Sad verses Happy poetry?

[addy]

are sad poems more prominent than happy poems?

[Leanne]

Yes. Poets are miserable bastards

Truth is, it's harder to write a happy poem and not sound trite -- though frankly, a great many people writing sad poems could do with lessons in not sounding trite as well.

[billy]

i think sad poetry predominates in forum poetry.
it also seems to have an edge on the happy stuff.
i suppose for some, a sad poem is a happy one....i slice open a vein and bleed out into the bath. for some it seems like they only live in their poetry when they're dying in it.

[rowens]

Being happy seems to me to influence other things, other activities. Writing uses more reflection, and projections. You project yourself into the future and think of ultimate things, like loss and death. You project into the past and relive loss and humiliatons. When you recall happy things, the urge isn't as strong to have to "do something about it". You can feel those rare moments of contentment and rest when you're happy. Even when you write poems celebrating something, it will have a feeling of sadness in it after you're dead. If anyone reads it then.

---

When you're digging around trying to come up with something that'll effect people emotionally or intellectually, you drag out all those sad things.

[billy]

sometimes it does seem that way. i do agree with rowen that you don't often shout out when you're happy but you do if you're angry sad (unhappy). it's often the non happy person who vocalises the most.

[poetsorrow]

are sad poems more prominent than happy poems? it depends on the poet and how you write it. yes most poetry I see on the internet are spilling your guts out feel sorry for me poetry. sad poetry can be very beautiful and creative IF you tap into your emotions correctly. What do you mean by "happy poems"? sad poems can have happy themes in them too.

[billy]

i think addy means upbeat, positive, and happy poetry.
much, if not most of poetry is the woe is me stuff, where partners leave each other
i agree that sad poetry can be good but usually it's not, that said neither is the happy poetry
but if sad and happy were set on scales, the sad stuff would weigh them down

[rowens]

I don't set out to write something sad. I don't set out to be sad either. It's just a general condition, and most of the time poetry is a way of better understanding and dealing with that condition. And what I use in poetry is the ritual quality, of searching and making. Rather than saying, "Look at how sad I'm capable of being", I want to try to do something about it, or at least do something with it.

[billy]

but lots of other poets do. often it's the ones who aren't in pain who want us to feel their pain.
i suppose young angst is as valid as old angst, but it doesn't travel as well. nether does the overly happy love story poems .

i suppose sad is the most common of conditions and happy for many is a fleeting one.

[Leanne]

As my good dead mate Kierkegaard said:

“What is a poet? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music.... And people flock around the poet and say: 'Sing again soon' - that is, 'May new sufferings torment your soul but your lips be fashioned as before, for the cry would only frighten us, but the music, that is blissful.”

We can write happy poems, and there are plenty of them around, but the truth is that nobody's really that interested. They want to know that other people are miserable so they can feel better about their own pathetic lives. That's why reality tv is such a success

Happy poems are almost always dismissed as flippant or pointless. It's effin' depressing, I tell ya.

[rowens]

I think that's when Kierkegaard seems most authentic too. Writing as the melancholy aesthete. But I guess he felt kind of ashamed of it, and tried to go beyond it. The Christian aspects of culture emphasize sorrow and suffering in such an extreme way, though all religions work with a touch of sadness. Everybody wants to be a martyr. That's another temptation that a true Christian writer has to face.