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Poetry's Cause

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I believe that poetry can be defined by an actual experience giving rise to the ideas and cogency of the poem; being the interpretation into words from thought.

It does not need rhyming schemes, or petty rules, but whatever one finds creative and appealing in context to language. A way of interpreting experience as language for language with soul. (If that sounds stupid then tel me). Laughing

I just found what I enjoy about poetry the best. The ambiguity, I can create, more than one interpretation, like more than one perception can be created from it, like more than 1 story is read from the same words. The stories could have nothing to do with each other or quite relevant to each other. Simply an art but very easing to the mind with practise... hopefully.:a-ok:

Betowski, (at least I think thats his name), said that critical thinking to find the right words was not poetry, that you had to be born with poetry, gifted with it, but that is not my definition. Anyone who appreciates their own cognition can find a way to creatively piece together an abstract in words.

Anyone who doesn't see the beauty in poetry has never seen it in their own regards before, otherwise they hate their own mind.

What do you like best about poetry? Why do you write it or why don't you if you don't.:rolleyes:

@Holiday20310401,

Good topic!

Poetry has musicality to it. In other words, its effectiveness comes not only from the skill with which ideas are communicated but also the more abstract effect of rhythm, of juxtaposed sounds, etc. This is of course incorporated into skillful prose as well, but with poetry it becomes much more central to the form and the effect.

@Aedes,

I love the rhythm & rhyme of poetry; complex rhyming schemes get me reading faster, faster and faster, and I love it when several lines suddenly- out of chaos, cascade together at the end of the stanza revealing the rhyme scheme. If the construction of the poem is written so that there is a conclusive line at the point where this rhyme-revelation happens then I'm butter.

I am only recently starting to notice technique like assonance and alliteration, as well as more structural embellishments- lists, repetition. So I think I am starting to enjoy poetry more and more. But I can't stop scowling at a poem that doesn't use a rhyme scheme .

I think poetry is wonderfully expressive, but I feel limited by word-power.
I think it is time for a new approach, I have been trying avidly to write some form of poetry this week, but to no avail.

Dan.

@de budding,

The only problem with writing poetry and creative writing in general I guess is how as a student still, my writing abilities advance so dramatically in even a month, and I can look back at a piece of work I did a few months ago and say this is awful, why'd I write so poorly then? So it gets hard for me to write poetry when I must spend a week on one poem and half way through feel unsatisfied with the earlier work and start over.

@Holiday20310401,

The intense level of creative freedom poetry provides does it for me. I find all writing (all art for that matter) to have an incredible level of freedom. Poetry, however, encourages certain liberties more often than prose. Thorough development of structure, sound, flow, shape, wording, etc. is more heavily emphasized.

I find short poetry to be the best (less than 50 lines) because every word is more highly concentrated. That's why poetry tends to take longer than prose of the same size. I also love microscope poetry, such as imagism. ...so much power in such small works!

@Faun147,

I'm trying to work up the guts to post my poem on the forum. Its a big one, but it doesn't cohere like you would expect, but it's the way I think when my mindset is on poetry. Its called, well I don't know what to call it, I just sort of wrote it. I though of calling it Reality's Reason. The ambiguity of the apostrophe, you could derive Reality is Reason, or Reality's Reason in the belonging sense.

Its over 100 lines long, and many ofthe words imply more than one meaning. Chances are if the word has more than one meaning then it is implying more than one meaning. Thats the kind of poetry I like. Critical thinking puts me at ease when there is a freedom approach evoked through creativity.

I also like paradigms. But those are hard. And there is bound to be a linguistical pattern somewhere in making them.

@Holiday20310401,

Holiday,

Poetry to my way of thinking is not a great deal different than a lot of arts. I give my daughter a guitar sometime ago, but before she ran into much in the way of frustration I decided to explain that simplicty that sounds so complex, That everything about the guitar is about pattern, the neck, pattern, the cords patterns, the rhythm patterns, the beat patterns, improvisation, the playing with patterns, even the frequency of a vibration string, pattern. Then it dawn upon me, this is not only true of guitar, it is also applicable to other instruments, one can use this model to write short stories, write a poem, or construct a whole, there is something cathartic about the process of creating a whole out of its own patterns, and playing it back to itself. For me poetry is something one does for ones self, if it finds praise that is pure gravy. Oh, poetries cause, Well the way I see it is, poetry is about the beauty of order, how a fortunate rhythm can evoke an emotional response, and speak to the order innate within you.

@Holiday20310401,

Holiday20310401 wrote:

I believe that poetry can be defined by an actual experience giving rise to the ideas and cogency of the poem; being the interpretation into words from thought.

It does not need rhyming schemes, or petty rules, but whatever one finds creative and appealing in context to language. A way of interpreting experience as language for language with soul. (If that sounds stupid then tel me).I just found what I enjoy about poetry the best. The ambiguity, I can create, more than one interpretation, like more than one perception can be created from it, like more than 1 story is read from the same words. The stories could have nothing to do with each other or quite relevant to each other. Simply an art but very easing to the mind with practise... hopefully.:a-ok:

Betowski, (at least I think thats his name), said that critical thinking to find the right words was not poetry, that you had to be born with poetry, gifted with it, but that is not my definition. Anyone who appreciates their own cognition can find a way to creatively piece together an abstract in words.

Anyone who doesn't see the beauty in poetry has never seen it in their own regards before, otherwise they hate their own mind.

What do you like best about poetry? Why do you write it or why don't you if you don't.:rolleyes:

Show me what ya mean holiday. Because from my perspective, talking about talking is always the second intention. I mean, I might draw a poem, but so soon as I be talking about it what I am doing is abstracting and abstraction which is bound to confuse the issue. Rather than say what poetry is, do a poem so people say the poem is poetry.

@boagie,

boagie wrote:

Holiday,

Poetry to my way of thinking is not a great deal different than a lot of arts. I give my daughter a guitar sometime ago, but before she ran into much in the way of frustration I decided to explain that simplicty that sounds so complex, That everything about the guitar is about pattern, the neck, pattern, the cords patterns, the rhythm patterns, the beat patterns, improvisation, the playing with patterns, even the frequency of a vibration string, pattern. Then it dawn upon me, this is not only true of guitar, it is also applicable to other instruments, one can use this model to write short stories, write a poem, or construct a whole, there is something cathartic about the process of creating a whole out of its own patterns, and playing it back to itself. For me poetry is something one does for ones self, if it finds praise that is pure gravy. Oh, poetries cause, Well the way I see it is, poetry is about the beauty of order, how a fortunate rhythm can evoke an emotional response, and speak to the order innate within you.

Sir; If I agree that understanding is the recognition of patterns, will you let me try to correct you on Catharsis. It is the witness to a tragedy who is broken, and who, in pulling himself together finds a little of sympathy and humanity in his being that is made whole -not only by the art, but by his relationship with the characters. When done right, we see ourselves in the tragic Antihero, and when we forgive him we forgive ourselves and are by the process healed of our hate. The process is exactly the opposite in some forms of comedy where people are piled up with hate, reminded of their hate, shamed even by their hate if they feel human, and then are made to leave the house with mortal wounds unattended by humanity. Ya. That's a laugh, but it happens all the time.

@Fido,

I stand corrected!! Smile

@boagie,

Reading 'amateur' poetry on the internet I find alot quite devoid of cogency. I think it is vital for a poem to revolve around a central topic; the depiction of events or concepts requires some kind of essential plot. Although I hate to say the word ('plot'), when examining a script I love to adhere strands of meaning to a path, as it were, using the mind as an audience member to envisage, and to correlate the juxtaposition of lingual imagery with a primary strand of information.

I like informative poetry, and dislike poems that are construed without depth (simply the relation of words, often in a 'surreal' or 'abstract' fashion; poems that do not satisfy the urge for understanding and subtext and reason).

I did write some poetry a while ago, and have recently experimented with the composition of poems based solely on dictionary definitions - for example taking a word and then the last word of it's definition, then the last word of the following word's definition etc (one can be quite fortunate, there is inspiration to be found in the most mundane of places). I managed to compose lines like this without having to dream up any images myself:

"Information was their behaviour's achievement,
Known values and conversational insertions helped them to make dates and interpolate points."

Of course my dislike of reason-less poetry would probably extend to ideas such as this; seems to me that poetry is a demonstration of the intuition, I'd rather not the demonstration of skilled thesaurus use. The best poetry I've written came after incentive, rather than inspiration - I believe that an author has infinite stories locked up in the subconscious, a reason is needed to release some of the internalized wilderness of a mental maze that language and the relevant imagery incite.

In the 'Creative Writing' section there's a poem entitled 'The Druids and the Elephants', it's a favourite of mine...

@Holiday20310401,

Holiday20310401 wrote:

I believe that poetry can be defined by an actual experience giving rise to the ideas and cogency of the poem; being the interpretation into words from thought.

It does not need rhyming schemes, or petty rules, but whatever one finds creative and appealing in context to language. A way of interpreting experience as language for language with soul. (If that sounds stupid then tel me).I just found what I enjoy about poetry the best. The ambiguity, I can create, more than one interpretation, like more than one perception can be created from it, like more than 1 story is read from the same words. The stories could have nothing to do with each other or quite relevant to each other. Simply an art but very easing to the mind with practise... hopefully.:a-ok:

Betowski, (at least I think thats his name), said that critical thinking to find the right words was not poetry, that you had to be born with poetry, gifted with it, but that is not my definition. Anyone who appreciates their own cognition can find a way to creatively piece together an abstract in words.

Anyone who doesn't see the beauty in poetry has never seen it in their own regards before, otherwise they hate their own mind.

What do you like best about poetry? Why do you write it or why don't you if you don't.:rolleyes:

i agree with betowski critical thinking its not poetry or art, for example math which is based on reason and critical thinking , is in contrast with art, because it is an exact science and art is inexact. did you find something beauty on math?

i found poetry kinda illogical but there strive their beauty, i think that mythology where written in poetry like form for aesthetic purposes,
what if the scientific text were written in a poetry like form?

@mashiaj,

Here's a verse that I took from a poem I wrote, except is stinks and unfortunately I found out that 'primson' is not a word.

"The primordial has turned to crime,
but the son would contrive roses".

Prim, crim - the two subjects in first line
match with...
son, roses - the two subjects in second line
so you get primson roses "turned to" or "contrives" crimson roses.

I had thought when I wrote this originally that primson was actually as word so this verse doesn't work with the poem. But both the primson and crimson roses have connotations I think, some made up, but what would it be without originality.:a-ok:

Thats some critical thinking in a way. And making it flow and sound good is what makes it poetry, but its rather aesthetic idealism and I won't stand for it. Wink

lol. Just kidding

Also, that verse requires some thought when creating a figurative and literal interpretation from it, just some ambiguity I thought was cool.:rolleyes:

@Holiday20310401,

Holiday20310401 wrote:

Here's a verse that I took from a poem I wrote, except is stinks and unfortunately I found out that 'primson' is not a word.

"The primordial has turned to crime,
but the son would contrive roses".

Prim, crim - the two subjects in first line
match with...
son, roses - the two subjects in second line
so you get primson roses "turned to" or "contrives" crimson roses.

I had thought when I wrote this originally that primson was actually as word so this verse doesn't work with the poem. But both the primson and crimson roses have connotations I think, some made up, but what would it be without originality.:a-ok:

Thats some critical thinking in a way. And making it flow and sound good is what makes it poetry, but its rather aesthetic idealism and I won't stand for it. lol. Just kidding

Also, that verse requires some thought when creating a figurative and literal interpretation from it, just some ambiguity I thought was cool.:rolleyes:

They said that bees hovered around Pindar's lips as a child. What sort of insect do you attract? You know, I first tried to write poetry, seriously, believing that every poem was in short what drama and novels were. But I hate some stuff about poems as they are and seem today, gay, affected, introverted, and self conscious. Who gives a shet, really, what might be your emotions as you gaze upon some cloud covered lake. What ever it is doesn't have much to do with reality, except personal reality. I used to write a lot of near porn celebrations of life and youthful sexuality. My soul revealed through my deeds, blood, gore, and stink. It might not surprise you that I liked Catulus, and his lines about having an empty wallet, and inviting a friend; and he says: for Venus and her Cupids gave my girl an unguent, and when you smell it all you'll want the God's to do is make you one Gigantic Nose to smell it always with... That must be some unguent, but time and progress have put such stuff on the shelf for fifty dollars a sniff if you have the money. Still, I like the idea of having that gigantic nose. It might be tough to get by the dog park, but some time it would be nice to smell the flowers as bees might. What do you think

Did I tell you you think about it too much? It is so accidental, more like magic than philosophy to find all the rights words arranged to a certain truth, in the best order, expressing beauty even when the subject is ugly. And I guess, ugly might be part of why I do this rather than that. You have to look hard at life until life slaps you for being rude. You have to look at pain, and ugliness, and injustice just as you look at rain, or wind flowing across a field of wheat. And it causes pain to look at pain, and it dares blindness.

@Fido,

Well unfortunately I'm a critical thinker, I think, and I prefer rationalism, people love what is simple, and don't care to figure out what the complex stuff can apply to.

It's all about making life easier, and life will slap you far that. lol

@Holiday20310401,

Holiday20310401 wrote:

Well unfortunately I'm a critical thinker, I think, and I prefer rationalism, people love what is simple, and don't care to figure out what the complex stuff can apply to.

It's all about making life easier, and life will slap you far that. lol

Thinking will only get you so far, and emotion, the irrational, and the anti rational will get you the rest of the way. Do you ever notice how art, writing, poetry affect you sub consciously, and how the images will work their way into you consciousness because they trouble your emotions? What if the reverse is true, that before art can become art it must trouble the artist.

Let me give you an example. I went to the Chicago Institute of Art with wife, daughter and her Boy friend recently. I like art, and Van Goegh (sp) especially. But, walking around with my wife, either in the Surrealist, or modern art rooms I passed by a painting of a young teen looking girl sitting on a porch with one foot on the rail exposing her under pants to the artist. And I don't guess I have ever seen anything like it in an art museum because the subject, just like the artist was flaunting many conventions. And it happened, that in looking for the kids and then my wife that I walked by that same painting two or three more time, each time feeling more like a pervert, checking out the girls shorts and that -I dare you look on the girl's face. And I found it troubling, and I guess I still do. If it were my kid, I wouldn't want anyone looking up her skirt even if she was daring them too, and the artist must have found it troubling, or at least have felt that courage was demanded for the push back against morality. And yet I sensed in the face of the subject an enormous consciousness of the sexual power she possessed, to populate the world or strike terror into the hearts of men. She was not like some nude finding she had too little of hands and arms to cover her privates. She was intimidating. And the art was intimidating, and it told a story, and the story was bigger than just their story, and it was in a sense universal. Men would not feel the need to clip the wings of women in myriad ways were they not so powerful and so intimidating that bringing them down to earth seemed a virtue.

So. I am not saying people should not think about art. I think about art. I think about almost everything. But, it is because my emotions get snagged on everything that is rough, different, and out of place or time. And I trust it is true of all people that we are forced to think by what we feel, because in our rational world we knit up all the edges, and minimize contradictions; yet, in our emotions we often accept glaring contradictions, loving and hating the same person, doing again and again what does not satisfy, or what make us feel worse. And people live in their emotions, even while our relationships with others are guided by the strictures of rational thought, things like convention, or law, or doctrine.

When I did my year in the university, I was an English Major. I have given a lot of thought and reason to what makes art, and poetry. But, just as a wedge is driven into people by way of their emotions, as an end run around rational defenses, so the subject itself must be one that effects the emotions of the artist. If a subject does not command your emotions it will not command any other person's emotions; it will not enliven, enrage, entertain, or trouble. Artists should give much thought to their craft, the art of the artist. And the fact is that Van Goegh, for example, like Baudelaire as a poet, were both critics, and as such, philosophers of art, and to a certain extent, all artists are philosophers, because they dare to ask. What am I seeing. What am I feeling, and how can I convey, express, and communicate what I see and feel with my medium.

I could perhaps recommend some good books on art and criticism. But nothing is ever going to be better than life experience, finding what you like so you can reproduce it, and reading everything from technical manuals to myths. There is plenty of Shet to life. An artist has to be like that duck at the sewage treatment plant, living on the corn he could pick out of the crap. First learn to feel, and then learn to see, and then learn to express what you feel about what you see.

@boagie,

Poetry, to me, is my perceptions emphasized by my conclusions (based on my perceptions) that I use to create a correct (by my interpretation) expression (of words) to represent what I intend for others to perceive (of myself and the way I interpret the world and ideas around me). In other words, it's what I think and how I express it in a way that I believe most people will understand in at least one way.

Whether or not another individual who reads (or has read) my poetry interprets it in the same light as I do is another case. Poetry is an art that is free for individual interpretation, which is I why I don't like the way it is generally taught in school systems. Most teachers (according to my experiences) teach poetry (including many notable poets) as an exact art with minimal variety of interpretation and symbolism.

However, it is my belief that the symbolism and ideas represented in poetic works should be free for individual interpretation as they (the readers) see fit.

~~~~

I write poetry for pure expression of things I observe in everyday life. I personally find it a simple and enjoyable way of getting my thoughts out on paper (though my peers have criticized me in the past for the ease in which I create poetry). I understand that for some, however, to create a work of poetry is sometimes a laborious art indeed...Like all terms and ideas of existence, society, being, understanding, and creating, some people prefer some methods over others (i.e. strict analysis over (preference of) figurative expression).

@Lilith Karr,

Lilith_Karr wrote:

Poetry, to me, is my perceptions emphasized by my conclusions (based on my perceptions) that I use to create a correct (by my interpretation) expression (of words) to represent what I intend for others to perceive (of myself and the way I interpret the world and ideas around me). In other words, it's what I think and how I express it in a way that I believe most people will understand in at least one way.

Whether or not another individual who reads (or has read) my poetry interprets it in the same light as I do is another case. Poetry is an art that is free for individual interpretation, which is I why I don't like the way it is generally taught in school systems. Most teachers (according to my experiences) teach poetry (including many notable poets) as an exact art with minimal variety of interpretation and symbolism.

However, it is my belief that the symbolism and ideas represented in poetic works should be free for individual interpretation as they (the readers) see fit.

~~~~

I write poetry for pure expression of things I observe in everyday life. I personally find it a simple and enjoyable way of getting my thoughts out on paper (though my peers have criticized me in the past for the ease in which I create poetry). I understand that for some, however, to create a work of poetry is sometimes a laborious art indeed...Like all terms and ideas of existence, society, being, understanding, and creating, some people prefer some methods over others (i.e. strict analysis over (preference of) figurative expression).

If you are doing it for yourself, then I hope you as your audience, applauds. There is no point in me saying you are right or wrong. When I most needed a shrink in my head, writing served that purpose because I wrote nothing without a second thought, and some times a third or fourth. When I expressed myself, and could not care for the person who expressed the thought, it was time to find a better me. And the funny thing is, that in writing, and trying to improve the same, I began to look at Greek drama, and through that into philosophy, until now, I give little thought to writing except as something essential to communication. All that I read, history, drama, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and etc, has stuck with me, and I still read it for fun, but it does not have anything like the purpose, I guess, because I have the answers I was looking for, and more; and the exercise of poetry is not one I am given to do. I write, but like you it is for me. I judge it against what I had in mind. It is purely selfish, but that I can afford to do it, without patron, as my own patron, makes me feel rich beyond measure. I am like Marcus Aurelius. I own the world, and I know its limits.

@Fido,

What, prey tell, is the poem's cause?
A medium to make you think and pause?
An expression of the auteur's deepest emotion,
Such as a declaration of love and devotion?
Is it a brash attempt to be an artiste,
for one who cannot paint, who resorts to ink?
Is it a simple memory, immortalised in time?
Or perhaps a picture, painted with words, inside the mind?
Is it a jest, designed to entertain?
Is it hard work, filled with blood, sweat and pain?
Is it a design, to earn other's respect?
Or to gain critique, to collect and reject?
Is it a thought, given a voice?
Would you stop reading, given a choice?

It is all these my friends, and so much more,
And that is why poetry....is something....I adore... Smile

::Tyr::

@Tyr,

Tyr wrote:

What, prey tell, is the poem's cause?
A medium to make you think and pause?
An expression of the auteur's deepest emotion,
Such as a declaration of love and devotion?
Is it a brash attempt to be an artiste,
for one who cannot paint, who resorts to ink?
Is it a simple memory, immortalised in time?
Or perhaps a picture, painted with words, inside the mind?
Is it a jest, designed to entertain?
Is it hard work, filled with blood, sweat and pain?
Is it a design, to earn other's respect?
Or to gain critique, to collect and reject?
Is it a thought, given a voice?
Would you stop reading, given a choice?

It is all these my friends, and so much more,
And that is why poetry....is something....I adore...

::Tyr::

Ah hates rhymes. I am going to lay on my tummy and kick the floor.

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