If you cannot make poetry

[PrinceMyshkin]

If you cannot make poetry
out of a broken heart
then, of what can you make it?

If you cannot make poetry
out of charred bits of plywood
found in a filthy alleyway,

the backside of a pleasant street facade
then, you might as well
go back to the broken heart,

which will always
be #1
on the Hurt Parade!



My name is PrinceMyshkin and I approved this poem.

[Sweets America]

My name is PrinceMyshkin and I approved this poem.

:lol: Me too!

But in a way I'm not sure, because maybe a broken heart is not the worst thing in the world? Well it depends on what a 'broken heart' can refer too, it can have a broader meaning than the one usually understood, I guess.

[PrinceMyshkin]

:lol: Me too!

But in a way I'm not sure, because maybe a broken heart is not the worst thing in the world? Well it depends on what a 'broken heart' can refer too, it can have a broader meaning than the one usually understood, I guess.

Oh, it is assuredly the worst thing in the word to anyone suffering it for the first or 400th time! But his or her task, in writing about it, is to do so in some way different or more fresh than the hundreds of thousands of ways it has been written about before. Much easier (though not necessarily better) to write about the death of a single monarch butterfly!


My name is PrinceMyshkin and I THOROUGHLY approved this response!

[goldenrod]

String Theory?
Fermat's Last Theorem?

I burnt the ox while roasting it on the spit, but even that cooking was better than my poetry!:)

goldenrod.

I feel a broken heart coming on...

[AuntShecky]

"Hurt Parade" -- that's a nice play on words, but hope you read about that somewhere; otherwise, it's showing your age.
Not every poem comes from a "broken heart," though, Prince. If that were the case, then poetry as a literary genre
would be the Crybaby of the Arts. No one wants a steady diet of depressing navel-gazing.
Some poems come from a place of a joy, but far from a "broken heart", the best of the best poems come from
a fully-integrated brain.

[Umbilical]

"Hurt Parade" -- that's a nice play on words, but hope you read about that somewhere; otherwise, it's showing your age.
Not every poem comes from a "broken heart," though, Prince. If that were the case, then poetry as a literary genre
would be the Crybaby of the Arts. No one wants a steady diet of depressing navel-gazing.
Some poems come from a place of a joy, but far from a "broken heart", the best of the best poems come from
a fully-integrated brain.

What's a fully-integrated brain?

Like Bukowski says, poets can't even say "I'm going to go feed the dog"... They need to twist, pervert and play with the words because expression is a problem for them...

What is there to integrate? Do we have separate parts that need to come together to work towards some purpose that we call 'poetry'?

And what about those who write crap from insanity, or write beauty from insanity, or write beauty from sanity, or crap from sanity?

Maybe the poems you enjoy come from integrated brains,
but maybe it's more your perception of the poem itself, than the person who 'created' it.

Sometimes it takes a big kick in the brain to kick the crap out of someone, so that they can just say a sentence that's not fractured by contrived bullsh.it.

Anyway... just my opinion. Not a very well expressed one, but one.

[AuntShecky]

What's a fully-integrated brain?

Like Bukowski says, poets can't even say "I'm going to go feed the dog"... They need to twist, pervert and play with the words because expression is a problem for them...

What is there to integrate? Do we have separate parts that need to come together to work towards some purpose that we call 'poetry'?

.


By that I mean that one can't put pure "emotion" on the page; there has to be imagery or some verbal, specific reference to represent the idea within the work.

A fully-integrated brain operates when one's creative energy is fully engaged -- both "sides" of the brain, the logical side plus the creative side, reason collaborating with intuition.

The term "common sense" derives from a Renaissance notion of all the sense cooperating with each other, as in
a fully-integrated brain.

Okay?

[PrinceMyshkin]

"Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net taken down."
--Robert Frost

"Writing formal verse is like playing tennis with the net tangled as tightly as possible around your body."
--Jerry Thaw

[Umbilical]

By that I mean that one can't put pure "emotion" on the page; there has to be imagery or some verbal, specific reference to represent the idea within the work.

A fully-integrated brain operates when one's creative energy is fully engaged -- both "sides" of the brain, the logical side plus the creative side, reason collaborating with intuition.

The term "common sense" derives from a Renaissance notion of all the sense cooperating with each other, as in
a fully-integrated brain.

Okay?

Yes, but can't a 'fully-integrated' brain produce poetry from a 'broken heart'?

Because you said that not every poem comes from a broken heart - I agree.
But sometimes the joy of 'creating' can temporarily create the illusion of that heart being whole, so in that case, YES, the poem 'comes' from a broken heart, but it's sorting itself out.

I just don't think that you can so easily and clearly separate weepy bull**** from integrated expression.

But I suppose you win because I haven't studied poetry, I obviously don't know or read as much as you, and I use BUT at the beginning of a sentence (bad girl)...
When can we argue again??

I just have to add that some of the great poets have contravened many of the assumptions about poetry, and thus how we 'define' poetry is poetry in motion itself.

:)