emulation

[wildsweetone]

have you found it of benefit to your own writing to emulate another poet's work?

if so, what were your findings?


i'm just curious, again.

 

[BooMerengue]

have you found it of benefit to your own writing to emulate another poet's work?

if so, what were your findings?


i'm just curious, again.

I sucked...

 

[wildsweetone]

i can't imagine that. wait a minute. yes i can.




i wuv you



hmmm how can you have sucked? you're really good at forms and stuff. okay this is where i realise there's more to emulation than just copying forms... the use of language, the use of punctuation, the use of space - filled and white.

i want to know, which bit you think you were not so good at, Boo.

 

[teacherman570]

I haven't read much poetry recently (of which I'm disappointed in myself), but when I do I always find myself taking the style of what I just read and incororating it into my own work, at least in the short term. I didn't work so well when I was reading a lot of Shakespeare.
20th century poetry always seems to make my poetry more fragmented. It usually mixed results. I usually find my best work coming from stream of consciousness and without any outside influence.

I do seem to ramble on, don't I?

 

[wildsweetone]

stream of conscious and rambling's good it's how we find those tiny gems.

i have a couple of sites where i can read the Poem of the Day (one gets emailed into my email account) and the thread i started about mixed sentences Word Order Game... these things seem to be conjuring up a fair bit of poetry for me to read.

i picked up a NZ poetry book the other day too... 121 New Zealand Poems by 121 New Zealand poets. quite cool.

i guess what i'm saying is, i've been reading so 'widely' lately that i haven't got hooked into one particular way of writing.

 

[teacherman570]

The variety is a great idea. Many times I'll be inspired by something I see in nature, or by a particular piece of music, which is why I walk so many different places and listen to so many different kinds of music.
I've been reading morepoetry here than anywhere else, and there is quite a bit of variety here!

 

[wildsweetone]

Share a Poet

New Poems Reviews

Poetry and Lyrics

Dusty Poems


wow that's quite a few really.

 

[BooMerengue]

i can't imagine that. wait a minute. yes i can.




i wuv you



hmmm how can you have sucked? you're really good at forms and stuff. okay this is where i realise there's more to emulation than just copying forms... the use of language, the use of punctuation, the use of space - filled and white.

i want to know, which bit you think you were not so good at, Boo.

the sucking part...

 

[BooMerengue]

stream of conscious and rambling's good it's how we find those tiny gems.

i have a couple of sites where i can read the Poem of the Day (one gets emailed into my email account) and the thread i started about mixed sentences Word Order Game... these things seem to be conjuring up a fair bit of poetry for me to read.

i picked up a NZ poetry book the other day too... 121 New Zealand Poems by 121 New Zealand poets. quite cool.

i guess what i'm saying is, i've been reading so 'widely' lately that i haven't got hooked into one particular way of writing.

I didn't know there were 121 people in NZ! I thought it was all waterfalls.

 

[Tzara]

have you found it of benefit to your own writing to emulate another poet's work?

if so, what were your findings?


i'm just curious, again.

I've not exactly tried to directly emulate another poet. Not that I can recall, anyway.

But write something inspired by or similar in style to, yeah. Has it worked? Dunno. I'm not sure anything I do works. It's all kind of fun, though.

For example,

• This for your STC "Chance" was directly emulating some techniques used by Jackson MacLow. Successful? No. But kind of interesting.
• This one was inspired by some of the "plays" (which to me sure look like poems) of Kenneth Koch. I had a great time writing this and am pretty fond of how it turned out. Is it any good? Probably not. But it was fun. Koch is so much ridiculously better that there is no point in even discussing it. But just as the fact that Tiger Woods is ridiculously better than I am at golf would not stop me from playing a round, so does the fact that Koch (or Yeats or Tennyson, or whomever) is way way better than I'll ever be discourage me from playing with poems. What harm can I do? I can't even break someone's window, like I could with an errant golf shot.
• This was less obviously inspired by Koch, but one of the things I like about a lot of his poems is that I find them funny, hence this.

I think of these as experiments on working with different styles and ways of thinking about poems.

Writing "poetry" (I hesitate to call what I am doing poetry--"playing with words" seems more accurate) is fun. So far, anyway.

 

[bogusbrig]

I think one of the ways of reaching ones own style is going through a process of stealing everybody elses style and then abandoning them, it's a learning and discovery process.

If you are drawn to write in a style do it, you will discover soon enough if it is you or not, though the danger of consciously writing in someone elses style is that you could end up parodying them rather than writing something original but in their style.

 

[flyguy69]

I think one of the ways of reaching ones own style is going through a process of stealing everybody elses style and then abandoning them, it's a learning and discovery process.

If you are drawn to write in a style do it, you will discover soon enough if it is you or not, though the danger of consciously writing in someone elses style is that you could end up parodying them rather than writing something original but in their style.

Absolutely. I will share a self-instruction technique I use: when i read a poem that particularly moves me I will sometimes rewrite the poem using my own personal experiences or thoughts. It is bald-faced theft, but since the poems never venture further than my desktop or the trash, i don't care.

It is surprising how much I learn from simply applying another poet's style to images from my life. I have done it with classical poets whose style I don't care to emulate, contemporary poets whom I would simply love to be, and even some of you.

 

[annaswirls]

I tried to emulate myself once
but it had a inverse destructive interference effect

you know too much inbreeding
gene pool stench

now apparently my poems
have self imploded
like a latex glove you peel off
inside out so the blood is caught on the inside

drop it into hazardous biomedical waste

dont catch it dont catch it
even the cocktail wont cure it now
blow on my thumbs maybe the fingers will pop out
to their original shape

pass it overhead
tap it overhead
don't let it touch the ground
dont let the needle get it

 

[flyguy69]

Your ears must have been burning!

I tried to emulate myself once
but it had a inverse destructive interference effect

you know too much inbreeding
gene pool stench

now apparently my poems
have self imploded
like a latex glove you peel off
inside out so the blood is caught on the inside

drop it into hazardous biomedical waste

dont catch it dont catch it
even the cocktail wont cure it now
blow on my thumbs maybe the fingers will pop out
to their original shape

pass it overhead
tap it overhead
don't let it touch the ground
dont let the needle get it

 

[annaswirls]

Your ears must have been burning!

when my ears burn we douse them
hydrogen peroxide, 2%
5 will burn
30 will kill

when the anger comes up
we crush it down
one pink one white
two will bring me here
three will kill

---------

oh wait... I am sorry
talk like talk,

Hi Fly! How are you buddy?
Burning? why? were you speaking of me?
many things begin to burn when you are near

 

[flyguy69]

Peroxide decomposes
explosively
pushing walls down I remember
the teacher: this guy had his world
enlarged by playing
with solutions
he said it looked like diamonds
raining
the tools of the scientist
turned to poetry.

when my ears burn we douse them
hydrogen peroxide, 2%
5 will burn
30 will kill

when the anger comes up
we crush it down
one pink one white
two will bring me here
three will kill

---------

oh wait... I am sorry
talk like talk,

Hi Fly! How are you buddy?
Burning? why? were you speaking of me?
many things begin to burn when you are near

 

[annaswirls]

H2o2

walls broken down
we remain
water and oxygen
to burn, to douse

the soap bubbles pop
and burn all the way
down to the spring
where matchsticks drown

eyes turn upwards
and wait for the next
flame

Peroxide decomposes
explosively
pushing walls down I remember
the teacher: this guy had his world
enlarged by playing
with solutions
he said it looked diamonds
raining
the tools of the scientist
turned to poetry.

 

[bogusbrig]

It is surprising how much I learn from simply applying another poet's style to images from my life. I have done it with classical poets whose style I don't care to emulate, contemporary poets whom I would simply love to be, and even some of you.

I'm sending you a bill.

It will be the first money I would have earned from my poetry so look at it as a good deed and open your cheque book.

 

[flyguy69]

I'll send you every dime I have earned from mine! What does a refill of a coffee cup cost in Rotterdam?

I'm sending you a bill.

It will be the first money I would have earned from my poetry so look at it as a good deed and open your cheque book.

 

[champagne1982]

I often emulate, most of the time, I'm completely unaware I had. Someone with wider reading will often say, "Gee, that poem reminds me of..."

Now, emolation. I was just burning to say that.