Why do you write poetry?

Why

"Is it because you have something powerful within you, building up, like a fire that will consume you if you don't let it out, the flames licking away your soul?"

That's putting it a bit melodramatically, but it is something like that. The words are rattling around in my head and I feel compelled to write them out. I write because I have to.

"Or, just because you think it's fun?"

Sometimes I do it for this reason too. Less often. I have more time for compulsion than for fun.

"Do you write simply as an emotional/spiritual catharsis, not wanting nor caring for others to ever read your work?"

No, I rarely do this. I try to make all of my poems readable. Which is not to say I write to be published, but that it is not a merely personal experience with me. I want my poems to be accesible and enjoyable for others.

Why I write poetry

Poetry is a way to write with more emotion than is usually acceptable in other types of writing.
It's therapeutic at times.
It is a way to tell someone something that I think they need/want to hear.
It's a way to play with language.
It's just the way some of what I have to write comes out.

I like to write poety and I've sold a few, had a few used in dramatic ways (on a headstone, in a Naval Academy dedication ceremony, on a counted-cross-stitch hanging, in a published cookbook), and given a lot away as gifts. Mostly I write for myself and for God (to Whom many are dedicated) and when I do share them, I don't care much what other people think about them (unless I'm trying to sell them, when I'm very careful to follow guidelines, meter, rhyme schemes, etc.)

I consider myself a writer who sometimes writes poetry, not a poet. And my favorite quotes about poetry are:

There's no money in poetry but then there's no poetry in money, either.--Robert Graves (1895--1985), British author

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"Poetry, which always sits on the sideline, is really there for us at a time
like [the aftermath of Sept. 11]. We know it because it is what we say when a child is born, when someone gets married or at the side of the grave. That's when we go to poetry, when things are really important." --Joan Murray

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"Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement."
--Christopher Fry

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yikes...

Robert Graves (1895--1985), U.S. author

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i like your response, but robert graves must be rolling over in his well ... grave.
he was british. very.

Yes, flame licking. All the little things I’ve done and said, indiscretions, lies, imperfections, some real, some imagined, building and rising to a deafening crescendo of spoiled guts played in a pitch only I am sensitive to that must be given voice outside my mind or my head will surely explode. That. Is what poetry is to me.








Lol, no it’s not.

I’m not a poet. I don’t know anything about meter or style. I write poetry on occasion for all kinds of odd inspired reasons. Most of the time it’s flippant and fun or observational, now and then it's serious, and lately I have written some that is about me.

How do you know a peach is a peach? You can see it. You can see it and touch it. You can see it, touch it, taste its sweetness, take in its fragrance… to me, poetry is another sense, unique in the way it cultivates insight. The more senses used deepens understanding.

Don't hate me because I'm a rotten poet! I'm not even a "real" poet in that I see myself as a writer of nonfiction.

Still, I turn to poetry when my personal essays fail. Sometimes, after hours or days of struggling with an essay, I realize the piece is meant to be a poem. That is, the piece seeks to portray emotion or feeling, more than tell a story with a beginning, middle, and end.

Again, please don't throw worm-riddled tomatoes at me. I love poetry, but have accepted its creation is not a gift I inherently possess.

As a shameless act of ego-boosting, though, I will add I've had three poems published (in an anthology of which I co-founded the publishing company...so take that for what it's worth). One of those poems has also been accepted for publication in a magazine, and should see ink this year.

I don't write real poetry. I occasionally write doggerel because it's fun.

Optimus said:

This is a question spawned from my last thread.

I was intrigued when reading one of the responses so, I ask, why do you write poetry?

Is it because you have something powerful within you, building up, like a fire that will consume you if you don't let it out, the flames licking away your soul?

Or, just because you think it's fun?

Do you write simply as an emotional/spiritual catharsis, not wanting nor caring for others to ever read your work?

Or, do you write because you have something to tell people, something you want them to hear, or something you need them to hear?

I'm just wondering and I think it'd be interesting to hear some of the responses.

I find that poets seem to be some of the more thoughtful and introspective of all writers, so I'm curious as to the different motivations poets have for writing.

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I write because I enjoy it and because I like hearing what other people have to say about it, good or bad. I left behind the catharsis a long time ago. No-one (seriously) wants to read that stuff. I'd rather tell a story and leave enough room for the reader to come to their own conclusion.

Thanks, William

<blushing> I usually try to look up and verify a quote before using it in here (I always do in my writing), but that one got by me. Thanks for pointing out my mistake.

poets should be lined up and shot.

I was intrigued when reading one of the responses so, I ask, why do you write poetry?

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poetry was my first love, and all my aspirations of being a writer revolved around it. i get a feeling of satisfaction in writing poetry that is impossible to duplicate in any other form of writing.

Is it because you have something powerful within you, building up, like a fire that will consume you if you don't let it out, the flames licking away your soul?

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language is incomplete. it may be humankind's high water mark in communicating with one another, but it is incapable of completely expressing the range of human emotion and thought. poetry seeks to wring the most out of language, by turning it on itself, compressing, deconstructing, violating and celebrating it - without regard to rules of syntax. in this role, poetry has more in common with painting and music than it does with other forms of writing.

Or, just because you think it's fun?

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it's fun in the wacky way it compels one to pull one's brain from one's skull and manipulate it like a rubik's cube.

Do you write simply as an emotional/spiritual catharsis, not wanting nor caring for others to ever read your work?

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it's ritual. not in the religious sense (although it can be); but no one truly engages the writing or reading of poetry without experiencing the transcendent quality of it. the rush for me is in writing it, though i appreciate it when it connects with someone. i no longer actively seek publication (i haven't had a poem published in a decade), and would rather take a rusty nail in my eye than read it aloud.

Or, do you write because you have something to tell people, something you want them to hear, or something you need them to hear?

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poetry is rebellion - against the artificial restrictions put on language by pedants, against cookie-cutter thought, against paradigms of perception.

i was drawn as a child to the outlaw quality of poetry. in the age of the novel (and certainly that of electronic media), poetry is relegated to a small section of slim volumes tucked away in the dusty nether-regions of bookstores and libraries. poetry is subversive and sublime. its mystery is dangerous to those who don't get it.

William Haskins said:

language is incomplete. it may be humankind's high water mark in communicating with one another, but it is incapable of completely expressing the range of human emotion and thought. poetry seeks to wring the most out of language, by turning it on itself, compressing, deconstructing, violating and celebrating it - without regard to rules of syntax. in this role, poetry has more in common with painting and music than it does with other forms of writing.

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IMHO,poetry is much like painting. When I'm working on or finishing up an ink piece, I can think of nothing i want more to do than to express my feelings about the art in poetry. It feels so fundamental to me, like the ink wouldn't be complete unless I expressed it in words of poetry. Poetry was the begining of writing for me, I can't even remember when I started. Some of it is VERY private and some I can't wait to share. When my writing (short, novel, or otherwise) needs a kickstart, I try turning out a few lines of poetry and the creative world shifts back on track for me.

Sara

He becomes harsh in the middle of St. Valentine's moon. ~SmsC

Well, for me, the poem is a beautiful compression (should be) of experience.

and, when done properly, imho, language is used to transcend language to arrive at a visceral point.......
that's why when people ask me what it means, i say, "it means whatever it means to you."

kf

I write poetry when I can't NOT write it. I don't care if anyone reads it; the thrill is in the writing of it. But if someone does connect with what I've written, that's pretty sweet, too. (Although, like William said, don't ask me to read it to you.) Sometimes I write just for fun--limericks, 'odes', etc. But because I most often write devotional poetry, for me it is usually a spiritual experience; it's my way of trying to 'capture' transcendence, much like taking a snapshot with my camera. It is the one time when I write that I feel sure I am in dialogue, not monologue.

I don't understand the question! Its like asking a human being why she is human be-ing?

well i guess its your first point for me... i just have to let things out this way... on trains, buses, during classes... memories, ideas, just a simple word can spark a thought or a feeling that i just cant seem to forget... i dont want EVERYONE knowing i write, nor do i want them reading my personal emotions... very few do know, and yes very few of my "poems" are here... i prefer to call them "writings" i am not a poet by any means... i actually hate it sometimes, cant sleep, cant focus... keep telling myself to shut up... ok i will shut up now... happy writing...

Personally I write to both channel and explore my imagination. In every day life I teach and that is indeed stimulating. However I find that my writing gives me the opportunity to fly free, at once unencumbered by reality and seeing it from a completely different perspective. When I eventually do return to the ground, I find that I frequently see things differently. I have new ideas, find new words to describe things with and am generally refreshed.
The box can be claustrophobic and difficult to see in. Frequent sorties outside are to be recommended!

this is stupid but you asked

I write poetry because it saved my life. When I was in the 4th grade I could not read. I don't mean I didn't sound good when I read, I mean I couldn't read anything (maybe dog, cat, ect..). I remember being under a table for reading time with a couple of friends and them passing the book back and forth, and when it would come to me I would make every effort to get out of it. I was placed in a "special" reading program. I was shy. The kids were very rough, and I hated it. It was the worst kind of torture for me honestly. I would much rather sit inside my own head than to deal with the real world anyway, and I had kids climbing the walls around me.

Well one of my reading teachers in the program let us pick out books from one of those flyers, and I couldn't read it so I just pointed to the prettiest book I saw I guess. It turned out to be a book of poems. I had the book for many years until just recently. Anyway she started reading to me, and within a month I was writing poems. I really started writing before I learned to read, and then reading poetry became my past time. I caught up to grade level by my Junior year in high school. My grades impoved and I went to school for writing and journalism and made the top 1/3 of my class. I went back later and got a masters degree and now I teach kids to read and write poetry. What else could I do?

Oh, the part about saving my life. Well most of the people around me, if you remember were not the best of character. So through my high school years I hung out with the type people that do not make it to college. My love of writing took me there, and I've lost 7 good friends to overdoses or suicide in the last 12 years.

Cool! But last paragraph snif! Very nice story + proves a theory I have had now for many years (since childhood) that poetry has nothing to do with reading (reading it?). And that reading ... well people read only things they already know. To confirm or such. Etc. I probably would have been with you under the table. You sound nice! Smile!

A friend of mine sent me an email today about her son Christopher who started college this fall. I thought of this thread.

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Devon has been using an old notebook of Chris' in which Chris obviously kept a journal of sorts relative to some creative writing class. I have been absolutely spell-binded by it tonight.

Here is an entry:

Poetry = Revolution

Poetry is the transfer of information, a form of communication, but the information communicated reflects emotion, has a power from the author rare in other forms of literature, but with a control and freedom rare in other forms of speech. So, it is poetries "best of both worlds' that makes it equal revolution. Revolution is ignited by emotion, offers the same control and freedom but in action instead of words. Revolution is poetry in action.

Poetry even transcends that imo ... 'poetry is alway something else' .

If you are interested in pages and pages of blah I wrote about this in the 'Praag Review' and in which I defended this statement of this something else, here's a link to it = http://users.skynet.be/spier/oeuvrepress.htm Click on 'machines of art'.

But sure I grasp your think re this thread, Cas. What do YOU think poetry is? Big topic!

as



Interview contains this kind of stuff =

[font=Times New Roman, Times, serif]'If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm meknow that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.'
Emily Dickinson[/font]

[font=Times New Roman, Times, serif]'Poems are signs, insider material, or at[/font][font=Times New Roman, Times, serif] least, deconstructive insider palpations of words. They are constructed out of things that are resilient, interchangeable and descantable and dynamic in temperament. There is movement, transition, division and inclination in poetry. The thingness of words, the things poetry are contrived and structured from, is the where/what-it-is-all-about in poetry. It may sound presumptuous, but, poetry IS this very something which is asked about when the query touches on essentiality. Essence. Formulations and admixtures such as: 'What, Is, The, Essence, Of and Poetry' prove the point: the thingness. Six things (words) are structured in a convincing fabrication. Syntactic rhythm and semantic weight bestow definition, significance and message. A poem, any poem, always enlarges the question of what poetry is. It adds to the historical questioning memoire. 'Poetry, Is, Always, An, Art-historical, Quest, Into, Some, Dark and Region'. The search for essence is convoluted, perplexing and intricate. It is a quest into illogical ambiguity.

[/font]

Aspier, yes, I know. I haven't answered that question. But I will .... soon.... oy.

Cassie88 said:

Aspier, yes, I know. I haven't answered that question. But I will .... soon.... oy.

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Smile yes! Wow that was quick posting! But sure its a 'hughes' topic of which the smallest poem poem, if you know what I mean, real poem, gives the complete answer. I am just hooked to poetry and you? Its a drug or even worse ... a curse, like love. Nice fatal curse! No?

Waaaaah! What is poetry????

Hey, check out what netscate wrote re this thread = http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21282

Aspier, that's the same poem that appears earlier in this thread!

I used to write poetry, but not anymore. I'm to busy trying to make a living at writing. Poets starve.