Saturday, April 01, 2006

It

So, the question is why don't the poets talk about poetry? Where is the deep analysis of the writing? Either the poets don't have any idea of what they are doing, or they don't want to spill their secrets, or they don't want to give away the tricks of the trade. Maybe there aren't any. Maybe it is like movie stars: either they have it or they don't.
So, poets, write down on one piece of paper all your golden lines, the lines that make you a poet. Are they any good? Is it poetry? Either you know or you don't.

2 comments:

Lo said...

"Are they any good? Is it poetry? Either you know or you don't." How? I never know. If anything, I will err on the side of caution and be fairly well convinced that they are not.
I do know that certain lines are "there" and poems are built around them. (for me, at least) But honestly, sometimes it all seems like just so much bullsh*t.
As to "secrets", I don't have any. I wish I did. :)
I can't analyze it deeply, I can't even analyze it superfically. There is so much supposed poetry that I don't find poetic and there is so much life that I DO find poetic that I can hardly tell the difference.
You asked in another post why some poets blogged mundane life-stuff instead of writing poetry and I have no answer. Maybe those of us who blog other things are not really poets after all. Or maybe just the very act of writing anything helps increase our ability to manipulate words to our advantage. I don't see why we can't take that learned advantage (no matter how or where we learned it) and transfer it to a poem when we do decide it's time to write one.
In other words, I can't write a poem a day...I can't even write a poem a month for the most part, but I CAN (and do) write other things.....ideas, visions, thoughts, concepts....anger, happiness, depression, elation. I think those are the things that poetry stems from.
Maybe you are right, tho, maybe we are only allotted so many words in a lifetime and if we use them all up wastefully (non-poetry)we will not have any left to use constructively (poetry).
Arghhh...
Now that's depressing.

Happy Birthday? What's with "Happy BIrthday?" Is it your birthday?
Happy Birthday!!!

Tom said...

Thank you, lioness of god.
Suzie bought me a set of those Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones, the ones people wear on airplanes or noisy places, so now I can listen to my ipod. Very cool.

Lo,
You either know or you don't. There is no inbetween. I have dozens of secrets in writing poetry, but if I say any of them I get knocked down quickly as such things sound like limiters, exclusionary rather than inclusionary, which is how most writers want to accepted. There is another thought that to write poetry takes almost all your energy and spending lots of time writing other things is damaging to your own art. I did not say to write poetry everyday, nor would I encourage anyone to write poetry everyday.
We might be allotted a certain amount of words, some more, some less, but we are allotted only a certain number of hours in a week, and how a week is used is a crucial difference to the art. The art only improves by doing the art. So many of the blogs I am reading concern themselves with chit-chat, things that don't matter. It is important to share lives with others, and to have concerns for each other, but babbling on about unimportant things is a waste. All I am saying is that I will be most concerned with someone who puts art first, before anything else in their life.
Only when it is for 'mortal stakes.'