It's time for you writers to stop being a bunch of sissies!

[Bluehound]

All the talk of bodily functions and writing from the guts provoked this impromptu poem (?) about my recent diagnosis with a chronic disease. I am a lot more positive about it than the words would suggest, but yeah reality bites and sucks.

[WolfLarsen]

Here's an example written by a Mexican child poet (then-- he is now adult) in English:


Ekiwah Adler Beléndez



The Zoo

My words, indifferent as a gray tortoise,
remind me of an old woman
smoking tobacco by the window.

My words are as invisible
as the old kitchen rag
I use to wipe the grease off the cages.

My words are clumsy
as a frog saturated with mud
wishing to hibernate.

My words have the deliberate solitude of lizards,
their tongues unfold like a royal carpet
straining to hear the inward music
of distant saxophones.

I come in and find abundant thick hairs,
droppings, and tangerine peels,
a familiar scent fills my nostrils.

My words have escaped.
I’m too tired or too wound up
to go after them.

When the children write better poems than the adults it should be a wake-up call. Of course, children's drawings & paintings are also known as being very creative – and were inspirational to many artists – including Picasso.

Childhood is often a time of great imagination. Many adults seem to lose many of their abilities in the area of imagination & creativity. What a shame.

[Paulclem]

I agree that the poem is very good, especially if it is written by a child, and I would agree that there is a lot of creativity in children, but that this is often scattered and not focused - which makes the poem more special.

Creativity can be practiced and nurtured. Here seems like a good place to try stuff out.

[WolfLarsen]

Bluehound this is rather depressed. To write is to surge into a world of energy vision and hope. One must teach oneself to be somebody else for the better only then one can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

inside me is energy
whenever the eyes sadden
desolate faddens
and imperfect glows
I search within me and it gives me power
to lift and be lifted
inside me is realm
the real esteem I need when I seem
slightly off beam

This for me reads better because it promises changes even if one is low one must write themselves up.

Originally Posted by Bluehound:

"I looked inside myself and this is what I found.

My guts are broken
The Doc says forever
Inflamed, raw,
Oozing, leaking
For life and maybe death

Broken forever
And always."

The original poem by Bluehound was better. Art is best when it's raw and unsanitized.

[AuntShecky]

Art is best when it's raw and unsanitized.

But sometimes it's better to sweep the work for typos, unintended shades of meaning, factual errors (an oxymoron?), needless repetition, overwritten fustian bluster, and god-awful boring parts,revising and rewriting when appropriate.

That's not being a "sissy" -- that's being "professional."

[WolfLarsen]

But sometimes it's better to sweep the work for typos, unintended shades of meaning, factual errors (an oxymoron?), needless repetition, overwritten fustian bluster, and god-awful boring parts,revising and rewriting when appropriate.

That's not being a "sissy" -- that's being "professional."

Nobody said anything about not editing your own work. You need to edit your work and improve on it – but you need to do so without losing the raw freshness of the first draft – because if the final draft is too polished it becomes boring.

Take Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring for example. I had two CDs of this work – one performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the other performed by the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra performed the Rite of Spring in a much more polished manner. The Cleveland Symphony Orchestra performed this work with all of its original rawness and vitality and energy and rebellion. When the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra performed the piece you could understand why the traditionalists rioted at the original performance – and yes the traditionalists rioted in the symphony hall itself when it was first played.

Igor Stravinsky worked and reworked (i.e. heavily edited) the Rite of Spring without losing all the rawness and ingenuity and creativity. The greatness and originality of the work caused the traditionalists to riot – because the traditionalists are close-minded and hostile to creativity.

[Charles Darnay]

The problem with your theory is that the rioting did not come from the music but the visuals. The "rawness" of the Rite of Spring was in its provocative nature - if the "traditionalists" as you call them were just listening to a recording of the ballet, they would have praised it, as they had Stravinsky's earlier works.

[cacian]

Originally Posted by Bluehound:

"I looked inside myself and this is what I found.

My guts are broken
The Doc says forever
Inflamed, raw,
Oozing, leaking
For life and maybe death

Broken forever
And always."

The original poem by Bluehound was better. Art is best when it's raw and unsanitized.

Art is better when it is refined because it changes perspective of reality and provide the mind with imagination pure and simple.
Sain is much needed if art and people are to make sense.

[WolfLarsen]

Art is better when it is refined because it changes perspective of reality and provide the mind with imagination pure and simple.
Sain is much needed if art and people are to make sense.

Nonsense! Refinment is horrible! The last thing you want to do when you're editing your work is refine it! Instead, you want to improve on it, you want to make it more exciting! You want to turbo-charge it! You want to give your work all the energy of the streets of Manhattan & Calcutta – you want to give your poetry or prose the speed of a fast fast fast assembly line, you want words to be greasy like the kitchen of a greasy spoon, you want your words to be as hungry as piranhas in the Amazonas when the dry seasons come, you want your words to be predators like those candirus that are swimming into bathers’ private parts in the Amazonas. Like a rainforest where everything is devouring everything else there is no place for refinement in the arts.

Refinement is for the people that don't create. Even Mozart – who was one of the most "refined" creators of all – wrote much of his music in whorehouses and gambling dens. Beethoven could hardly be considered refined, as can be said for Jackson Pollock, and Picasso's nickname was "Prickasso" for a variety of reasons.

The refined are those people who mock the Impressionists and gave that type of art its name, the refined are those who mocked cubism & fauvism – and also give those works their names.

Refinement is for people that look backwards. They can only admire the great works of the past, and contemporary works that mimic the past. Refinement is the enemy of creativity.

And imagination has nothing to do with refinement. Because the imagination goes where it may – imagination is exactly the opposite of refinement.

[MANICHAEAN]

Refinement! Hah Christmas Humbug, Little Red Riding Hood.

Let’s discover through fractured syntax, crafted inarticulateness and oblique denouement, the new naturalistic dialogue. For writers should be before their time, and to be completely to the vanguard in aspirations is fatal to fame.

And if the objectors are constitutionally beyond the reach of a logic, that, even under favouring conditions, is almost too coarse a vehicle for the subtlety of the argument, lets rebel in high Promethean fashion against the gods and fate. Let us like Aeneas as when Troy fell, establish a new Rome via the arms and bed of the Carthaginian queen Dido.

Enough of this carking incertitude. Let also Ithuriel be dispatched to locate Satan. Then when the “grieslie King” is discovered in the Garden of Eden squatting like a toad close to the ear of Eve, let him touch Satan with his spear, thereby causing the Tempter to resume his true likeness.

And yet!!

“What can be expected but disappointment and repentance from a choice made in the immaturity of youth, in the ardour of desire, without judgement, without foresight, without enquiry after conformity of opinions, similarity of manners, rectitude of judgement, or purity of sentiment.”

[WolfLarsen]

Manichaean! What a great post! You know, when people are refuting each other, and they start using imagery like this – all I can say is it's wonderful! I'm not exactly sure what his point is, I think he's making fun of me and possibly others, and he does it so well, his writing is absolutely hilarious! It's very talented writing actually! Read this by Manichaean:

Refinement! Hah Christmas Humbug, Little Red Riding Hood.

Let’s discover through fractured syntax, crafted inarticulateness and oblique denouement, the new naturalistic dialogue. For writers should be before their time, and to be completely to the vanguard in aspirations is fatal to fame.

And if the objectors are constitutionally beyond the reach of a logic, that, even under favouring conditions, is almost too coarse a vehicle for the subtlety of the argument, lets rebel in high Promethean fashion against the gods and fate. Let us like Aeneas as when Troy fell, establish a new Rome via the arms and bed of the Carthaginian queen Dido.

Enough of this carking incertitude. Let also Ithuriel be dispatched to locate Satan. Then when the “grieslie King” is discovered in the Garden of Eden squatting like a toad close to the ear of Eve, let him touch Satan with his spear, thereby causing the Tempter to resume his true likeness.

And yet!!

“What can be expected but disappointment and repentance from a choice made in the immaturity of youth, in the ardour of desire, without judgement, without foresight, without enquiry after conformity of opinions, similarity of manners, rectitude of judgement, or purity of sentiment.”

[MANICHAEAN]

Is it possible that words, mere words, can work miracles? Or are they not words at all, but chalices and Holy grails, of human passion, full of the life-blood, staining the lips that approach them scarlet, of heart-drained pulse-wearied ravishment?

[Delta40]

Lol. Such wit embroidered like a fine shawl Manch, while I make do with toasted wholemeal humour dunked in tea.

[Steven Hunley]

Ya write it as raw as you like and refine the you-know what out of it later, when you've had more time to consider it. Cave men took branches out of trees and hit animals over the heads with it when they wanted food. Later men shaped them into arrows and did it from a distance. The branches were straightened and balanced and polished and feathered. Now more than a mere tool, they were a piece of art. And you know what? They were more deadly. Art pierces hearts more effectively than crudity, and still gives no quarter.

[WolfLarsen]

Being civilized and creating great art are two different things!

As I said before many great artists & writers could hardly be considered very civilized in the way that some of the posters here consider civilized. They were civilized in the sense that they knew the history of arts and literature, but they did not have all the stuffiness of those who consider themselves "civilized".

It is better to understand the history of art & literature, but at the same time be a barbarian. The pen is a sword. The pen is a phallus. The writer is to take his pen-phallus-sword and do things to "civilization" & the readers that I don't believe I can say here without getting disciplined.

The "civilized" writer/artist who is not a barbarian is the equivalent of a eunuch. Prickasso was no eunuch!