writing poetry

[blp]

Maybe the hardest thing for them to do is to learn to love the 2nd & 3rd etc. draft process, to throw yourself down a flight of stairs and trust you'll be able to fix yourself up afterwards.

The inarguable voice of experience. For those who don't know, PM's actually taught poetry in college.

I am a child of that generation, which explains, now, why I remember nothing about learning grammar at school and why I struggle now with punctuation! It feels like a handicap.

I sympathise and am happy to say I don't think the problem's too hard to fix (not that it really shows with you anyway, at least online). I'll re-recommend the Strunk and White book, The Elements of Style. It's cheap, virtuously brief, available from the usual online booksellers and, in a large measure, a grammar book, but with a hefty emphasis on good written style. P.S. Your above statement does actually contain a punctuation error: you used an exclamation mark at the end of an ordinary sentence. Exclamation marks are for exclamations, e.g. Wow, yikes, golly, ouch. OK, I'm kidding. The above rule is true, but I don't really care about it because it doesn't have any real function in facilitating sense, just pedantry. I like to think that's not the purpose of grammar, but, well, sometimes it seems to be used that way.

Fortunately education begins when school ends.

Or when art school ends in my case.

Honestly, I believe you are both right.. but I realized a few hours ago that my poetry is lacking in something vital - experience. I feel that my works, both poems and short stories have some sort of juvenile veil around them... (FYI I am only 18)
Can age limit you in any way? Have you ever felt limited?

I have and the poems of mine that matter to me most come out of experience. In a sense, 18 years is quite a lot of experience, but you're probably right not to rest on those laurels. If you don't feel like boy genius Rimbaud yet, Prince's suggestion to read loads is probably key - and not just poetry. Even arch radicals like Kathy Acker and William Burroughs emphasise the need to do this, Burroughs stating baldly that bad writers were writers who didn't read enough.

The reason I immediately big up reading in this conversation about experience, rather than suggesting you go on a pony trek in Afghanistan or drop acid and join a sex commune, is that language is how we make sense of experience. Experience is a given. You're having an experience now, or, in fact, lots of them - sensations of temperature, comfort, discomfort, sounds, memories, breathing in a certain sort of way, relationships etc. The more you read, the more you see how even very slight seeming experience can be the stuff of great writing. Anyway, in the immortal words of the old Smiths song:

There's more to life than books, you know, but not much more, not much more.

Or, as Derrida said

There is nothing outside the text.

[PrinceMyshkin]

I have and the poems of mine that matter to me most come out of experience. In a sense, 18 years is quite a lot of experience...

The reason I immediately bring up reading in this conversation about experience, rather than suggesting you go on a pony trek in Afghanistan or drop acid and join a sex commune, is that language is how we make sense of experience. Experience is a given. You're having an experience now, or, in fact, lots of them - sensations of temperature, comfort, discomfort, sounds, memories, breathing in a certain sort of way, relationships etc. The more you read, the more you see how even very slight seeming experience can be the stuff of great writing. Anyway, in the immortal words of the old Smiths song:

There's more to life than books, you know, but not much more, not much more.

Emphasis added, but I think the whole of this is brilliant and if it registers with Veva, ought to free her to do what she wants to do, although the question might have been asked of her original post Why do you want to write poems, of all things? Why not, e.g. a manual on how to survive being 17? I ask that half in jest, of course, but I'd be interested if she cared to answer. There's a romantic glow around the concept of "Poet" - the heroic suffering! The noble sentiments! The vengeance wreaked on those who wounded us (or we thought they did...) But is the posture enough or mustn't one also - as I think you or someone else noted here - mustn't one also love the things one can do with language and line breaks and ambiguity and detail, detail, detail...?

[TheFifthElement]

I sympathise and am happy to say I don't think the problem's too hard to fix (not that it really shows with you anyway, at least online). I'll re-recommend the Strunk and White book, The Elements of Style. It's cheap, virtuously brief, available from the usual online booksellers and, in a large measure, a grammar book, but with a hefty emphasis on good written style. P.S. Your above statement does actually contain a punctuation error: you used an exclamation mark at the end of an ordinary sentence. Exclamation marks are for exclamations, e.g. Wow, yikes, golly, ouch. OK, I'm kidding. The above rule is true, but I don't really care about it because it doesn't have any real function in facilitating sense, just pedantry. I like to think that's not the purpose of grammar, but, well, sometimes it seems to be used that way.

Thanks blp. It is now on order. When I read Eats Shoots & Leaves it just made me depressed

[blp]

Thanks, Prince. I'm glad you liked what I said and flattered. I agree, yours is a good question, though I'd add, just so there are no misunderstandings, if Veva or anyone else doesn't quite know how to answer it, they shouldn't be put off. The answer may be in the poetry itself.

Hope the book lives up to the build-up for you, 5th.

[Delta40]

I sound so naive Veva after reading these posts because I don't have the background and education that other members have. I woke up last year and felt I needed to give the poet within me a voice.

I wrote.

I don't know anything about it other than that which I write.

I imagine I will interest myself more as I go along. Your post prompts me to wonder, only idly, if this poses a problem.

What do you think?

[cogs]

the more you write, the quicker you'll develop a method.
regarding age, i was thinking that the other day, and i've come to think that inspiration can happen at any age. the spark will ignite a whole train of thought. i just write it all down, then take out the best parts. then get inspired all over again, and do the same.
next, i try to say the same thing with words that express the thought exactly,
which is why thesaurus.com (which also has a dictionary), is so important to me.
it's the ideas that are important, and their structure can only enhance their connections.

[Silas Thorne]

Great thread! I'm learning a lot as I travel through it.

I'm returning to poetry (or Poetry ) from a long absence. I never ceased to enjoy reading poetry, but I stopped writing it for a long time as I felt false to myself in the way I was writing.

[jon1jt]

I suppose resorting to some poetry guide is one way to kill any interest you may have in poetry, but if you must then so be it. You found this website so I imagine you've been exposed to some poems---some good, some maybe not. And at some point you must have formed an opinion about one or two, maybe discovered a poem that really moved you.

You want to be a poet, then start out with writing a line or two about anything and go from there. Then get some feedback and in the end follow your own voice.

The rest of the advice offered in this thread may come across to a novice as a bit abstract or philosophical and lead to scaring them off. Then again, the poster mentions 'emotios,' which says she knows more about poetry than I do, which for her is a good thing.

[blp]

I had a browse through this

http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Write-Po...1326750&sr=8-1

yesterday in my local bookshop and thought it seemed good. He begins by saying that, in beginning to think about poetry, it's pointless to ask what poetry is, better, perhaps, to wonder what it has been in the past and what it might be in the future.

[blp]

Was just commenting on Cellar Door's poem and remembered that these lines from Lorine Niedecker were some of my favourite by a poet on poetry:

                   Poet's Work

Grandfather
  advised me:
        Learn a trade

I learned
  to sit at desk
        and condense

No layoff
  from this
        condensery

and

...But what vitality! The women hold jobs--
clean house, cook, raise children, bowl
and go to church.

What would they say if they knew
I sit for two months on six lines
of poetry?

[TheFifthElement]

Meant to add Veva: WRITE!!! You'll learn more from doing than thinking about poetry. Write, and you'll find your voice.

So, when are you going to post some poetry