Ever felt like this?

[aschueler]

At the end of the day, this is not intended as a thread about me.  I will cheer myself up or I won't, and the world will go on.  This is about you:  what makes you question yourself?  What does poetry really mean to you and to your world?  Is it art or just another method of jerking off?  

And when you jerk off, is milo's picture in front of you?

Rambly response

Poetry to me and my world?  

It's a number of things all rolled up.  Mostly it's expressing in words something that generally can't be expressed in words.  It's art in the same meaning of the word with visual arts;  the words themselves are colors, but they all have their own personalities when you look at the connotations, rhythms and local use.  It's putting all that together into something coherent or nearly so, for the purpose of ... well, whatever but generally expressing something to myself or someone else or both.  Sometimes it's just words that sound very nice, like Adirondack or hordeolum.

It's better than masturbation.  When I was a philosophy minor, that I used to call mental masturbation.  It was enjoyable and you thought you did something, but you end where you started.   

So everyone is giving you advice, you could have seen that coming.   Don't know your personality (although is amuses me, and most people I know who claim to be misanthropes really only wish they were) well enough to be specific;   but put poetry down for a bit and do something else, like reading fiction (Bruno Shulz or maybe Borges).  Go to some museums or read some math books.   

But honestly, it's not something you can just stop doing.


Also, looking at how poets die or are not appreciated isn't really limited to or specific to poetry.  Just googled Frost, he died at 88 rather quickly and not that bad.