Simplicity in Poetry

[Lizzie]

I prefer complex poetry. But you can take a class in Complex Poetry and come out writing complex poetry. It's not as impressive. I prefer solitary reading and personal epiphanies and outbursts. I'm not against reading everyone and everything. I just prefer no guidelines when I'm reading and writing. I want to be attracted and repulsed on my own, based on my own levels of understanding, for good or for ill. There's no literary establishment I'm rebelling against, or trying to buddy up with or impress. If I don't write well nobody will want to read what I write. But I write as though they will.

What's so horrible about having to learn to write poetry and learning from other people? If you're reading poetry, you're learning how to write it -- you're learning what you like and don't like. Personally, I pick up styles from others easily and often mimic people, if only subconsciously. I've read books that explicitly tell young writers to copy poems that they like in order to learn how to write in their style. I think that imitation is a part of learning, and we're always learning. I read things and I think, "That's a good idea. I'm going to do that too." I think that's part of building your own style, gleaning a bit here and a bit there. Certainly, I try to think things up on my own, but that's usually just the content, the style I rely on those who have gone before to teach me. 

I hear you saying that you want to build your own style, and I think that's very ambitious of you. There's a certain elegance to an idea like that, almost the ideal of the rugged individual making his own way in life without needing things from others, entirely self-sufficient. I cannot write like that and expect to be any good. Maybe that's the difference between us, I want to "be good" and you're more willing to take risks and scrape your knees a bit? But, then, if I take notes from you on that, am I not making my own way in the poetry world? I'm confusing myself now.