How has poetry helped/ changed/ affected you

[Philatone]

Recently, my girlfriend had to give a speech for the members of the company she works for during a concluding dinner (roughly 150 people attended). She had enough faith in me to ask my opinion on some of the things she wanted to say, so we went back and forth through a revision. A number of the points of advice I gave her came, I feel, from my work with trying to write poetry. For instance, pointing out cliches, trying to work from general to specific to general, vice-versa, etc. To this end, I feel that poetry has had an influence in life.

Other times, when I'm teaching my international students, I feel as though I pay special attention to idioms, cliches, expressions, and phrases. I blame at least part of this attention on poetry, what with its need to be fresh; in order to avoid cliches, you have to know what they are, and so they stick out much more noticeably. My students are learning English, so knowing how to avoid using cliches / explain them is key. Additionally, I find that poetry influences, to some degree, the kinds of writing assignments I give in the sense that I try to create more creative prompts than other materials and teachers provide. I'm not giving it complete credit for my actions and thought process, but I think it deserves something.

My question is how has poetry influenced your life beyond the actual writing and reading process.

[Wildcard]

Well I won't dwell long on the connection to songwriting as it is kind of obvious, but I do find that I analyze things a little differently now that am around the process of writing and critiquing poetry. When I listen others talk I hear poetry in the things that they say when even they do feel it.

Oh and my barroom napkin poetry is much worse now (see before I could just write something inane but now I try too hard )

[billy]

looking at your answers geoff i'd say most were not beyond the reading and writing process. you just used those things somewhere else--

truthfully,; it hasn't changed me, apart from take a lot of my time up.
okay, i can see more into a piece of writing,and i do question things but like you that's part of the new reading and writing process i have. I've always loved words so no change there as to how it's affected me.
there's may one way it's affected me (the way i act in a forum) i'm not so much of troll any more which I sometimes see as a negative affectation. that said i'm pretty sure it's the being a mod that's affected my trolling and not the writing

[addy]

I think it has showed me my sensitive side? I'm not really a super-emotional or passionate person. Not interested in romance. And I like consuming media that's more logical and informative. But when I read great poetry i think "Yes, exactly. I understand!". Discovering that art could excite me rounded out my view of myself

[abu nuwas]

I have used it to adorn rather dry documents; to enliven speech with wit, either by the truth of the quote (''O for the touch of a vanished hand
And O for the sound of a voice that is still'')

or ironically, say by quoting some of the old jingoistic stuff of my youth (''Let dusky Indians whine and kneel/An English lad must die'') or

There's a breathless hush in the Close to-night --
Ten to make and the match to win --
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in.
And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,
But his Captain's hand on his shoulder smote --
'Play up! play up! and play the game!'

but mainly, there are just some things which I like. I like rolling rhythms like :

''Before the Roman came to Rye, or out to Severn strode
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.
A reeling road a mazy road, that rambled round the shire
And after him the Parson ran, the Sexton and the Squire''

This sort of thing links back to Chaucer, and the characters with which he peopled his yarns. They pop up in Shakespeare, in the minor characters, or even in in ''Grey's elegy'' or Clare. They come again in uniform in Tennyson, and Kipling,and ,still in uniform, in Rupert Brooke, Siegried Sassoon (eg ''Does it matter?...) and Wilfred Owen. TS Eliot even has his own variety, as did Betjeman, as soldiering and shepherding gave way to suburbia.. So...it has helped me because I enjoy it, though I can never say what I am likely to like. Anne Sexton's 'making love to the bed' was more than amusing, but the Lord knows I have waded through some tripe, rather like the idiotic continuo in an opera.

Then there has been the odd romantic assist. Not part of Ten Ways To Bed a Woman, but simply when it seems, to me, natural. I have also suggested, when asked, suitable stuff for funerals -- suitable, that is, for the one or two really bereaved.

I have also written, sometimes quite dire, little pieces to commemorate some important day -- a birth, eg., but these do not leave my notebook.

One further thing. I mentioned above all these old English characters, shepherds etc. But there is a saying that if you scratch an Englishman, you will find a fisher or a farmer. Well, the Ancient Mariner may not have qualified as a fisherman, but it is such a special poem that it calls for its own mention: yes, it is a sea-poem, but also v mystical, and so wonderfully written. The English were not all serfs and churls, you see! Then there was Fitzgerald....

[billy]

now you mention the ancient mariner, i'm reminded of Hemingway 'the old man and the sea' saw Spencer Tracy play the lead role and read the book on the face of it. both superb though the old man and the sea wasn't poetry. i suppose it (poetry) helped me read with more attention to detail. one thing i did take from poetry as positive; i realised poetry isn't just visible in text. i see it all over the damn place, in everyday objects. not to be cliche but the beauty of poetry amazes me. it's all there for us to interpret and transcribe into something that evokes an image or insight within us. so it gave me clarity.

[Leanne]

Freebody & Luke's Four Resources Model for Reading explains that to read effectively, we need to simultaneously be:
Code breakers
Meaning makers
Text users/ participants
Text analysts

Four Roles of a Literate Person

No other form of writing gives us these tools and forces us to use them half so well as poetry does -- and they apply not just to reading/writing but also to other media, especially film. That's why I rarely watch Hollywood movies anymore -- they're far too heavy on the "please understand my meaning stupid people" angle

Poetry has forced me to watch Kevin Smith...

[billy]

poetry has helped me grow a thicker skin. unless of course you call my poetry bad names
it has taught me a bit of decorum. when in poetry mode i speak to people with a more civil tongue.
i don't lash out at people with verbal abuse as i used to

[Leanne]

I lash out at people with poetry abuse instead

[rowens]

Having a world view at all has a need for poetry of some kind. For better or worse, some people find it hard to separate the life from the work. Everything is based in creative work, your own and others'. Some motivating force, like religion, that gives you and your community a part in the maintaining of this world. For me, this kind of work is socially religious and political as it is personally loving and antagonistic. So I don't separate being human from being constantly affected by poetry. As with what people brought up in another thread, Ego; apart from my ego that lives with the poetry I make, my personal opinions dont matter much.

[billy]

I lash out at people with poetry abuse instead

i like to create my own expletives sometimes but they're not poetic

---

Having a world view at all has a need for poetry of some kind. For better or worse, some people find it hard to separate the life from the work. Everything is based in creative work, your own and others'. Some motivating force, like religion, that gives you and your community a part in the maintaining of this world. For me, this kind of work is socially religious and political as it is personally loving and antagonistic. So I don't separate being human from being constantly affected by poetry. As with what people brought up in another thread, Ego; apart from my ego that lives with the poetry I make, my personal opinions dont matter much.

poetry for me is compartmentalised. it doesn't as a rule bleed into my world view. poetry has in some ways taught me to lie, or as others have said, invent new truths. i'm also on the opposite with my opinions. for me they're one of the most important tools i have; as a poet or world viewer. my ego on the other hand isn't that important, well not as far as poetry is concerned; i've learned to leave that bugger at the door when i come to poetry. in the real world i do have an ego but i tend to think that in the real world, ego serves a higher purpose.


p.s. Hi rowens, it's great to see you taking part in some of the forums.

[rowens]

I'm trying to say what I can, where I feel my comments can be most honest. And trying not to force comments where my opinions aren't necessary.

---

In a broad view, shaking some one's hand is poetry. All we do beyond our most crude biological functions has some element of poetic traditional construction. For instance, I think the political campaigning of Obama and Romney in America is pretty bad poetry.

[TwistedAngel]

for me i cant say its made me a less angry person..but has made me less reactionary to that anger

reading/writing has made me think its made me look into emotions an feelings an explore them..to then try an write about them or see in others writings about other people an how i would relate to them..or not

i wouldnt say is made me see the world in a new light but i think IMO its made me more tolerent

they say "the proof is in the pudding" an i aint hit anyone in weeks

[Rose Love]

Poetry, and writing in general, has always been a life-line for me. I wouldn't know where to begin. Poetry is a part of me. I began writing a diary when I was 10, and I haven't stopped since. Throughout my 20's I carried a "thought book" with me everywhere I went and wrote my poetic thoughts in it and I also had a poetry book I kept, besides my regular diaries. (All before the age of computers)

After a major trauma within, or apparently at the end of (or what was supposed to have been the end) of a relationship, I did attempt to stop writing, after burning 26+ hand-written diaries, countless letters, photos, poem/thought books. But I couldn't stop writing. I started out saying to myself, "I'll just keep a journal with little bullet points." Yeah, right.

I learned that if I'm not writing, I'm not breathing either.

Anyway, poetry, especially writing, or poetic writing, helps me to process my pain. In my late 20's, I noticed how I could make things, relationships and men beautiful when they were actually incredibly ugly, inwardly. Poetry could make the ugly beautiful.

And I noticed how I could get in fights so bad when I was in love with a guy, because I would try to talk to him about what was wrong. But when I would write a poem in which I expressed my feelings and the situation surrounding our fights, he was very open to it and even liked it. Nothing changed, but ... I found poetry to be a much gentler way to deal with my emotions. It seemed to enable me to take ugly things like anger and express them in a more sincere, close-to-the-heart way.

Then I also noticed that I would write poems about a guy I loved, pick any one of the guys I have ever loved, and write poems about him that were absolutely amazing--by which I mean, you would think the guy were absolutely amazing, when in reality, he was actually pretty much...crap. So I even used my poetry to delude myself by building the guy I loved into the guy I actually wanted to be with (who I never actually met).

I never paid much...any attention at all to the technical aspects of poetry, except when we learned those things in high school, but I have forgotten those. I suppose I should brush up on that...

Before life got real bad, I used to even think in poetry often. In rhythm and rhyme. But suffering has a way of killing natural creative freedom. I've been trying to find my way back to poetry since about 2008.

[Leanne]

I make a living writing trash.

Poetry for me is like the antidote to that.

Though I have written poetry all my life, I am still very much a learner. I am currently wrestling with some of Lianne's excercises to further feel my way around the environment. I think these various, quite rigid formats are going to be good for me to dance with whatever is going around my head at the moment.

I don't think poetry has changed me, but it does help me understand how I have and continue to change. I love the way it develops my various styles. I am less pleased when the trash enters the poetry, but no matter. It is what it is.

I think revealing my poetry has changed me. I love to meet other funky thinkers.

Trash poetry has its place too Personally, I love poems that give me an insight into the poet -- not their history or personal life, but the mind behind it all. I love seeing unique word choices and interesting little turns of phrase that tell me there's a real person behind the pen (or keyboard, whatever) instead of just someone going through the motions.

I've been called many things... and I suppose, if it was muffled, one of them might have sounded a bit like "funky thinker"...

---

Rose, your story touched several nerves. Except for a few things that my parents kept from school, I have no poetry or any other kind of writing from before I was 26, as my ex burned the lot of it. I stopped writing then, until I was 30 and decided to go online so at least some of it would be safe. The interesting thing was, I couldn't write about how I actually felt -- when I was the most miserable, I wrote comic poems, to the point when that was all I was known for. I didn't write about any personal stuff until more than a year after I'd finally left him and I felt comfortable enough to purge it all.

I've always written with rhyme and meter, though I didn't always know what I was doing until someone said "that's perfect iambic pentameter" and I had a baseline to work from. Although I studied poetry at university, it was simply not done to use any kind of structure and rhyme was anathema -- but my tutor was such a tosser that I figured learning all I could about forms was a kind of revenge. Now that I know the purpose behind each element of a form, I love to play around with them and find that matching the vessel to the poem is very rewarding.

I do hope you stay. It sounds like you'll fit in perfectly.

[Rose Love]

Rose, your story touched several nerves. Except for a few things that my parents kept from school, I have no poetry or any other kind of writing from before I was 26, as my ex burned the lot of it. I stopped writing then, until I was 30 and decided to go online so at least some of it would be safe. The interesting thing was, I couldn't write about how I actually felt -- when I was the most miserable, I wrote comic poems, to the point when that was all I was known for. I didn't write about any personal stuff until more than a year after I'd finally left him and I felt comfortable enough to purge it all.

I've always written with rhyme and meter, though I didn't always know what I was doing until someone said "that's perfect iambic pentameter" and I had a baseline to work from. Although I studied poetry at university, it was simply not done to use any kind of structure and rhyme was anathema -- but my tutor was such a tosser that I figured learning all I could about forms was a kind of revenge. Now that I know the purpose behind each element of a form, I love to play around with them and find that matching the vessel to the poem is very rewarding.

I do hope you stay. It sounds like you'll fit in perfectly.

Wow, what a horrible situation you were in. I think I would die if I were in a relationship so smothering that I couldn't even write. Thank goodness you got away. I suppose I was lucky in that my parents never paid attention to anything I did when they weren't yelling at/lecturing me (and I never had what I would call any real relationship with a guy...maybe ½ of one though). I have always been free to express myself in writing. I was always pretty socially inept, quiet and shy, so I had to have some outlet...

When I burned my diaries etc., I'm sure you know it was a completely different situation than what you described, not one that is easily explained. I think I'd have died if someone else had done it prior to then, because I always knew, if my apartment caught on fire, what was the first thing I would want to save? My 26+ diaries, poem books--my writings. Then I end up burning them myself in a big outdoor fire in the dead of the winter darkness. I'd do it again too. There is just one poem I would save before doing it again though...

Well, I like it here so far. I don't usually get along very well with people, especially ones on the Internet...so I hope this isn't a dream

[Leanne]

We're mostly all merry misanthropes here

I find people tend to suck less if they're imaginary pixels in your head...

[Rose Love]

We're mostly all merry misanthropes here

I find people tend to suck less if they're imaginary pixels in your head...

Hmmm...I suppose I'm a misanthrope...I don't know about merry...

For me, this forum has to replace the worst online social life ever, consisting primarily of years and years of one guy after another (or several at the same time) trying to do to me whatever it is girls online let guys do to them, plus lots of fights and friction between me and people from a personal development site I was on. I got so disgusted I just finally abandoned all social sites and all instant messaging programs. I wanted to slap a guy in the face every time he asked "Why??" when I said no to webcams or to anything else he wanted that I didn't want. I find them actually much more infuriating the way they are online as pixels than in real life.

[billy]

i'm glad you chose this site to help replace what befell you. hope we can be one of those new bridges people want to build
we're all the development site anyone needs, visit the sewer and chat with sj .

[Rose Love]

i'm glad you chose this site to help replace what befell you. hope we can be one of those new bridges people want to build
we're all the development site anyone needs, visit the sewer and chat with sj .

Thanks I think I am too. This could possibly go down in history as the first place on the Internet ever that I fit in ...

Not quite sure what "visit the sewer and chat with sj" means though