(11-25-2012, 08:15 AM)Leanne Wrote: I wrote this a while back, on another site -- a few things I've seen recently have reminded me of it:some good points. many like myself came to poetry with no grounding of it. when i read a poem i thought a the poem was about them or;
Is poetry dead? Who cares? How many times have we had this discussion? No, it's not dead, you cry. There's more poetry being written now than there ever was. Look around you. The internet is a marvel of communication. Poets, poets everywhere and something about slimy things.
Blah. Poetry didn't go through an amazing resurgence with the coming of the internet; what surged was people's ability to get in other people's faces without ever having to properly commit to any kind of relationship. This nice safe little interface created a haven for the imagination, but there was a problem: imaginations just aren't what they used to be. As a consequence of two or three generations of being told precisely what to think, how to act, who to vote for and so forth etc ad infinitum, "creativity" has come to mean "see what else is around that you like and think you can manage, then copy it". The personal diary became the public blog, and poetry in the key of I was soon de rigueur.
I recently tried an experiment with a group of poets who professed to be -- as they always do -- interested in learning. For discussion I posted a couple of very well known "classic" poems, the first being Blake's A Poison Tree. If you're not familiar with it, google it. It's a poem with fairly straightforward metaphors, written in such a way that it should provoke quite a lot of philosophical discussion and speculation. Instead the prevalent responses were something along the lines of "Blake is bad, why would he do such a thing?" and "how can an apple kill someone?" Before you shake your head, consider why these are not stupid responses but the result of conditioning. Let's first look at the I in poetry. Once a narrative device that we'd have had no trouble separating from the writer him/herself (do we really think Huck Finn wrote his own story?), it's become the only perspective that seems to matter in poetry and must be true. The I can't lie. And, it seems, the I most especially cannot be tangled up with metaphor. How can one thing be another thing? That's just not authentic. Authenticity means, it seems, a stream of emotional responses to life changing events with arbitrary line breaks to make it look like a poem should. God forbid we should lie in our poetry, we're so very honest in every other aspect of our lives after all.
The internet brought not a resurgence, but an unholy resurrection. We have zombie poets who feed on validation, which is just as well since brains are in disturbingly short supply.
b they were lying . it turns out that's not always the case, and omce we understand that the better we are at being equipped in giving some kind of sensible feedback. it's the same for those who do genuinely write about themselves..they shouldn't expect us to accept their reality as much as they should expect us to enjoy it. once we start with the "i can't respond because it seems like "a' truth" we're fucked.
i don't know about resurgence or not but the net did make it more accessible. sadly it works the way a sharp stick works, give everyone a sharp stick and people are gonna start losing eyes
(11-25-2012, 08:49 AM)rowens Wrote: I feel that when I think about things really hard for a long time, and then express what I feel, people tend to laugh at me, or get pissed off at me. When I write a poem, nobody will read it, unless I post it online. But posting it online does little for me, since I somewhat hate the Internet. Really the Internet makes me feel uncomfortable. But it's better than people telling me that they don't have time to waste reading things I've made. This is the first year I've ever tried posting poems online.i get the feeling (and i may be wrong) you're worrying too much what others think and say. as for the net making you feel the way it does, that's more of a personal problem that only you can deal with. so far you seem to be doing okay.