In my hand I hold a chip. I skip to the kitchen to grab some dip. When I return with my liquid cheese, I drop to my knees and cry out 'Jeez!' For much to my dismay, My cat is in my bag of Frito Lay.
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Feeling stuck? Write a poem
21–30 of 116 posts
Re: Feeling stuck? Write a poem
#22Wish I "got" poetry. Spent 4 years studying literature and got a degree in writing, and throughout it all poetry just annoyed me. I think I made a genuine effort but I couldn't get over feelings of "get to the point" or "so what?" Everything from Byron to Billy Collins. Doesn't do anything for me.
Have you ever been touched by writing outside of poetry?
Re: Feeling stuck? Write a poem
#23In my hand I hold a chip. I skip to the kitchen to grab some dip. When I return with my liquid cheese, I drop to my knees and cry out 'Jeez!' For much to my dismay, My cat is in my bag of Frito Lay.
Cat, cat, why do you meow?
I bend down to pet you now,
but then you dart away.
Re: Feeling stuck? Write a poem
#24Wish I "got" poetry. Spent 4 years studying literature and got a degree in writing, and throughout it all poetry just annoyed me. I think I made a genuine effort but I couldn't get over feelings of "get to the point" or "so what?" Everything from Byron to Billy Collins. Doesn't do anything for me.
May be you could try it once again, I found that I couldn't get it too while I was younger.
The work that greatly helped me to appreciate poetry better was, "Understanding Poetry" by Robert Penn Warren and Cleanth Brookes.
Re: Feeling stuck? Write a poem
#25Plugging a side project: if you want to be reading more poetry but don't know where to start, sign up at https://verse.press/ to get a weekly poetry "playlist" in your inbox. Sometimes it's a set of poems on single theme by different authors, sometimes it's a sampler of poems from a recently published book.
Does it only feature new works or does it take from the six centuries of great poetry we have in the English language.
Re: Feeling stuck? Write a poem
#26Wish I "got" poetry. Spent 4 years studying literature and got a degree in writing, and throughout it all poetry just annoyed me. I think I made a genuine effort but I couldn't get over feelings of "get to the point" or "so what?" Everything from Byron to Billy Collins. Doesn't do anything for me.
Have you read any Chinese poetry? AFAIK it inspired the "concrete" movement in western poetry. In just a few characters a Chinese poem can create a whole world. So while western poetry to me often just seems like word craft, Chinese poetry answers the "what's the point" question by creating a rich world in your mind with as few words as possible.
It demonstrates that with just a few subtle linguistic cues the human mind can be made to simulate an entire world. And, more importantly, if those cues are well chosen that world will be complete with memory, emotion, sound, light, and movement. Not because those things are in the poem itself, they exist in your response to the poem as the negative space is filled in by your imagination. In that way poets are engineers not of language but of the human mind.
Re: Feeling stuck? Write a poem
#27Perhaps not necessary to write a poem, reading itself may help. Reading poetry is a more involved task than reading prose, your mind is forced build up all the details poems leave out.
Re: Feeling stuck? Write a poem
#28tried to work, but had the blues
i wasted time on hackernews
distraction, it's the modern curse
but still there's time to pen a verse
and realize that it could be worse:
until you're riding in a hearse, success is yours to sieze or lose!
Re: Feeling stuck? Write a poem
#29Better yet, combine science fiction with poetry. Write SCiFiKu!
Re: Feeling stuck? Write a poem
#30Ant farts are hard to hear
hard to smell yet so near
they cause minor headwinds
in hindsight of tiny hind legs
they cause minor earthquakes
yet nobody is scared, or cares.