When did you consider poetry?

[CRNDLSM]

Have you always read it?
Was it an accident?
Did you pick it up in school?
From a significant other?

I've always listened to music and never considered it poetry.  I've read poems in classes and never considered them musical.  A girl once told me my life was a poem, I was a lost boy, and after 10 years of writing music I found this poetry website, had all my stuff picked apart and found a new love for form poetry.  

When did you snap?  Was it a flurry?  A puzzle? An exercise?  Ive met people who like writing reading and reciting poems but I still don't understand it.

[busker]

I’ve been writing poetry since childhood
I’ve always liked poetry and music. Poetry more than music.
I think music with words is an abomination. One of the reasons I like opera is that I don’t quite understand what is being said.
Poetry for me has been a way to release creative stress. Most people I know in real life don’t know that I write, which is a good thing. I like to keep the two worlds separate.
If I’d been an artist or a musician or - god forbid - a writer, I’d have run out of things to say pretty soon. So I’m glad to be a an itinerant artist, like rowens.

[TranquillityBase]

For me, Poetry is kind of a second language, one that I speak and understand poorly.  I turned to Poetry at 16 for the basest and most delusional of motives:  I thought being a "poet" would get me a girl.  I got the idea from reading a biography of Dylan Thomas.  I was a weird kid.

I think I first read poetry for other than a ego-trip reasons when I discovered Allen Ginsberg.  Maybe when I was 17-18?  Read lots of poetry for about a decade, got married, had kids, and then I read mostly prose (although I'd argue Ulysses has more poetry in it than most collected works of card carrying poets).  About once a season I'd try to write a poem.  That doesn't work too well.

Son died.  Returned to Poetry for solace and issuing the occasional primal scream.  Writing every day.  Something, anything.  Even this.

[CRNDLSM]

I think I first read poetry for other than a ego-trip reasons when I discovered Allen Ginsberg.  Maybe when I was 17-18?  Read lots of poetry for about a decade, got married, had kids, and then I read mostly prose (although I'd argue Ulysses has more poetry in it than most collected works of card carrying poets).  About once a season I'd try to write a poem.  That doesn't work too well.

Did I read that you taught a poetry class?

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I think music with words is an abomination. One of the reasons I like opera is that I don’t quite understand what is being said.

I have so much to say on this subject, but I'll leave it at 'i love singing along to Carmina Burana in it's entirety'

[TranquillityBase]

[/quote]

Did I read that you taught a poetry class?

[/quote]

I was in a creative writing program for one year at University of New Mexico.  I mainly did it to get out of my then current job and live in New Mexico.  I was a teaching assistant.  You know, they just throw you in.  Here's 30 freshmen, make them write 8 papers and don't be shy about failing them out.  (UNM was open enrollment and F.E. was used to discourage the unwanted.)  

Second sememster they gave me a creative writing 101 class.  I was a horrible teacher, but I think only one of the 12 or so students actively hated me.  My only experience was with writing workshops I attended while getting an English BA.  It was a lot more fun than freshmen english though, for everybody concerned. 

Anyway, their Final Exam was to watch the Marx Bros' Duck Soup.

[RiverNotch]

Grade school was Southern Baptist -- memorizing the King James Version was part of the curriculum, and we had to sign hymns every week. Gave me a feel for it, but other than that, had to wait for High School,
where they made us read Shakespeare and I genuinely fell in love. Sonnets, Romeo and Juliet, and The Merchant of Venice chiefly. At the same time
I got into pop. Bjork really opened my eyes (my first posts here were attempts to, like, write like her. of course, while she's literate, she's far from the best writer, largely because she writes in a language she doesn't have full command of, even to just write a clean facebook post xD love her music still though), and then the Beatles, and then the rest is here.

Oh, and during High School, I fell in love -- as in, had a bunch of really powerful infatuations. A girl, a dream -- Whitman, Dickinson, Plath, Eliot, Gluck -- movies older than the 80s -- but, again, much of that's chronicled here xD

Right now I don't read and write enough poetry, but I still read and write as if what I read or write is poetry. One of poetry's central principles -- form and function matching each other so exactly -- that's something I've found is just, like, *fundamental*, in all kinds of art, even in all elements of life. If something isn't beautiful -- say, an iconoclastic Pentecostal church, or any ethical-political system that takes Rand seriously -- then it's shit xD

[ISawASpaceship]

Have you always read it?
Was it an accident?
Did you pick it up in school?
From a significant other?

I've always listened to music and never considered it poetry.  I've read poems in classes and never considered them musical.  A girl once told me my life was a poem, I was a lost boy, and after 10 years of writing music I found this poetry website, had all my stuff picked apart and found a new love for form poetry.  

When did you snap?  Was it a flurry?  A puzzle? An exercise?  Ive met people who like writing reading and reciting poems but I still don't understand it.

I started reading and writing poetry in grade school, however as soon as I got out of highschool, I stopped. I would occasionally listen to slam poetry after that but didn't write anything that I can recall, so from eighteen to twenty-six I basically didn't read or write hardly any poetry. I took a stroll in the park and met thunderembargo for the first time and we had a conversation involving poets and our favorite pieces. It was after that, that I started writing poetry again, as a means to communicate with him and generally express how I was feeling about situations that were occurring in my life. I kept a lot of things to myself. I only started sharing things with other people because he prompted me to and I'm glad that he did. It's a nice experience getting my writing critiqued.