Rousseau: My OP was not a response to anyone’s posting on the SDMB. While it’s true there’s a lot of bad poetry scattered throughout the forums, there’s also a lot of funny ones. I can take a joke. I only cringe at bad poetry that was intended seriously. BTW, I truly LOVE drumming - what else do we have in common??
Sunflower: You are, of course, free to write poetry. Please don’t interpret what I’m saying as “Only established, older poets should be heard and published.” I don’t think that. I have even stated that the BIGGEST poet in our nation (Robert Pinsky) is overrated.
(a Pinsky tangent - It’s great that he’s enthusiastic about poetry. It’s great that he’s a very good translator [although I still haven’t found out if he is truly fluent in Italian - does anyone here know?]. What’s not great is that he is a poor, unoriginal poet and he holds the highest honor in the nation. It just reinforces that it’s a purely political position and not about the actual poetry - which is sad.)
Poetry is a gift which is scattered all around us. Gather it whenever possible.
Sake Samurai…I know you didn’t mean that only older established poets should be published. I am only speaking of the experiances I have had, and what I have seen happen to other young poets.
Give these * *
clay feet
wings to fly * * *
* * to touch
the face of the stars *
For my first ever post, please allow me to present a large target. It appears that some contributers to this thread have made sweeping pronouncements based upon a limited exposure to English language poetry in this century (or last, for that matter). While I agree that much drivel has been inflicted on the world in the name of free verse, I do not agree that that fact implies that free verse itself it therefore without merit. Condemning an art form due to the mediocrity of the majority of its practitioners would lead to thing like the blanket condemnation of pop music, rap music, and every movie made in Hollywood since 1939. hmmmmmmmm – maybe the idea has merit after all . . .
Those of you who are even moderately read in modern poetry will no doubt infer from my handle and sig how I feel about the potential of a poetic form that moves beyond the structure of hard rhyme and meter. Those who are not might like to sample one of the finest lyric poems of the last 5 centuries before entrenching too deeply behind the fortifications of hard rhyme and even meter.
To some, poetry is the aural expression of the language of symbol, a medium of sound and metaphor that holds beauty and power in the echoes of memory and emotion. It can be aided by the structures of rhyme and rhythm, but it can also be trapped by them.
On a side note, ee Cumming was actually a very traditional poet. Much of his work was strictly formal in all things except typography. If you look closely, you will see quatrains aplenty and more than a few sonnets among his body of work. It is only on the page (superficial appearance, anyone?) that his poems appear to lack structure.
On a central note–young poets, let no one dissuade you from where your heart leads. Young critics – if you surf to a person’s website and see an expression of personal import that is “offensively” framed in free verse (or doggerel, for that matter) a number of options are open to you.
realize that you are a guest (invited or not) and smile at your hosts earnest effort – been there done that.
smile smugle and feel secure in the skill of your OWN artistic efforts – done that too, never claimed I was a saint
Flame the poor bastard for daring to not live up to your artistic standards in all expressions that have any chance of passing before your exalted eyes and ears – nope, that means you’re an asshole and on your own as far as I’m concerned.
Newbie season is now open
The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity
Spiritus: Speak when you’re spoken to, you ugly smelly piece of trash. God, I can’t stand you. You make me sick. Go to hell. Go to hell and die.
(For the sake of being PC, I will herein indicate that I am kidding. It’s not that I don’t trust your ablility to understand this fact, but believe me, there are people around here who don’t.)
The IQ of a group is equal to the IQ of the dumbest member divided by the number of people in the group.
hmmmm, wonder of all monolobes are incapable of appreciating the implied subject.
[I am} merely completing the gestation of a caprine.
[You are a] Phillistine!!
The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity
This is fun – but I fear we have lost sight of the original thread. (Or maybe no body else cares about poetry.) Perhaps they are all happily immersed in The Second Coming or perhaps *Great Limericks of the Western world[\i].
Regardless, you have decimated my position with your uncanny focus on typography. (A closet cummings fan, perhaps?) I wither before a gaze blank and pitiless as the sun.
The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity
Insult can have a passion, and depth, which gives it the rank of true poetry. To reach those levels one must feel the disdain deeply, and give free reign to the urge to achieve the ultimate in insult: The insult that must be explained! How sweet it is to lead some blithe free spirit back around the verbal battle ground, and point out the sharp nick which they had not noticed, and the blood trail of their incompetent rejoinder, the clumsy knot they tied into their own intellectual entrails, as they searched for a hiding place.
On other matters:
Most people are not poets. Sadly, most poets are not poets either. But write your poetry, by all means. The great value of it is not in the renown you receive from others, but in the passion you feel as you express yourself. Avoid the mistake of thinking that your work is something a whole lot of other people need, or in any way would like to read. Sharing ones poetry is even more intimate than sex. Yes, the great works of the language have enriched us all, but we are talking about you, and your work. Write it down, and put it away, read it in a few decades. If you don’t throw up, save it. Hell, save it anyway, “Listen to the Trifid” was the best selling book of poetry in the history of the English language, go figure.
I’m sorry, but you simply are not going to tell me that “There was a young lady named Bright” is a poem and that the works of Sylvia Plath are not. Anyway:
I do too! How dare someone grab you, strap you down, and read poetry aloud to you while keeping you awake with amphetamines? Oh, wait. I suppose that’s not your problem. In which case I would say, don’t buy the damn book, espece de con.
{shrug} Hey, if you think W. Shakespeare and J. Keats sounds like M. Goose, that would certainly be your opinion. Don’t know anyone else who would share it, la belle dame sans merci.
Well, sure, I knew that. But when was the last time you saw someone eschew the hegemony of meter, cadence, and verse and yet remained enthralled to the suffocating straightjacket of rhyme?
Now let me illustrate another point about free verse with a free verse poem by RW Emerson:
So, what do you think of RWE’s free verse poem? Seems to me like just prose with too many carriage returns. This is poetry just because the language is flowery and high-falutin’? Just because it’s ‘imaginative’? Just because it’s emotional. Give me a break. How is this a poem?