what is the point of writing poetry?

[rowens]

What difference would it make if nobody wrote poems? What does it accomplish for individuals, or for the world?

I don't believe that life has any meaning. And lacking religious comfort, or motivation, nothing I do or don't do matters. I have nothing to lose. But when I poetically enhance things, I start to feel strongly about things.

[Leanne]

If the day comes when art has to have a point to its existence, I think we'll have failed as a civilisation.

[rowens]

I've been told to stop writing poetry many times in my life. That I waste my life reading and writing several hours everyday. Yet when I want to go on a walk or camping in the woods or something else I like, I'm told that's a waste of time too. So I have to cut off relationships with all the people I've known around this town. And I'm stuck here until I can get out of town again, using this computer. I really don't like computers or the Internet.

But again I 'm asked: Why am I on a poetry site? What else is there to do online? Porn and Facebook?

[Todd]

What difference would it make if no one wrote poems?

To a great many people no difference at all. Hallmark would go bankrupt, or streamline their cards to simply say happy birthday! Or Congratulations!

It would matter to me. As a reader, I would lose a lot of enjoyment, and some of the connection I feel with my fellow human beings. As a writer, I would feel restless, and not know why. Life would be less fulfilling.

I would miss it.

[Leanne]

It's true that you cannot "waste your life" doing things only for self-gratification. No matter how you try to sell it, at the end of the day that's just hedonism. All things need to balance. Spending your life pleasing other people, the martyr syndrome, is equally detrimental. Sounds like you've made some bad choices and resent the consequences. I'm sure you don't mean to sound like you're whining but it could easily be construed as that.

There are a lucky few in this world who manage to make their art into something productive. Some people see those others and wonder why they're not able to manage it themselves -- it's supply and demand. The supply may be inexhaustible, but the demand varies depending on the priorities of consumers. This demand is going to be markedly less when an increased number of potential consumers are simply pursuing their own pleasures, especially those who expect approval and praise from the mediocrity that is the result of their lack of interest in making the effort required to create something of genuine quality. This in turn devalues the products available and those who are creating works of true genius are pushed so far beyond the norm as to be considered odd or "alternative", thus unsaleable.

One should never be afraid to pursue pleasure, but not at the expense of being a productive, cooperative member of the society we build by contributing to it.

---

To a great many people no difference at all. Hallmark would go bankrupt, or streamline their cards to simply say happy birthday! Or Congratulations!

I'm not sure this would be a bad thing

[rowens]

I don't see what supply and demand has to do with the subject.

[Leanne]

If you don't write for an audience, then I suppose it has nothing to do with it.

I don't see the point of writing if not for an audience, though.

[billy]

seriously if poetry or creative arts never existed, we'd simply create them, it the that god thing. erase the god concept from everyone's mind and within a decade or less (because of the net) we'd have at least two or three , orld wide. there is no point to it because the creative arts are a big part of who and what we are. pondering the universe and walking through woods is what we do.

as fort why are you/ we in a poetry site? i'm here because i wanted to try my hand at creating a decent place for poets to exist. it doesn't matter if i succeeded or not it what i wanted to do. as it happens i spend more time not writing poetry as i used to but that's okay. what else would i do...a shitload of stuff. i love learning new stuff. i've dabbled in most things. 3d modelling, most kinds of design programs, i got to the stage where i could use them and became board. this place is much more of a challenge. my problem is, once i know i could (not did but could) master something i stop trying. i know i can never master poetry and so here i've been for a few years. I'm a grade a carpenter model maker, can build most things that hands can build, i've made jewellery, mainly from scrap gold, i was into gardening. i enjoyed them all but nothing holds me like poetry. so in answer to the question: there is no point. it isn't about the poetry as much as it's about the person. the person and their need to express, discover, take part in and create something new and different.

[rowens]

The question I'm asking is what is the point of writing poetry. What does poetry do for the world? The people that tell me to stop writing poetry don't read poetry, and tell me that poetry serves no purpose.

[billy]

I don't see what supply and demand has to do with the subject.

it's often the most salient point of any creative works. we supply to the audience, they demand what's perceived by themselves to be good work. they like, love or hate it, supply and demand. the self reading writer who write only for themselves fill the same meme. the only difference is the demand consists of only one person. you can alter the supply and demand scenario as much or as little as you want but it's a major player in how our art evolves. ie, if the demand is one, it probably won't evolve and no one will give a fuck if it does except the one.

---

The question I'm asking is what is the point of writing poetry. What does poetry do for the world? The people that tell me to stop writing poetry don't read poetry, and tell me that poetry serves no purpose.

the only answer i can give is who gives a fuck what it does for the world. (and i'm not being rude) who said it was supposed to do something for the world. you can say that about any creative pastime. it does something for the perosn. what it does, depends on the person. people have told me most of my life not to do certain things. mostly illegal stuff people it seems like poetry...thats where the demand comes from, people like writing poetry, that's the supply. the real point is we like to do it. for what ever reason we like to write.

[rowens]

I come to my family and friends, and I ask them to read a poem I've made. They say they don't want to, because poetry is boring. So they watch TV, and get high and drunk. I'm not saying I'm writing for myself as much as I'm saying that nobody will read what I write. But they will ask me what good does it do to write poetry.

---

And what I've tried to ask before is: Don't you see how poetry is important in how it affects people, despite the form? The symbolic power it gives to life? That poetry gives life a meaning? That's the way I was using the idea, Poetry. It challenges, and it soothes, and it angers, and it makes you happy, makes you think, and feel, and consider things. And do things, with a sense of purpose.

[Todd]

The question I'm asking is what is the point of writing poetry. What does poetry do for the world? The people that tell me to stop writing poetry don't read poetry, and tell me that poetry serves no purpose.

I'm sure you're not into all the crap they're into either. I don't need shopping malls, NFL football, or Celine Dion...but I'm sure there are a lot of people who like each of those things. If it means something to you you keep doing it. Living for other people's acceptance never works out. Who cares what poetry does for the world as a whole...what does reality TV do for the world. If NO ONE likes something than it goes away. If at least some people like something it has value to them. That's good enough for me.

---

I come to my family and friends, and I ask them to read a poem I've made. They say they don't want to, because poetry is boring. So they watch TV, and get high and drunk. I'm not saying I'm writing for myself as much as I'm saying that nobody will read what I write. But they will ask me what good does it do to write poetry.

---

And what I've tried to ask before is: Don't you see how poetry is important in how it affects people, despite the form? The symbolic power it gives to life? That poetry gives life a meaning? That's the way I was using the idea, Poetry. It challenges, and it soothes, and it angers, and it makes you happy, makes you think, and feel, and consider things. And do things, with a sense of purpose.

Nope, they don't see it, and they probably never will. They aren't wired that way.

[Leanne]

And what I've tried to ask before is: Don't you see how poetry is important in how it affects people, despite the form? The symbolic power it gives to life? That poetry gives life a meaning? That's the way I was using the idea, Poetry. It challenges, and it soothes, and it angers, and it makes you happy, makes you think, and feel, and consider things. And do things, with a sense of purpose.

Poetry does those things for you. For someone else, it might be bungee jumping or shearing sheep. They find their understanding of the world, their meaning, in something other than you do -- that's neither less nor more important than yours.

When I published my first anthology, I of course gave a copy to my parents. They displayed it quite proudly and showed it off to all visitors. A few years later I mentioned something I'd written in it, to which my mother's reply was: "well I wouldn't know really, I don't like to read poetry".

At university, my lecturers were hell bent on telling everyone that formal poetry is dead -- do you see me taking their advice?

I've been writing for more than 20 years -- ten years as what I can safely call a "professional" (having made the grand sum of nearly $400 dollars in that time) -- but it took me until about 5 years ago to be comfortable with referring to myself as a "poet". I no longer care what people think of the title. It's what I do, and if they're not convinced, I couldn't care less. Why should I live my life worrying about pleasing others, when they don't please me very much either?

[rowens]

So when I argue in another post about how poetry can be prose or speech, and when I say attitude and intention, I mean poetry in the sense of how it affects people and the way they feel and think, and how it gives meaning or challenges meaning. I'm not saying that my intent makes a poem a poem. I'm talking of poetry as the thing that accomplishes those things, no matter what form you're using, and that's true of everyone that is writing with the poetic function, not just me. Poetry enhances life. Poetry is what is capable of making life mean something. Whether it be in verse or prose.

---

If you love someone, and you would die for them. Logically that's foolish. But poetry makes us really love someone, and not say, "Oh well, it's just a state of mind, or chemical reaction."

We feel poetry abstractly inside of us. And that poetry makes us write and craft poems, or treat people kindly, and all the other good and moral things that we don't need or have to do, but that that poetry inside us gives us the passion and the strength to do.

[rowens]

I think poetry is very important.


"When I published my first anthology, I of course gave a copy to my parents."

I published a book around 2005 or 2006. My family sent it to a doctor (I had to go to doctors because I have blinding mind pains that sometimes make me sick and feverish for months), and the doctor said my book was crazy. Ever since, everything I say or do in this town is considered insane, because my family like to gossip. When I was in so much pain that I couldn't see, I felt I was going to die, my family sent me away. So I went to the doctor, and they gave me pills, and though the pain only got worse, the pills made me sleep. So I mostly laid in bed for three years, doped up. The pain was worse, and I was so exhausted from the effects of drugs that I couldn't fight off the pain. Meanwhile, all my closest friends were starting to use morphine and other things like that. One day, I stopped taking the pills, I got out of bed, I walked up and down the road all day long for a year or so, until I lost most of the seventy pounds I'd gained on the drugs. People in my family kept calling me fat, and people would see me walking on the road all fat, and they gossiped about it, and my family heard about it, and were pissed off at me for walking around all fat. And my friends were all drug addicts, and didn't talk to me, because they were off finding ways to get high. And I'm not a happy person.

Life is not ordered by anything if not the poetry that each individual creates. And this is made for others, as much as for the person that makes it. The "I" that I claim to be is an illusion. And I have to keep myself intact every moment, with this illusion, or I float away into abstract impersonal, vertiginous maddening pain. I have to consciously construct "who I am" every moment.

So if people here, like most people, think that what I say is weird or arrogant, or talking all out of my ass: that's my explanation.

[Todd]

Well, I think that's sort of the point. Everyone goes through a lot of crap. There's always a lot going on inside people. If you get joy out of writing poetry than keep doing it. Worrying about approval or how the world values what you value seems to be the wrong place to put the emphasis. The point is more internal not external. If its external you're always going to be unhappy. That's how life works.

[billy]

yes but don't you see...it's YOUR explanation. i once knocked out a professional boxer. (all be it not a well known one), and friends were hailing me as some kind of hero. but what they were calling me isn't what or who i was. i am not what people make me, or what people say i am. it sounds like you had it bad, but didn't we all. i don't know your pain nor do i want to, i also don't want people to know mine. it won't affect how i see your poetry. how can it, i will never know it's truth or untruth. my life as a kid was a violent road wreck of epic proportions but so what, my family all hate poetry to their last atom, i accept that they're not me, i hate watching soaps and talk of what's fashionable this year. i think therefore i think. that you have to do the constructing thing for your "who you are' is tragic but it's what you have to do, or not do. all i see are words. all i am is words. i so love and enjoy the interaction we have on this site but i'm selfish, i don't care about you all, all i care about is sharing through poetry. it doesn't have to be real. when i get to know some in certain ways, (like i know jack) (like i know some others) it enriches me but it still doesn't mean we really know each other. you say your family sent the book to the doctors...was he a publisher sorry about that. my point is if my family did that i'd be thrilled, just at having the opportunity to take the piss out of my family and my doctor. if my doctor told me my book was crazy, i'd tell he should see what i do with peanuts. give what you get take what you need, if you can't just walk away, enjoy the pain. see what i'm saying...i'm saying a bit of everything cos we don't know the poet. it's why we don't critique the poet. pain doesn't make a better poem, that's the job of words.

[Todd]

Totally off topic: Your last phrase Billy would make a cool signature.

[billy]

Thanks for the inspiration back on topic:

what would you say the point of writing is if you only had one line to say it in?

[Todd]

Creating something good that didn't exist before.

That's my sentence.