Poems From Poems

[Angeline]

Do you ever read a poem you love and then, consciously or not, write a poem that's similar to it? I'm not talking about plagiarizing, but reinterpreting what you believe to be a poem's theme. I've seen pairs of famous poets do it and I've done it myself.

I was just reading this Ted Berrigan poem and realized I had been influenced by it to write my poem Things to Do on Tuesday. In that case it was totally unconscious, and there were years between my reading the Berrigan and writing my poem. But look.

Things I Do Every Day
Ted Berrigan

wake up
smoke pot
see the cat
love my wife
think of Frank

eat lunch
make noises
sing songs
go out
dig the streets

go home for dinner
read the Post
make pee-pee
two kids
grin

read books
see my friends
get pissed-off
have a Pepsi
disappear


Things to Do on Tuesday
Angeline

Start your car.
Go to work,
get caught in a traffic jam.

Try to pretend you’re not
looking at the road psychos
screaming rage at each other
through windows rolled up
and doors locked.

Wait for the elevator.
Say “Hello, Hello,
Good Morning.
I’m fine.
How are you?”

Get off at the third floor.
See a friend you love
but are unable to connect
to because the vast gulf
of this building, this daily drivel
makes false shadows pass
between you, a soup of fog
too thick to cross.

Turn on your office light, the computer.
Tap, tap, tap.

Go to meetings.
Have IMPORTANT conversations.
Curl yourself up to hide
from an artillery of petty attacks.
Next time it might be you.

Eat lunch.
Tap, tap, tap

Three o’clock. Staying calm.
Drink cold water, yawn, stretch,
and go to the bathroom.

Leave work. Drive home.
The traffic psychos are looser,
more swaggering now.
It’s Miller time.

Home. Dinner.
Pay a bill. Have a fight
over money. Clean a spill,
read a story, give a bath,
call Mother, kiss a boo-boo.

Get in bed
and think about how much
you love that bed. The sheets
and pillows are so soft,
compromising.

Open a book
and dive into the words.
Remember your name,
remember who you are
just so you can willingly
lose yourself, float there
through that world
until someone says

“Aren’t you ever going to turn off the light?”

And you do.
And you try to sleep.


Have you ever done this or have good examples of other poets who have? If you haven't you can try it yourself if the idea appeals.

 

[sandspike]

With me it was songs

I rhyme a lot so its a easy trap to fall in. When I know a song line started one
of my poems I try to start over.

 

[impressive]

Do you ever read a poem you love and then, consciously or not, write a poem that's similar to it? I'm not talking about plagiarizing, but reinterpreting what you believe to be a poem's theme. I've seen pairs of famous poets do it and I've done it myself.

This is probably why all my poems sound alike.

 

[Liar]

This is probably why all my poems sound alike.

This is probably the only reason my poems sound different. I read a poem, gets instantly influences by the theme or the style or some particular device they use, and then go write a poem. Sometimes intentionally mimicking the poem I read, sometimes just going with an idea that plopped into my head at the time I read the poem.

 

[jthserra]

I'd have to say

that probably over 50% of my poems are like that, it's kind of a learning experience for me. If I am not intimating their style, I will pick up on a line or two and use that as inspiration for my work. That is why I use epigraphs so often. Anyway, when I read Bukoski, I will work towards his style for a while and then slowly move back to what you might call my style, then I'll read Symborska and write like her... and so on.

I look at it all like a learning experience.


jim : )

 

[Angeline]

that probably over 50% of my poems are like that, it's kind of a learning experience for me. If I am not intimating their style, I will pick up on a line or two and use that as inspiration for my work. That is why I use epigraphs so often. Anyway, when I read Bukoski, I will work towards his style for a while and then slowly move back to what you might call my style, then I'll read Symborska and write like her... and so on.

I look at it all like a learning experience.


jim : )

Jim I was reading a great quote earlier from Ted Berrigan about this--it reminded me of the poems I posted here. I think most writers do this--you can't help but be influenced by what you read and admire. I have to go out for a bit, but I'll try to find it and post it when I come back.

 

[Angeline]

Jim I was reading a great quote earlier from Ted Berrigan about this--it reminded me of the poems I posted here. I think most writers do this--you can't help but be influenced by what you read and admire. I have to go out for a bit, but I'll try to find it and post it when I come back.

Oh well couldn't find it but I found this which is pretty good, too.

When Allen Ginsberg's father died in 1976, Ted Berrigan took over Ginsberg's class at Naropa, and the occasion inspired him to speak about what he called "The Business of Writing Poetry." The first literary experiment he devised for students to try can be read as a revealing gloss on his conceptions of poetic authority and influence:

What I'm suggesting here, is that you take out about three of your best poems and think who your favorite poet is, living poet preferably, and type that poet's name in underneath your poems,and then put them in the drawer for a few weeks, and then find them, and read them, and see if they are good poems by that poet or not very good poems by that poet. And it may give you some sense of where you are at. (TALKING PO. 42)

 

[My Erotic Tale]

I was reading ZEN MASTER poets
and when they interviewd Hsu

they asked what poet inspired him the most ...

He replied .."I do not read others poetry
I mean no disrespect, It is just that
I do not wish for others poetry to influence my own."

I found that unusual and asked ...how do you write
poems if you never read one before <grin>

anyway I was going to make a thread asking then
about this but blew it off, but with this thread I
can ask what do you make of that?

hey grasshopper?

obviously the masters recognize influence in poetry !

one more note:
neo's poem 'cage' <<<< a water drain>>
inspired me to write 'silver slut' <<< about a trash can>>>
nodody got that it was a trash can they seem to take
the title by what it says and see a slut on the curb
not a silver trash can ...lamo it worked for neo
but then again he's a zen master poet <grin>

 

[Angeline]

I was reading ZEN MASTER poets
and when they interviewd Hsu

they asked what poet inspired him the most ...

He replied .."I do not read others poetry
I mean no disrespect, It is just that
I do not wish for others poetry to influence my own."

I found that unusual and asked ...how do you write
poems if you never read one before <grin>

anyway I was going to make a thread asking then
about this but blew it off, but with this thread I
can ask what do you make of that?

hey grasshopper?

obviously the masters recognize influence in poetry !

one more note:
neo's poem 'cage' <<<< a water drain>>
inspired me to write 'silver slut' <<< about a trash can>>>
nodody got that it was a trash can they seem to take
the title by what it says and see a slut on the curb
not a silver trash can ...lamo it worked for neo
but then again he's a zen master poet <grin>

Well my dear Art, I don't claim to be a Zen master--not the way I'm stumbling through life.

On the other hand, Lester Young who is a Zen Master to me said you can't develop your own style without first imitating others. He said an artist's voice grows in this way.

And you saw, no doubt, the Ted Berrigan quote I posted.

But I'll say this--from the little I know about Chinese poetic form, which is very different from a jazz improvisation or twentieth-century free verse, Hsu's comment seems consistent with his culture's art. Does that make sense to you? It does to me.

And here's another thought, if neither of us ever learned to read we might be able to express ourselves to ourselves beautifully, but could we understand each other?


Angeline (who is actually starting to dig being called Grasshopper by you, lol)

 

[My Erotic Tale]

Well my dear Art, I don't claim to be a Zen master--not the way I'm stumbling through life.

On the other hand, Lester Young who is a Zen Master to me said you can't develop your own style without first imitating others. He said an artist's voice grows in this way.

And you saw, no doubt, the Ted Berrigan quote I posted.

But I'll say this--from the little I know about Chinese poetic form, which is very different from a jazz improvisation or twentieth-century free verse, Hsu's comment seems consistent with his culture's art. Does that make sense to you? It does to me.

And here's another thought, if neither of us ever learned to read we might be able to express ourselves to ourselves beautifully, but could we understand each other?


Angeline (who is actually starting to dig being called Grasshopper by you, lol)

Just starting to ...laughs
I remember when we were on different sides of a debate
(for a lack of a better word to call the squabble <grin>)
but you showed clearly your understanding of our
differences and expressed an online personality at that
meeting that had me picturing you like .. grasshopper!
wisdom wit patience and calmness in a hustle ...
it just stuck, your a large help on the thread
and no matter what question I ask 'they' (lit-its) say go ask
angeline or jim <grin> I could just see you blowing a flute <laughin>

any way I know I personally have come a long way in poetry
wouldn't you say <laughing hard> and it is from reading alot
of the poems here and branched out to other sites and poems
on the web as well as the few books I picked up ... so I am
inspired by a read and it churns out a tale or poem.

so in some weird reality we are in a constant poem workshop
of reading and writing from what we read...curious but very true.

 

[Angeline]

Just starting to ...laughs
I remember when we were on different sides of a debate
(for a lack of a better word to call the squabble <grin>)
but you showed clearly your understanding of our
differences and expressed an online personality at that
meeting that had me picturing you like .. grasshopper!
wisdom wit patience and calmness in a hustle ...
it just stuck, your a large help on the thread
and no matter what question I ask 'they' (lit-its) say go ask
angeline or jim <grin> I could just see you blowing a flute <laughin>

any way I know I personally have come a long way in poetry
wouldn't you say <laughing hard> and it is from reading alot
of the poems here and branched out to other sites and poems
on the web as well as the few books I picked up ... so I am
inspired by a read and it churns out a tale or poem.

so in some weird reality we are in a constant poem workshop
of reading and writing from what we read...curious but very true.

Yes.

Reading poetry is one of the great joys of my life. I think it would be whether I wrote it or not. And you have grown as a writer since you came here. So have I. I think it's because we're both willing to learn with an open mind, don't you?

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2003/20030720/spectrum/grasshopper.jpg

 

[DeepAsleep]

I've noticed some influence of others' work on my own. I went thruogh a weird phase when I got done reading 'Love is a dog from hell' by Bukowski. I really liked his spare form, and choices of subject matter.. my imitation of his style lead, in a roundabout way, to me developing some small understanding of line breaks. (By the way, Eve, if you hadn't threatened to beat me, I may never have noticed that. >=])...

Another thing I consider, in my head, is what I call 'the ten thousand monkey syndrome'. There are only so many ideas, only so many words, only so many styles. Eventually, someone's going to do something similar to something that's already been done. I was nearly called a plagiarist in a comment on a poem I submitted, 'melancholera.' The commentor (anonymous) did everything but say I'd stolen lines straight from other people... which made me angry enough not to ask which ones and get all ranty and irritable (like I do). I don't care if you call it crap, so long as you understand that it's new crap, y'know?

So, yeah. Sometimes, you just come out with something that echoes something else.

~D.A.

 

[My Erotic Tale]

Yes.

Reading poetry is one of the great joys of my life. I think it would be whether I wrote it or not. And you have grown as a writer since you came here. So have I. I think it's because we're both willing to learn with an open mind, don't you?

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2003/20030720/spectrum/grasshopper.jpg

Yes I do <grin>

(~_~) bows humble to the zen master of sonnet jazz <smile>

I just love that pic ...ty


DA ... I know what you mean ...I wrote dream catcher a story
and every one asked if it was like the movie ...
I asked what movie???
went and rented it and watched it and nope ...my story was
lots better than that movie <grin>

 

[average gina]

I've noticed some influence of others' work on my own. I went thruogh a weird phase when I got done reading 'Love is a dog from hell' by Bukowski. I really liked his spare form, and choices of subject matter.. my imitation of his style lead, in a roundabout way, to me developing some small understanding of line breaks. (By the way, Eve, if you hadn't threatened to beat me, I may never have noticed that. >=])...

Another thing I consider, in my head, is what I call 'the ten thousand monkey syndrome'. There are only so many ideas, only so many words, only so many styles. Eventually, someone's going to do something similar to something that's already been done. I was nearly called a plagiarist in a comment on a poem I submitted, 'melancholera.' The commentor (anonymous) did everything but say I'd stolen lines straight from other people... which made me angry enough not to ask which ones and get all ranty and irritable (like I do). I don't care if you call it crap, so long as you understand that it's new crap, y'know?

So, yeah. Sometimes, you just come out with something that echoes something else.

~D.A.

I wanted to quote Angeline's initial post, but you said something that I wanted to elaborate on by showing this, written last December:

Could
wake up
shower
go to work

Could
pop out of bed
rouse the children
get us to school

Could
sit up
ring a bell
let Jameson bring breakfast
spoil myself

Could
fall out of bed
100 sit ups
100 push ups
run 6 miles


not gonna

Now I wouldn't know Ted Berrigan if he came and pimp-slapped me, I rarely read poems in fear of syle-raping (I'm trying to. trust me.) so I haven't seen the initially posted poems until tonight. So I can dig the 1000-monkey complex. It's not the same thing, but in a way, they have some similar thoughts.

 

[Liar]

so in some weird reality we are in a constant poem workshop
of reading and writing from what we read...curious but very true.

Honestly, I can not fathom it being any other way. I trhink I wrote a post about this in some other thread, about human creativity and learning processes...

All we do is filter and file impressions, and then invent new ways to use them in our current context. Real creation of something unique is quite rare. We assimilate ideas on a daily basis, much more than we realise. Most of the time, the ideas fit into what we already know and are familiar with, and we use them sub-consciously. Sometimes, they fall out of what we are familiar with, or comfortable with writing, and we have to focus on them, explore them and try them out more explicitly. We accomodate, expand our horizons and become more able poets.

 

[Fflow]

Human Condition

It is not surprising that we write about the mundane aspects of our lives. We hope, I suspect, to illuminate and elevate them, to breathe meaning into them, so that they become more tolerable.

Our minds are naturally drawn to the familiar, to the emotions and sensations closest to us. These things have a commonality that can reach across the chasm that seperates each of us from one another. I know what it feels like to wake to the jarring sound of an alarm. It may be a different sound than what you hear each morning, but the feeling it evokes is familiar.

These daily rituals may change from time to time, or from culture to culture, but the desire to express our humanity in the midst of the mundane is an urge that has always existed in us and, probably, always will. It is part of the human condition.

xoxo

 

[Fflow]

Elliot & Eno

elliot wrote:

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

Eno wrote:

The passage of my life is measured out in shirts