On Writing Poetry

[Erthona]

On Writing Poetry
 
If you are writing poetry in hopes of gaining recognition, fame, or wealth;
by self analysis, or doing drugs that destroy your health.
Better to invest your time and money in the "Lottery"
as you improve your health and your odds significantly.*
 
 
 
*It is a fact that there is a factor of a magnitude greater people who have won the lottery (in the over one million $ category) in the last thirty years in the United States alone, than there have been poets who have made 1/10th that amount while still living (adjusting for the cost of living), since the time of Shakespeare and while fame is fleeting, in the current age of electronic media, circa 1950's to present, a person wining the Lottery becomes known to many more people (albeit for a shorter amount of time) than any English language poets of the past while still living. Even if one who demonstrates the skills and talent to say with some amount of certainty that there is no doubt they are poet's (say slightly more than a handful, that I am currently aware of on this site and no, I will not say who), would (probably) not recognize many on the list of the top 100 English language poets currently alive; excepts milo of course who spends his whole life learning those sorts of things in order to show us all up       
 
P.S.  …and please do not throw up Maya Angelou, it will simply make me gag, and as I am eating at the moment, that would be quite rude.
 
 
R.I.P  Ziggy Startdust
 
 
dale

[Wjames]

I think most people start writing as some kind of a coping mechanism when feeling like shit, and then, as they do more of it (and reading), grow to love it (or, hate it). At least, that's my experience with poetry and poets.

[rayheinrich]

        We start writing because of our feeling like shit and end up feeling like shit because of our writing.

[Erthona]

Wjames is way to generous to his fellow human being and is apparently unaware of all the poetry vanity sites that have bloomed about the web. Probably the only genera of sites that outnumber them are porn sites, which of course outnumber everything combined by several orders of magnitude.

Of course having worked on the underbelly of the world for many years, I'll concede my worldview is possibly somewhat jaundice
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C'mon Ray, how can a person feel like shit with all those wonderful cats around all the time.

[milo]

[rayheinrich]

C'mon Ray, how can a person feel like shit with all those wonderful cats around all the time.

               

[Erthona]

milo