Poets, has your style evolved over time? Show and/or tell.

[CassandraW]

This thread may fall flat, but I thought I'd give it a try.

I would bet that many of us have been writing poetry from a pretty early age, and probably most of us have seen our style evolve as time went on. I'd be really curious to see a sampling of people's early work -- whether it's something they're still proud of, or something that makes them cringe, realizing how much they've learned.

And since I started this possibly cringe-inducing thread, I'll stick my neck out first.

I've been spouting poetry since elementary school, but my style changed quite a bit over the years. Through age 18 or so, I was mesmerized by Edgar Allan Poe, and I was all about rhymes and meter. Then, starting in college, I went through an extended period where I rejected rhyme and form altogether, and it was all about meaning, images, and metaphor, with the cleanest language I could muster. Now I've let rhyme and some form and meter back into my work -- though, when I look at my college work, I can see the beginnings of the voice I now think of as mine.

 

[Hamenaglar]

Uuuuu, an excuse to put some shameful old stuff, great idea!

My early stuff is soooo bad, that I can't bear my self to read more than a few lines. It's all canned in a imaginary trash bin. The second period was also bad, but I at least started looking for interesting themes to write about. But, I think soon, all that will finish in an imaginary trash bin too. Here is a piece from that period (one of my favourite ones actually).



Melancholy

Call my name,
Say that you love me,
And then be gone away.

Seek the solitude within my soul,
Touch this absence of hope,
Feel the surrounding void.

My ego, mountain size,
Trapped in imaginary world,
Through years, filled with lies.

Call my name,
Say that you love me,
And then be gone away.

Give me your soul, give me your heart,
Let me take it, let me break it,
You are not what I want.

Let me feed upon you,
Bleed for me, die for me,
I accept your life gladly.

And as you do not come,
No sacrifice given to me,
I give in to my melancholy.

 

[kuwisdelu]

Oh, fun! Old bad poems!

Like you, Cassandra, my earliest was probably my Poe phase in middle school when I was 12 or so years young. For better or worse (probably better), I don't have anything from that period.

I have some stuff from high school and undergrad, though:

the windmills

i was driving too fast an hour
outside chicago when
i saw
the windmills, they
spin slowly with the breeze, and
my g-d
there must be a million of
them, scattered across the
hillside, casting
dim
shadows
that
twirl in the grass.

the grass that, like
an ocean, has
ripples
and waves. and
the uncut green blades
slouch
toward me, undulating
(when they feel like it) in
the wind, the same wind
that spins the windmills
scattered on the hillside

on the other side of
the hill
sets the
dying sun that
casts the
shadows
twirling in the grass
that
slouches toward me
(but only when it feels like it)

and i couldn’t help but think that
it was beautiful
something to write a poem about, but
it would be
an uninteresting poem
because
beautiful
isn’t interesting.

and i couldn’t help but think that
the only thing
that could make it more beautiful
were if she were here
with me
she with the eyes the color
of the dying sky
behind the dying sun
as bloodred as
the grass was turning on
the otherside of
my bloodshot eyes.

but she has better things to do
(the windmills were gone by now)
than be here with me.
(my car spinning off the road)
she is the sun that casts the
shadows on my grassy heart
and
(my car shooting faster than a lawyer to hell)
she is busy fucking me over
(but only when she feels like it.)

isn’t that interesting?

I am the river that flows endlessly toward you,
and you are the wine-dark sea into which
the sky empties its tears
like God, weeping.

Throw a mountain in front of me
and I will break it down to reach you.
Cast the moonlight on me
and I will carry it to you.
Dam me up and I will sit, placid,
until the sky opens up again and I overflow

into you and you color me
with your endless waters like open arms,
your waves that break like glass,
your ripples that pulse like a heartbeat,
and I know you were waiting for me.

But I am no river, and you
are not the sea, and yet,
as your heart beats and sends ripples through me that
break on me like waves,
I wonder if the river knows
where it is going, and
do you know I am coming?

O forsaken stars! Tortur’d am I,
By thy rememb’rance of her nightly eyes,
Though they be faded in astral translation,
And no more comfort than dullest portrait.
Sith fire come and dous’d thy former light,
In lesser glow, yet closer, man hast forgot;
But if her likeness thy points reluméd—
In perfect stars her face heaven-painted—
Then all the world should drown itself at night
To seek a kiss upon thy wat’ry lips,
And make a grave under sea’s reflection.
O! But far from sky she lies in earthly ground.
O most tormented night! O bane of sky,
Happy with her million eyes! I weep.
So haunt me, love, until my soul woulds’t burn!
By Heaven! I await my love’s return!

to her sovereign master

if but a single moment left
we had and you, my soul bereft,
would reach and clutch my torrid heart
and squeeze from it some mottled art,
like sun-splotched words of rhyming verse
that mirror sunset’s rosy course,
or playful wit or love-struck song,
like the Holy one of Solomon,
and love you’d make in rhythmic ode
to me, that I submit, it bode.

you master me with words and phrase:
with me as muse, the sun you raze
and raise an alabaster tower
to shout your love, but still I cower.
but heart cannot forever hold
and starve from lovesick, lonely cold;
it yearns for you with Hell-like fire.
though damned I’ll be for this desire,
forsake my rites to tomb lonely,
I choose your dust eternally.

Long after the streetlights come on,
I am still awake with bloodshot eyes.
The night is an arachnid inside my head,
crawling the angry streets before dawn,
waiting for the Zippo-spark horizon.
I am thinking of those ink-colored mornings
I spent with you, half-asleep, smoking Parliaments,
and how I am more yours than God’s.

Your eyes were the lantern that
burnt the sky awake every morning, and
your skin was the soft fog that
caressed my cheek.
Your lips, whose kisses caused car crashes,
I wait for, now, in the morning dew. And
I think no poet is complete
without spending a night
on the street, waiting
for morning
just to recapture those Indie-rock twilights
I spent with you.

...and that was the very last poem I wrote until 2014, beginning my current phase.

Actually, now that I think of it, I have a poem that I wrote in 2008 and heavily revised into two new poems in 2014. They might make an interesting comparison if anyone is interested, but I think I'd prefer to post them in a different thread, since the revisions are recent.

 

[CassandraW]

Uuuuu, an excuse to put some shameful old stuff, great idea!

Hurray, I got a bite!

My thought exactly. If I can get any traction on this thread in the next couple of weeks, I'll thoroughly embarrass myself and share something from the period before my severe stage. (I'd share it now, but none of it is on my computer, and my physical copies are at my parents' house.)

Thank you for sharing. What do you feel has changed from your second period as compared to your style now? Anything in particular that made you change it? Do you have a link to a representative work from your current style?


What made me veer quite abruptly toward a rejection of form and rhyme was a poetry seminar I took in college. The professor exposed me to a lot of poets who wrote in a more severe vein that I'd ever seen before, and taught me to appreciate the merits of it. And when I started writing it myself, and shared it with him, he fell all over himself praising it (which of course made me want to write more of it).

Heh. This is a bit pathetic. I have an innate love of rhyme, alliteration, and meter. Rhyming, metered lines would inevitably pop into my head when writing. But for a few years I beat them back with a cudgel and bent over backwards not to include them.

I've softened my stance quite a bit since then, as you can see from my stuff on AW. I think that's partly because for many years now, I've written poetry solely for myself. And damn it, I enjoy rhyme! it's crept back in, and I think it's an improvement.

Now I think it's rather silly that I spent years deliberately removing music from my work. On the plus side, I think I did gain something in learning to work with meaning, metaphor, images, etc. And I still put them first when writing a poem.

I'm betting this is not an uncommon phenomenon, and I'd be curious to hear if anyone else went through comparable phases, and if so, what, if anything, spurred the shifts.



ETA:

Hurray! I got a second bite! Thanks, Kuwi! I can't wait to delve into your various styles!

ETA:

Kuwi, I love how you've named your various styles. I particularly like "angry, lower-case phase." I went through a very brief all-lower case phase, but it wasn't really me. I also went through a short "no sentences" phase, but again, it wasn't me. I write in sentences.

I'm not sure I went through an angry stage, exactly, but I did go through a sorting-out-my-sexual-awakening phase. I'm not sure I'll be posting anything from that particular phase, although I might still have some kicking around somewhere.

 

[kuwisdelu]

After my Poe phase, I had a period where I was just messing around, not really knowing what I was doing. The "angry, lower-case phase" was part of that. I have some examples from that period with lots of rhyme, too, but didn't post them because they tended to be a little bit longer.

I also love rhyme and rhythm, but while my next period had little-to-no rhyme, I never really made a deliberate decision to eschew rhyme, but I was trying to be more economical with words at the time. This was my Rilke phase, which came about after one of my English teachers gave a book of his poetry.

My next English teacher had this fun exercise where for each author we read in the curriculum, we had to write a passage in the same style as the author (or poet), and then bring our own passage and a passage from the original author (from a section or work we didn't read). The class then had to choose which was written by the original author. I had great fun, because I tricked them every time (except for the teacher, of course). I did manage to trick him once or twice though (with Milton, no less!), of which I am still very proud. The Shakespeare and Marvell are from these assignments.

The Beat phase (renamed from "Ginsberg phase") was my undergrad years. This was also when my poetry and prose were most similar. In addition to the Beat poets, my poetry was also heavily influenced by my own prose style.

Today, I'm more happy to let my poetry be its own thing.

Kuwi, I love how you've named your various styles. I particularly like "angry, lower-case phase." I went through a very brief all-lower case phase, but it wasn't really me. I also went through a short "no sentences" phase, but again, it wasn't me. I write in sentences.

I'm not sure I went through an angry stage, exactly, but I did go through a sorting-out-my-sexual-awakening phase. I'm not sure I'll be posting anything from that particular phase, although I might still have some kicking around somewhere.

My Beat phase was also pretty angry, but it doesn't really show here, since I chose a shorter one.

My angry phases correspond with my break-ups.

Edit: This path follows the evolution of my prose rather closely. My prose went through Borges, Kafka, and then Pynchon periods. And in both cases, I have had to "escape" the vicious cycle of writing about my ex, and work toward feeling comfortable writing about my own heritage and identity.

 

[CassandraW]

Today, I'm more happy to let my poetry be its own thing.

That very neatly describes how I feel about my current work. I always start with a very intense, vivid idea of what I want to say, and usually a couple of lines and/or an image embedded in my head that will not go away. They tell me how the poem is supposed to look and sound -- and then the fuckers won't let me rest until I get somewhere at least close.

I no longer make any attempt to emulate any other style of work. My voice and my poems are what they are.

My angry phases correspond to my break-ups.

Heh. I have a fair amount of break-up poetry in my files.

My poems still sometimes reference a long-ago broken engagement, including, rather obviously, my most recent poem (in my sig). And family things or personal events that happened long ago, They don't look at all like the things I wrote at the time -- they're written from my perspective today. But those events helped shape who I am, so they're still relevant to my poetry. Important events in your past are never really dead, IMO -- they're always lurking somewhere, and it's best to come to terms with them and their significance.

I suppose, in some ways, poetry has functioned as my version of therapy. When I write a poem about something and finally, painfully, come up with a reasonably satisfactory product, I get a sense of closure and understanding that few other things give me.

 

[Xelebes]

I don't have anything left of my older poems so I can't compare. Boo.

All I can say is that I have abandoned the Spencerianesque heptameter from my earliest days.

 

[Hamenaglar]

My thought exactly. If I can get any traction on this thread in the next couple of weeks, I'll thoroughly embarrass myself and share something from the period before my severe stage. (I'd share it now, but none of it is on my computer, and my physical copies are at my parents' house.)

Hehehe. If you do that, I'll share my most embarrassing stuff too. We are talking about teen angst levels of embarrassing .

Thank you for sharing. What do you feel has changed from your second period as compared to your style now? Anything in particular that made you change it? Do you have a link to a representative work from your current style?

A lot has changed. I'm trying to show more instead of telling, I'm trying to use more metaphors. Instead of writing about emotions my characters are experiencing, I'd rather create a metaphoric image of what's going on. I'm trying to be more subtle. I still love telling stories through poetry, but I leave a lot more unsaid. I almost completely rejected rhyme. I also write a lot more about love. I also stopped writing in English and concentrated almost exclusively on Croatian.

A good current representative would probably be Doll: http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=303190

What made me veer quite abruptly toward a rejection of form and rhyme was a poetry seminar I took in college. The professor exposed me to a lot of poets who wrote in a more severe vein that I'd ever seen before, and taught me to appreciate the merits of it. And when I started writing it myself, and shared it with him, he fell all over himself praised it (which of course made me want to write more of it).

When I was younger, I remember arguing with friends about rhyme, I thought it was necessary part of poetry. Rules needed to be obeyed. But over time I set my self free. I remember people encouraging me to stop rhyming and to stop writing about fantasy characters/settings. Finally I gave in. Sometimes, I will still rhyme something just for fun.

 

[CassandraW]

I don't have anything left of my older poems so I can't compare. Boo.

All I can say is that I have abandoned the Spencerianesque heptameter from my earliest days.

Damn. I'd pay good money to see that.

My old stuff is incredibly badly organized, and I'm sure much of it has disappeared. I made no attempt to save anything except the stuff I liked best. But I've tossed a lot of it into boxes with other memoirs, or random papers I wrote and hung onto. And every once in a while a poem on a scribbled envelope will tumble out of a book I haven't opened for years.

 

[Kylabelle]

I'll have to have a look for some embarrassing old stuff in the next couple of days. I haven't intentionally saved any of the really terrible things, but there are some quirky not-quite-anything pieces that might suit the mood of the thread.



I think mostly what has developed for me is confidence in my own voice. Earlier writings often tend to have a kind of apologetic tone that now makes me cringe.

 

[CassandraW]

It need not be embarrassing to meet the mood of the thread. It can simply be something that shows an evolution in your style. I'm not embarrassed by my skull poem, for example. But my style and my ideas about poetry have evolved a bit since then. When I dug it up a few months ago -- I hadn't thought of it in ages -- my first thought was that I still liked it, and my second thought was on how I might tweak it. I ultimately decided it represents a particular phase for me in several ways, and I should simply leave it the way it is.

But yeah, I have to admit, getting some embarrassing stuff would be fun! When I am visiting my folks in a couple of weeks, I am absolutely going to dredge up some examples.


ETA:

One bad tendency I had very early on (let's say high school -- I think I'd mostly ditched it by college) is the impulse to try to tack on an inspiring, grandiose, profound or whatever conclusion where one simply didn't belong. If I can find one of those poems, it will surely make me cringe today.

 

[kuwisdelu]

When I dug it up a few months ago -- I hadn't thought of it in ages -- my first thought was that I still liked it, and my second thought was on how I might tweak it. I ultimately decided it represents a particular phase for me in several ways, and I should simply leave it the way it is.

This is why I often have a much harder time editing older stuff than more recent stuff.

People always suggest letting something sit for a few weeks or months before editing it, so you're not too close to it, but I can only edit while I'm still close to it.

If I try to edit something that is no longer raw for me, it'll become something different. That's okay, but then it's complete re-writing and no longer just editing.

 

[Steppe]

A poem I wrote some time ago, the form different than most of my poems now.

"And If Winter Comes"


And if winter comes
I'll go next spring,

when lilacs bloom and dreams
to memory cling.

And if the road is overgrown
with sorrow,

I'll not complain
there'll always be tomorrow.


But if the winter comes
with drifting snow,

I'll lie here in my bed
and cannot go.

I'll dream of blooms and blossoms
in the hollow,

and not complain, there'll always be,
tomorrow.

 

[Magdalen]

I had a few special pens whose ink I liked to spread;couplets, sonnets, pastorals, haiku and more forms than were formally necessary found their way onto reams of paper, napkins & a few panties as my poetic skills developed. Immersed, at times, saturated, in the time-frame, dress, mode and manner of the poetic epoch, I found inspiration in dressing (if only via a token bit of fabric, book or candle) myself and my environment. My undoing was the Ode, Pindaric more precisely, but after I'd spent time on a settee with Wordsworth:

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;--
Turn wheresoe’er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

Somehow I got my Williams and my Walters confused and experienced a euphoric epiphany (the dry kind) and realized in a multiple wave of understanding & personal growth, etc. that poetry was my bread! not cake! left out in the rain. After that I wrote free verse, nakedly, wildly, frequently and with great pleasure. And so it goes.

 

[CassandraW]

Oh, I am enjoying this thread. Pardon me while I fetch some popcorn.

 

[Priene]

Most of my early stuff has been nuked from orbit. It was the only way to be sure. I remember one that went something like


You let happiness by
You can figure out why
Whatever possessed you to stay
You perform on the wire
Till you fall to desire
And whose life is it, anyway?

 

[Stew21]

A few years back (before I was a Mod, when I was the Poet Laureate) we did a Body of Work Critique. The idea was that forming opinions about poets should come from their evolution as a poet, and how the individual poem fits in that time line. That the work as a whole is important, not just the success of individual poems. If you search the forum you can find them. It was fun. I pulled works from AW poets into a thread and we all discussed them.
When I first came here, I hadn't written poetry in quite a long time. I really did have to learn again, and worked my ass off to improve. I'm not so proud of those early poems as I am the journey I've had here. My style, and just generally, ability to present more complex ideas has definitely improved. I still get horribly frustrated when I trap myself in my own head for too long, or miss the mark in how my poems "speak" to their audience.
It really is such a journey. I believe I put up my "body of work" for critique now instead of back in 2007 (my god was it that long ago?), it would be a vastly different and the improvement would be far more drastic. Mostly, we all just want to improve, I think, so I'll stick with that.

 

[KTC]

I honestly don't think my style has EVER changed. Which sadly means I have never grown. But I am one whose fingers are attached to his tear ducts and feels. I just write from the heart...and my heart hasn't done a lot of changing over the years.

Here's one that is pretty much like all the rest...

When a Cello is Played

the strings,
when they sing,
command the bow
to sleep
the slithered dream.
the body,
like the arc
of a dove’s grey belly,
catches your breath,
hints at a Botticelli
between your thighs,
that voluptuous curve
sublime.
its f-holes seductive,
slick esses to
entrance the eye,
a vibrato rush
and desire
to caress the strings
while they sing.
a glissando quavers
through the silence,
holds for a spell
and your breath
is willingly
taken away.


I just believe in simple honesty and feelings. I don't think that will ever change. And my poetry, because I'm simplistic in nature and not one to educate myself in styles and how-tos, etc, will probably never change, mature, or otherwise improve...

 

[Debbie V]

I've posted a few revised versions of poems I wrote in my junior high through college days. I'm better at avoiding cliched rhymes and getting to the heart of a piece than I was then. I have stronger line breaks (at least, I think I do, still working on that) and don't capitalize the first word of every line anymore. Much of what's been up for critique is work like that.

Maybe I'll throw an original up here some time. But I'd have to type it in. Then you could really compare.

 

[scifi_boy2002]

Here is a poem I wrote over 25 years ago. I later used it as lyrics in a band I was in and I also included it in my current WIP. One of my characters uses the poem while entertaining.

Portrait of You

Now I see the portrait of you
by the window reflecting light
from the moon, shining bright;
and how I wish upon a star
that our love could go far.
But you are gone so far away,
out of reach; within my grasp,
why couldn't you let it last?
I can still see your smile
and your eyes sparkling with dew.
All I can do is think of you.
White lilies in the field,
capturing rain drops as they fall,
how I told them all.
The summer is now gone,
passed away with the dawn.
While you were counting pebbles on the path,
I was waiting for you outside my door
and I would let you in
to stay forever.

 

[CassandraW]

I'm so pleased this thread has found legs!