Do you think poetry helps with literary fiction?

gettingby · Mar 20, 2016

CassandraW said:
This, exactly.

I can knock off doggerel and nonsense verse in minutes. But that, to me, is not poetry. Something I would call a poem can take anywhere from an evening to a couple of weeks to write. I often mull over a single line for days, only to have it jump out at me while brushing my teeth one morning.

Neither exercise is a warm-up for writing prose. But I do think writing poetry has made me more attuned to language and better at paring it down to essentials. (Writing doggerel, on the other hand is useful only for entertaining my little nieces and nephews.)

I'm so glad you said this. I was thinking something was wrong with me when it comes to how long it takes to write a poem. It seems like it should be much easier and I should be banging out cleaner drafts or maybe not even need to do anymore drafts. But poetry requires a lot of thought and a good ear and needs time to develop. And writing formal poetry means planning or at least thinking ahead a little as you're writing.

I am a pretty fast writer when I comes to prose, but that skill is not really transferring over. I know I'm still very new at poetry and probably not even supposed to be good yet. But after a few months of poetry, my fiction is on fire. I just wrote my best story ever. I kept catching myself paying attention so sound and rhythm. My new story sounds like someone else, a better writer, wrote this one. I am in love with my story and that hasn't happened in a long time.

So, if It takes me a dozen hours + to write one bad poem, but I'm able to write a more remarkable story than I could before, the whole thing is worth it. I think I might stick with this poetry thing for awhile.

CassandraW · Mar 20, 2016

It is not just you. I can write pages of prose in the time it takes me to turn out one poem (or at least one poem I like). I've been positively prolific lately -- which for me means finishing a poem every few days.

If you'd like half a dozen limericks of no particular quality, though, I can turn them out tonight.

gettingby · Mar 20, 2016

I usually slave away for a few hours at a time. I work on it until I either think I'm brilliant or just decide to quit that poem. That just seems like so much time to spend writing 300 or less words. It's crazy. And what I write is probably really bad. I'm actually having a lot of fun writing formal poetry. But, of course, it's bad. I'm still new at this. So, if I've got one I think is good, I will come back to it the next day and the next day. It sounds like we're on a similar schedule. But I bet you're still faster than me. Have you been writing poetry for a long time?

lacygnette · Mar 21, 2016

Gettingby said, "But poetry requires a lot of thought and a good ear and needs time to develop." I think you could say the same about prose. Good prose.

I still write poetry from time to time and I find it requires more of a letting go than prose. A novel I can direct, at least in plot. A poem I can only nudge. Thus the time element.

Lillith1991 · Mar 21, 2016

lacygnette said:
Gettingby said, "But poetry requires a lot of thought and a good ear and needs time to develop." I think you could say the same about prose. Good prose.

I still write poetry from time to time and I find it requires more of a letting go than prose. A novel I can direct, at least in plot. A poem I can only nudge. Thus the time element.

This sounds interesting to me. I can write a poem in less than 30 mins depending on the length, but I spend a long time refining the poem and even rewriting things about the poem that don't work. I've rewritten entire poems before if the thing just isn't working. Poem writing is a process to me. I get the initial draft down and then work on getting it to sound its best and convey the meaning it seems to be conveying already.

CassandraW · Mar 21, 2016

gettingby said:
I usually slave away for a few hours at a time. I work on it until I either think I'm brilliant or just decide to quit that poem. That just seems like so much time to spend writing 300 or less words. It's crazy. And what I write is probably really bad. I'm actually having a lot of fun writing formal poetry. But, of course, it's bad. I'm still new at this. So, if I've got one I think is good, I will come back to it the next day and the next day. It sounds like we're on a similar schedule. But I bet you're still faster than me. Have you been writing poetry for a long time?

Yes, I have been writing it for a long time -- and I do think if you put time in you develop a better ear and it comes more easily. That says, I certainly do not consider my poetry in terms of words per day.

Some poems take longer to wrestle out -- and it is not a function of the poem's length. I have some that came rather easily, and I was content with in an evening, others where something just didn't satisfy me for weeks. The thing with a poem (IMO) is that every word should be the best possible word for that poem, with nothing extra and nothing omitted, in the best possible order. I've completed a novel and many stories and a heap of legal writing (I'm a lawyer), and writing a good poem (emphasis on the good), takes me much longer on average word for word -- much.

Do you think poetry helps with literary fiction?

gettingby

CassandraW

gettingby

lacygnette

Sucked in by AW again

Lillith1991

The Hobbit-Vulcan hybrid

CassandraW