yours real fast, now do you a psychological interpt.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

Ourselves, of course, our concerns, our histories, those things that have made us what we are.

Poet Guy has recently been sick, which is not important, and during that time has been reading poetry, which he hopes is. Important. At least as discussion topic. Take Dorianne Laux, specifically, whom he has been reading.

Ms. Laux's first book of poems has a lot of abuse in it. The author is sexually abused by her father. Her sister is abused by her father--hit in the mouth with a belt buckle. Her neighbors are abused. Her mother is abused.

Poet Guy would like to point out that he was not abused. By parents or by teachers. By anyone, in fact.

So, his question. Poet Guy has had a very happy life. Is he handicapped as a poet by the fact that he's had a happy life? So much modern poetry seems to focus on awful things. How does one write poems about happiness? Is that even possible?

What does a happy poet write about?

I think a point should be made about the clear distinction that almost always exists (to a small degree or to an extent bordering on dissociative identity disorder) between the person who writes and the author persona (and then between the author and the poetic I). Just because the actual person who picks up the pen or sits in front of a computer screen hasn't experienced pain or anguish or transgalactic travel, it doesn't mean that the author can't just fake - and that faking can seem so real, that the author can even fake the ache he (or she) can truly feel. To paraphrase a favourite poem.

 

[twelveoone]

I think a point should be made about the clear distinction that almost always exists (to a small degree or to an extent bordering on dissociative identity disorder) between the person who writes and the author persona(s) (and then between the author(s) and the poetic I(s)). Just because the actual person who picks up the pen or sits in front of a computer screen hasn't experienced pain or anguish or transgalactic travel, it doesn't mean that the author can't just fake - and that faking can seem so real, that the author can even fake the ache he (or she) can truly feel. To paraphrase a favourite poem.

aye and there's the rub
you do have to be
It is an more like an "acting range", Kevin Spacey's range is not Brad Pitt's

 

[Lauren Hynde]

aye and there's the rub
you do have to be
It is an more like an "acting range", Kevin Spacey's range is not Brad Pitt's

Agreed.

 

[butters]

aye and there's the rub
you do have to be
It is an more like an "acting range", Kevin Spacey's range is not Brad Pitt's

^ this. at least, you have to allow the poem's truth, whatever that is. it's irrelevant if it's reality, or our own truth - be true to what's being written and it will be read as genuine.

 

[theognis]

I think a point should be made about the clear distinction that almost always exists (to a small degree or to an extent bordering on dissociative identity disorder) between the person who writes and the author persona (and then between the author and the poetic I). Just because the actual person who picks up the pen or sits in front of a computer screen hasn't experienced pain or anguish or transgalactic travel, it doesn't mean that the author can't just fake - and that faking can seem so real, that the author can even fake the ache he (or she) can truly feel. To paraphrase a favourite poem.

Reminds me of something. Don't know who said it first, but:

"Once you learn to fake sincerity, the rest is easy."