11-17-2012, 12:58 AM
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.
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.