Who do you write for?

[Kaily Bear]

There was something that sparked this for me... someone said poetry was for the reader, not the writer, but personally i disagree with this. Yes the reader needs to be taken into consideration, but often the writer has an attachment to their words, as they should. Sure they look to others to improve, and help, but that does not make it souly for them...

Think about the world in its most basic way. We see and experience the world through two parts of our brains, the part that processes, and the part that controls our senses. Each of our senses has a range of each sense and each range sense is different for each one. and each person has a brain with different ranges.

This means each person has a unique world only they see. Literally. Not figuratively or poetic imagery. Literally.

Being an artist or a poet, is a drive to share the unique world they see, through the media of their choice. Writing poetry fulfills that drive. That is why i say the poems are for the poets, but the readers and critiques are a tool to help craft our art, and they get something out of it too, if you are doing it right.


What do you think of it? Why do you write poetry?

[Leanne]

I write because it amuses and pleases me to do so. Once I've written a poem, though, it becomes something different -- it's not really mine any more (I've had my fun), so I spend a lot of time making it work as something for others.

It's certainly not a gift that I donate to the mindless masses though

[QDeathstar]

Me. I write to quiet the voices.

[nibbed]

Sometimes for God, sometimes for me. I guess it depends where I am
or if the Spirit of God moves me. I want it to be for God ALWAYS
and I hope He uses every jot and tittle, but sometimes I mess up...
no, not sometimes, I mess up A LOT and get too much of me in there.


-nibbed

[alonso ramoran]

I like to capture things like memories as if they were photographs, though I'm not the best photographer. I write to create something that will outlive me, so in truth I write for the reader. And of course, since it's an artistic outlet that the artist should be pleased in doing, I write for me.

[rayheinrich]

        For thrills* and attention*.  




        *Personified

[CRNDLSM]

I only write and play for one person. That person is always different. If there's 100 people in the room, and I reach that one person, then all my efforts were worth it. There's always 1.

[yimbus]

Everyone. I write to capture my thoughts better than I can think of them myself, and also to express my thoughts to others in a creative and ambiguously organized way

[ritwiksadhu33]

When I write it's usually because I have something to say, although it may not be to anyone in particular. It's just like, I'm thinking about stuff, and then, an idea or a phrase or dialogue turns up, seems fun, and I'll go, "Hey, I should write that down", and then it may or may not grow into a poem, sometimes immediately, sometimes over months, as I remember or invent new details or stuff. Sometimes, if it's a narrative, I might imagine an audience, and their nature varies with the poem. Sometimes there's no audience intended at all.

[Bocasi]

Writing is just as much the string, that holds the windchime together, as it is the pieces of poetry we've strung together.  The illusion of vibrant motion that we create as writers, is the wind and the music that we can't really hear.  Yet it exists brilliantly.  We constantly continue the movement.

I write because there are so many cracks in my life, that I needed some kind of adhesive.  

- Bo

[RiverNotch]

interesting video i recently watched that's pertinent to the topic:



not saying i write because of the process -- heaven knows i've too much of an ego for that -- but goodness me, if i ain't trying. put dryly, though, i think i started writing because i had feelings i wanted to express that otherwise would have made me look insane -- er, look more insane than i already was, or am. feelings about a certain red-haired super-fiction i keep returning to.

[Lizzie]

interesting video i recently watched that's pertinent to the topic:



not saying i write because of the process -- heaven knows i've too much of an ego for that -- but goodness me, if i ain't trying. put dryly, though, i think i started writing because i had feelings i wanted to express that otherwise would have made me look insane -- er, look more insane than i already was, or am. feelings about a certain red-haired super-fiction i keep returning to.

Wisdom.
Thanks for sharing.

[Fae]

Primarily, I write for myself. It acts as catharsis in so many ways. I don't feel the need to expand on this point, as I'm sure all of you understand what I mean.

As a secondary thing, I write for people who can relate to my struggles. I like the idea of helping people feel less alone with their experiences, and that's beginning to influence how I've been writing. I've decided to take on a much more simple and calm approach. I want to make my poems into something like a mantra or a meditation of some kind, the sort of thing that comforts both others and myself.

[rowens]

I write for Zooey Deschanel. And all the blue-eyed brunettes who remind me of her whose lives I've ruined over the last twenty years. But mostly Zooey Deschanel.

[Richard]

I write for myself, really out of pure selfishness. Sometimes it's cathartic, but other times it's just an escape. I have no delusions about people reading my poems years after I'm dead, so that leaves only one reason, or person, to write for...

[LilacFantasy]

I write, to get out the things that I've been holding in. I write sometimes just because I begin to see things in a poetic way- personification of wind as it wraps around a tree, or a moon that is sitting; waiting just for me. I want to feel and see things differently, and so I write about it in an odd way to sort of distort reality into a more bearable picture. And while I like to create my own world that is to me easier to live in, I also desire for those words to pull on someone else's heart strings.