why?

[billy]

what makes us write the way we do.

i know when i first started writing poetry it was all the lovey dovey stuff. i thought it was good stuff. so did my partner at the time but she i think was biased. i also did some of the angst stuff but an older version of it. it amazes me how we all write the same. (i think i'll do a blog about it )

but for now, why do we write the way we do. (apart from the really good poets who are naturally gifted from an early age).

[heslopian]

When I first began writing poetry, all my work had rigid rhyme schemes, and the naive attempts at high lyricism present, I think, in most teenage verse, but as I started reading more, my structures became less refined, and my themes more intimate. I revealed things I probably shouldn't, produced and published on the web all these long, rambling, angry poems about suicide, anxiety, sexuality and hate.

This change in my style happened, I think, partly due to the onset of my mental illness and my desire to express how I felt about it, but also because I'd just discovered Anne Sexton, and realised that personal subjects could be discussed in legit literature. However, I was determined to avoid the trap of thinking I'm as good as her simply because I share her sickness, that the emotion is enough and one doesn't need to work at the art. I've long despised that school of thought that just because a poem is sad, an honest expression of grief, that somehow makes it good and the aesthetics don't count. Write that shit when you're fifteen, but try and improve as you mature.

Now, oddly enough, I've been regressing slightly, not towards rhyme schemes, but a simpler, more imagistic kind of verse, with more technical refinement and objectiveness.

[billy]

i found i wrote in an archaic stye because that was the only stuff i'd read.
i also did the hall mark poetry walk as well. i often see many writers berate those who write in a hall mark manner but i personally think if that's what you've been exposed to then it's pretty much how you'll write your poetry.

[Todd]

I started writing rant-like angry diatribes which were low on imagery and high on word play. I mostly gravitated to free verse and started out with confessional topics because it's what I was reading (Plath, Gluck, Sexton, Olds, Forche). I gradully started developing metaphor and imagery, and my stuff got less about me being pissed off. I wrote some love poetry but most of it was deconstructionist, ironic, and stark. I'll post one of my early love poems for you guys to see in the critique forum." I almost think it would be cool to put a thread here called: "My early shitty work" and post some of the crap we first started writing...though that may be too painful for some to want to dredge up.

[Lawrence]

I LOVE that idea. I have enough early shitty work for TEN threads.

What about the REALLY early shitty work? Should we make one for that, too?

[heslopian]

I agree, that does sound like a great idea Todd. Here's the first poem that I ever wrote. (Well actually it's the second, but it's the first one that I still have):

Sweet Alice

On an evening spent within my chair,
Amidst a bawdy student house,
I lay reading my books on Baudelaire,
Quiet as a dormouse.

While in the rooms beyond I hear the fruits of passion,
Punctuated by the wind whistling through the willows,
Content with my evasion of this vulgar carnal fashion,
Lying on my flaccid bed of mattress, quilt and pillows.

Suddenly my thoughts are halted by the cries of dear, sweet Alice,
Her saintly call emerging from some unseen realm or palace,
Still crying as I’ve heard her cry a thousand times before,
Laying where my father lay her on the dark and dusty floor.

This father who I’d loved and cherished,
Has done evil and has perished,
But still the memory of his betrayal,
Leaves me bitter, cold and frail.

The night goes on and still I sit, waiting for the morning dawn,
Each breath of wind against the glass awakening my darkest thoughts,
The ceaseless crying in my mind has weakened every ounce of brawn,
And now I hear the spectre of my father‘s ghostly taunts.

His cruel, sardonic voice seeps slowly through my door,
His footsteps creep across my creaking, wooden floor,
The evil of his being roaring through my very core,
An image that will haunt me now and forevermore.

And now the beast is taunting me, to break my vow of fidelity,
Betray my dear, sweet Alice, who relieved me of virginity,
The only one who ever showed me hope or love or pity,
The one he killed and stole away the memory of her beauty.

[billy]

i can't remember how many of of my poems has words like amidst in
or alas, or even thine hehehe

you'rs isn't too bad.

maybe it should just be called early works, without the shitty. poets are emotional people and their works are seldom shitty ;D

though most of mine were. my love poems were so bad.. sadly they will never see the light of day because they're also personal.
most of my other stuff has been reworked.

[heslopian]

you'rs isn't too bad.

Thanks Billy, though I look on that poem with embarrassment now. The shallow, lofty, faux lyricism, that tired, pretentious attempt at Gothic horror. I thought it was the dog's bollocks when I wrote it, however. Seriously, I saw it on the same level as Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven, and considered it a modernised version of that.

[billy]

tell me about it. i used to think all my stuff was untouchable when i started writing.
i hated feedback that said "it needs this or that." thankfully i'm the opposite now
and find feedback helps me in more ways than one.

[kath3]

Just my peanuts worth ...
First of all you guys are being waaaay too critical and hard on yourselves as most artists are.
And ya I'd go for the Early Works title ... because if writing such as Heslopian just posted is considered shitty then I will never attempt to write.
I really enjoyed Sweet Alice, it's full of heart and emotion and easily related to.
I've read poems by a few of the greats only to feel lost, and thinking ... wtf? (I do apologize for my lack of appreciation and intellect). My appreciation is more for writings that go straight to the heart and cause one to feel.

[billy]

thats one of the best ways to appreciate anything kath
and don't let how good or bad anyone is put you off.
right for the fun of it and post in the for fun forum.

no feedback there except gratitude

[heslopian]

And ya I'd go for the Early Works title ... because if writing such as Heslopian just posted is considered shitty then I will never attempt to write.
I really enjoyed Sweet Alice, it's full of heart and emotion and easily related to.

Thank you, Kath, you're very sweet. I still think Sweet Alice is objectively shit, but that it touched you means a lot to me. And don't worry about not understanding some of the greats; your opinions are just as valid as the academics, the people paid to critique poetry. That's how I feel, anyway. I don't think anyone here would claim to be an intellectual - I know I certainly wouldn't! - so going for what strikes the heart seems like an appropriate course.