Ask a Poet

[Angeline]

Oh come on... Not one mention of Dr. Suess for Todski?

I can do that from memory:

All the rest of that day on those wild screaming beaches,
the Fix It Up Chappie kept fixing up Sneetches,
off again on again in again out again
through the machines they raced round and about again,
changing their stars every minute or two.
They kept paying money, They kept running through
until neither the plain nor the star-bellied knew
whether this one was that one or that one was this one
or which one was what one or what one was who.

Ask me how many times I read that to my kids lol. And please don't get me started on Fox in Socks!

 

[Angeline]

You know Champ there is a thread here somewhere where we were all writing Seuss-like poems. Remember? I'd try to find it but beddy bye is looking more and more enticing.

 

[Palba_Noruda]

Talib Kwali (they say he's freestyling but I think not)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b76AAWoLNVE

Shel Silverstein
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZO5JHUj4aiI

 

[todski28]

Thanks again for the help,

So far it's cat 3, Todski 0

 

[twelveoone]

Then if you listen to someone like Langston Hughes, the great poet of the Harlem Renaissance, you hear a modern rhythm--the American blues. He has a musical accompaniment, but notice he is reading in a voice that could easily be sung as a blues.

what you hear is phrasal rhythm, repeats and variations on syntactical units. Dylan Thomas often used it. This is what most often people hear, sound streams.
to paraphase Patti Smith
Langston Hughes was an Auslander
Dylan Thomas was an Auslander

 

[Palba_Noruda]

I still hate prose poetry though. I'm most passionate about hating prose poetry. edit: and the Boston Red Sox.

What is it about prose poetry that so raises your ire?

Which prose poet do you hate the most?

 

[bflagsst]

What is it about prose poetry that so raises your ire?

Which prose poet do you hate the most?

Prose poetry is wonderful at times, but I do have a problem with prose-poetry as a movement, same as I have a problem with slam poetry as a genre. You get repetition of an original way of going about things and it becomes factory-like and business-like and the passion isn't present. To whittle down my tree of ire to a statement: I hate prose disguised as poetry, because writing lofty prose is much easier than writing

Autumn Movement

by Carl Sandburg

I cried over beautiful things knowing no beautiful thing lasts.

The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper sunburned woman,
the mother of the year, the taker of seeds.

The northwest wind comes and the yellow is torn full of holes, new beautiful things
come in the first spit of snow on the northwest wind, and the old things go,
not one lasts.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I hate myself as prose-poet the most. I've written some terrible prose-poems.

 

[bflagsst]

Now, my question to poets:

What is and what has been your inspiration for writing poems? I'd like really nitty gritty details of hopes and dreams and ambitions for specific poems, groups of poems etc.

Example: I forced a poem from my nether regions one day, years ago, when I was sick of writing poems and wanted to write one really great one about the experience of trying to write a great poem when no one would really care either way. It's on my poem list under the ill omen of 'Best Poem Ever!'. A poetry journal wanted to publish some of my poems but at first passed on it and I asked them to publish it as a favor, pretty much.

 

[twelveoone]

Now, my question to poets:

What is and what has been your inspiration for writing poems? I'd like really nitty gritty details of hopes and dreams and ambitions for specific poems, groups of poems etc.

.

I write when I'm pissed, but have to I make it a challenge, otherwise there is no reason for it to exist. Most often, if someone says its a bad idea, I test bed it. To the point of failure and then back it off a notch, and write around it.
Biggest failure 3 lines supposed to be Devil's tritone (Blue Skies), dumb ass me, won't work without the overtones. Rewrote it, but don't think anyone will get it. Just a bunch of demons falling out of the clouds, talking near English.
Probably, best success thing called 'transcript' which has no fixed point of view, after jtsierra? talked about lack of POV in a thread. I think he was pissed. Really one of more amazing guys that appeared here, I wish I could remember his name correctly.

 

[bronzeage]

Now, my question to poets:

What is and what has been your inspiration for writing poems? I'd like really nitty gritty details of hopes and dreams and ambitions for specific poems, groups of poems etc.

Example: I forced a poem from my nether regions one day, years ago, when I was sick of writing poems and wanted to write one really great one about the experience of trying to write a great poem when no one would really care either way. It's on my poem list under the ill omen of 'Best Poem Ever!'. A poetry journal wanted to publish some of my poems but at first passed on it and I asked them to publish it as a favor, pretty much.

Wow. I have enough trouble writing with a ball point pen.

My inspiration for most poems is a memory. I think it takes about 10 to 20 years of fermentation before the memory is read to taste. Last night, I posted a short piece which came floating back. It had been a miserable day. My mother was in the hospital, for the last time. She was on her third course of chemotherapy for Leukemia. Most people do not make it through the second course. By this time, I knew my current girlfriend was only hanging around because she didn't want to dump a guy with a dying mother.

When I look back at it all, I realize we should have parted long before then, but I was holding on to whatever I could at that point. When I look at my portfolio, I see that she and that time in my life has inspired a lot of work.

 

[bogusagain]

Now, my question to poets:

What is and what has been your inspiration for writing poems? I'd like really nitty gritty details of hopes and dreams and ambitions for specific poems, groups of poems etc.

Example: I forced a poem from my nether regions one day, years ago, when I was sick of writing poems and wanted to write one really great one about the experience of trying to write a great poem when no one would really care either way. It's on my poem list under the ill omen of 'Best Poem Ever!'. A poetry journal wanted to publish some of my poems but at first passed on it and I asked them to publish it as a favor, pretty much.

I have no desire to write the best poem ever and I'm not really bothered about writing something called a poem, my poems are incidently poems. Too often 'poems' to me are like verbal equations and have a similar aesthetic to equations, an internal logic, even beauty. However, that often leaves me cold, like a woman of classic beauty, no sex appeal. Ugly women can be sexy. I think the French have a term for it 'jolie laid' which literally translated means pretty ugly LOL Beatrice Dahl was one such. And she is how I like my poetry.

Now the nitty gritty. This gives me the opportunity to post one of my favourite poems which has multiple time lines and perspectives. I'd been experimenting and trying to get to grips with a narrative from multiple time and perspectives when a friend told me she had breast cancer which prompted me to write this poem. Unfortunately the formating isn't correct which I do find important.

MEAT​

the crystal ball above his head
was a means of producing light
illuminating the kitchen's sodden drudgery
his hand sliding easy over a liver
with a blade that could shave your teeth
surgically slicing the meat

‘a full breakfast and a mug of tea, please.’

page three and her mammary glands
like swollen globes tipped with volcanoes

‘reconstruction involves tissue taken from the labia.’

more cuts
she winces
as she pictures
the blade
slicing her again​

I remember the eye of the bull and how it bulged with fear

my days in the abattoir and the spilling of guts into plastic bins

the flaying of skin as it was stripped off the carcass like an elastoplast

the indifference of death
as it passed on hooks
marked, cut and labeled
taking the dead weight
and stacking it in a pile

the barrels of blood
the floating clots
and the glug, glug, glug
as the vats were filled
with the brilliant pigment​

“bacon, sausage, black pudding, two eggs, beans and toast!”

sweat accumulating on the tip of his nose
dripped and salted the food on the stove
a marinade that ferments and bubbles up
odours diffused and absorbed by the room
the harsh light highlighted the shimmering heat
pearls of dew that coat the food like a sweat

a charred turd of processed meat
impaled on a fork gobs its fat
dribbles of saturates pool on the plate
marbling into a broken yoke
the congealed juices bedding like an alluvium
as my heart winced and took the strain

“enjoy it. animals have fucked and died for this.”

joke!​

her breasts had been full of milk, her belly full of life

her legs were spread
in an act of faith
as we took a hold of her
and he manipulated the forceps
braced himself and heaved

the guttural cry of pain
the suction of meat
separating from meat
the spewing of blood and mucus
in the stark white cell​

ketchup or brown sauce squeezed out like excretions​

I braced myself and slurped a slop of stewed tea
tannin staining my tongue like rust
the metallic tasting residue dowsing my salty mouth
and eased through my gullet like bleach
retching free a bilious morsel
I belched life's sickly odour

 

[Angeline]

Now, my question to poets:

What is and what has been your inspiration for writing poems? I'd like really nitty gritty details of hopes and dreams and ambitions for specific poems, groups of poems etc.

Example: I forced a poem from my nether regions one day, years ago, when I was sick of writing poems and wanted to write one really great one about the experience of trying to write a great poem when no one would really care either way. It's on my poem list under the ill omen of 'Best Poem Ever!'. A poetry journal wanted to publish some of my poems but at first passed on it and I asked them to publish it as a favor, pretty much.

I find I go through periods when I think in poetry. It's like I can't not do it and when it's happening I write as much as I can stand. For example, I go outside and look at the sky or whatever and a poem about it starts playing in my head. It's like switching from my native language (prose) to something else. I love when it happens and try to prolong it as much as I can. This probably sounds crazy but I don't know how else to describe it.

Of course I'm not always able to do that so some poems are more what I'd call "intellect induced." I'm thinking about something, maybe something in the news or something I read--I'm a total reading junkie--and I choose to write a poem about it. I think I can write a good poem that way, but they always seem less authentic to me than the poems that are less contrived. Those kinds of poems are more craft than art, imo.

There is one other factor. My immediate family, except for my two kids, is gone. Some poet, I forget who, said that when you lose someone you love they move from your outer world to your inner one. I am often writing to ghosts with whom I'm still having internal conversations. In my humble opinion, most of my best poetry has come from that.

Oh and I am talking about first-draft writing here because that is where inspiration starts. Once I'm in edit phase, I'm connecting with the poem in a different way.

 

[Angeline]

I write when I'm pissed, but have to I make it a challenge, otherwise there is no reason for it to exist. Most often, if someone says its a bad idea, I test bed it. To the point of failure and then back it off a notch, and write around it.
Biggest failure 3 lines supposed to be Devil's tritone (Blue Skies), dumb ass me, won't work without the overtones. Rewrote it, but don't think anyone will get it. Just a bunch of demons falling out of the clouds, talking near English.
Probably, best success thing called 'transcript' which has no fixed point of view, after jtsierra? talked about lack of POV in a thread. I think he was pissed. Really one of more amazing guys that appeared here, I wish I could remember his name correctly.

His main user name is jthserra and he is one of the best ever here, I agree.

 

[twelveoone]

I have no desire to write the best poem ever and I'm not really bothered about writing something called a poem, my poems are incidently poems. Too often 'poems' to me are like verbal equations and have a similar aesthetic to equations, an internal logic, even beauty. However, that often leaves me cold, like a woman of classic beauty, no sex appeal. Ugly women can be sexy. I think the French have a term for it 'jolie laid' which literally translated means pretty ugly LOL Beatrice Dahl was one such. And she is how I like my poetry.

Now the nitty gritty. This gives me the opportunity to post one of my favourite poems which has multiple time lines and perspectives. I'd been experimenting and trying to get to grips with a narrative from multiple time and perspectives when a friend told me she had breast cancer which prompted me to write this poem. Unfortunately the formating isn't correct which I do find important.

MEAT​

the crystal ball above his head
was a means of producing light
illuminating the kitchen's sodden drudgery
his hand sliding easy over a liver
with a blade that could shave your teeth
surgically slicing the meat

‘a full breakfast and a mug of tea, please.’

page three and her mammary glands
like swollen globes tipped with volcanoes

‘reconstruction involves tissue taken from the labia.’

more cuts
she winces
as she pictures
the blade
slicing her again​

I remember the eye of the bull and how it bulged with fear

my days in the abattoir and the spilling of guts into plastic bins

the flaying of skin as it was stripped off the carcass like an elastoplast

the indifference of death
as it passed on hooks
marked, cut and labeled
taking the dead weight
and stacking it in a pile

the barrels of blood
the floating clots
and the glug, glug, glug
as the vats were filled
with the brilliant pigment​

“bacon, sausage, black pudding, two eggs, beans and toast!”

sweat accumulating on the tip of his nose
dripped and salted the food on the stove
a marinade that ferments and bubbles up
odours diffused and absorbed by the room
the harsh light highlighted the shimmering heat
pearls of dew that coat the food like a sweat

a charred turd of processed meat
impaled on a fork gobs its fat
dribbles of saturates pool on the plate
marbling into a broken yoke
the congealed juices bedding like an alluvium
as my heart winced and took the strain

“enjoy it. animals have fucked and died for this.”

joke!​

her breasts had been full of milk, her belly full of life

her legs were spread
in an act of faith
as we took a hold of her
and he manipulated the forceps
braced himself and heaved

the guttural cry of pain
the suction of meat
separating from meat
the spewing of blood and mucus
in the stark white cell​

ketchup or brown sauce squeezed out like excretions​

I braced myself and slurped a slop of stewed tea
tannin staining my tongue like rust
the metallic tasting residue dowsing my salty mouth
and eased through my gullet like bleach
retching free a bilious morsel
I belched life's sickly odour

Awesome, one of the more interesting I've seen here, consider putting a time signature in each section, if possible avoiding the obvious i.e thursday

 

[Senna Jawa]

So I am breaking my cherry in terms of actually posting in the forum. I only just now found out it exised. I barely passed my final year of high school and so many of the poems on here I can barely grasp. Is there a ways and means of building up a poetic repetoire so instead of scratching my head in confusion, I can actually glean some kind of meaning from it?

(if any one says read more poetry idiot I will accept that as an obvious answer lol)

Read Chinese poetry from 8th century, and earlier (there are translations available).

 

[champagne1982]

So I am breaking my cherry in terms of actually posting in the forum. I only just now found out it exised. I barely passed my final year of high school and so many of the poems on here I can barely grasp. Is there a ways and means of building up a poetic repetoire so instead of scratching my head in confusion, I can actually glean some kind of meaning from it?

(if any one says read more poetry idiot I will accept that as an obvious answer lol)

Hey there, again todski. There's really nothing to most poetry that is truly hidden. When I don't understand a reference or a phrase I turn to my big book... Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Another technique (I learned in my grade 11 English class) is to paraphrase the whole into simpler terms and once you understand the oblique or obscure references and metaphors you can put it back into the original poem and be just as (or quite likely more) in tune with the piece as/than the poet.

I know I love when I make an inadvertent connection to a hidden reference that I didn't even know I'd included. This, for example, is what I mean. The tie to the other reference is this: Ps 52:8 "But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God: I trust in the mercy of God for ever and ever." (KJV) Which I imagine was one of the only pieces of literature to be found in his self-imposed incarceration. Cool, right?

 

[todski28]

Thanks for the offerings of furthering my education. SennaJawa and Champaigne. I will endeavour to look into both of these offerings of advice.

 

[twelveoone]

Thanks for the offerings of furthering my education. SennaJawa and Champaigne. I will endeavour to look into both of these offerings of advice.

Endeavour to look below the surface. You are reading, not looking below. Which is fine unless you wish to write (think), there are all kinds of hidden operations going on. Start parsing. What I would really like to see is some of the interviewees, actually show us the reason for their choices in composition.

meantime
chew on this
http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=405452

 

[todski28]

Funny you should say that I never think about my compositions, I just write the stuff and what happens, happens. I'm hoping that it's just because I'm new, I have been doing a whole lot of experimentation and little rumination. '"Jealousy" took me 7 minutes to write up. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing? but when you said I wasn't doing a walk through I was surprised.

 

[Angeline]

Funny you should say that I never think about my compositions, I just write the stuff and what happens, happens. I'm hoping that it's just because I'm new, I have been doing a whole lot of experimentation and little rumination. '"Jealousy" took me 7 minutes to write up. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing? but when you said I wasn't doing a walk through I was surprised.

It is because you're new. The more you write, the more you'll notice how each word sounds and whether it's the best word for what you want to convey, whether you're breaking lines in the best places for your poem, how to play with rhetoric and on and on. But it does take time. I think the editing process is where you really hone all that. I can guarantee you that even a few months from now you can go back and look at the earlier stuff you wrote and see ways to make it stronger and clearer or more whatever it needs. It's a process like learning anything imo.

 

[twelveoone]

Funny you should say that I never think about my compositions, I just write the stuff and what happens, happens. I'm hoping that it's just because I'm new, I have been doing a whole lot of experimentation and little rumination. '"Jealousy" took me 7 minutes to write up. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing? but when you said I wasn't doing a walk through I was surprised.

No Todd, I said you should think more about what you are reading. That piece was a one of (experiment), another two or three and it becomes a walk though. My piece was a walk though, that took about 7 minutes. My guess Ash's are about 5. However, I know a good line and I had a real purpose for that poem.
as i said my ass slept
sounds like what? where is the action taking place?
Generally it is a bad thing, most of mine take months, one took about two years.
Do you know how many of these things and better YOU DON"T SEE, don't you think I get sick sometimes reading all the serial submitters that can't be bothered to read or think about what they just read? Do you wonder how many of theirs you don't see?
Not that it is much better on the threads, I pulled up some anon comments one referred to a former moderator in a disparaging way, another former moderator saw the posting and threatened to quit, because she did not bother to read the preface.
A couple of years ago I handed a couple of people their heads. Do you think I could not do the same to this ANON sheetface


thanky here fo da brevity, honky

what yo need is a good boot up yo ass

who does a very bad impersonation of a black man and was probably predicated by the fact that I suggested they take their metre system into a black bar and point out to the patrons that they don't have any rhythm because they don't follow the meter. They would have there ass impaled on the nearest parking meter. Sure it is a little stereotypical, but not quite as bad as "thanky here fo da brevity, honky" I guess they expect something like "why yessa massa, i's gonna shuffle off 'cause i's scared"
REALLY?
No, I'm tired and feel like I totally failed in getting people to think things through, and unless something changes you'll have two people that are leaving comments that have any worth and they will get tired and sure 'nuff honky sheetface ain't gonna leave 'em.

 

[Rogueslady]

Hello just had a question for any poet: Will you read this and let me know where I can improve?


The way I feel
is so intense
like a ship on the rough open seas
waves crashing against the sides
tossing the ship this way and that
trying to get stability and get things on an even keel
not getting far feeling like I am crashing into a fence
my heart starting to freeze
trying to stay afloat as I am trying to make even strides
knowing I will never be the same and that is that.

 

[butters]

Hello just had a question for any poet: Will you read this and let me know where I can improve?


The way I feel
is so intense
like a ship on the rough open seas
waves crashing against the sides
tossing the ship this way and that
trying to get stability and get things on an even keel
not getting far feeling like I am crashing into a fence
my heart starting to freeze
trying to stay afloat as I am trying to make even strides
knowing I will never be the same and that is that.

hello, rogueslady

very quickly (am about to head out the door to work), what's throwing this piece is mostly the mixing up of your sea allusions with land-based ones. for example, you put in the word 'fence' - it jars and not in a good way with all the watery images. you could opt for 'reef', perhaps, or something else water-related.

you don't need 'like', it works well enough as metaphor without it.

'strides' - hmmn, the only striding would be on the ship's deck, and then it'd be a strange gait in rough seas - perhaps some reference to gaining your 'sea-legs' might work better. 'strides' feels too land-locked and clashes with all that's watery in this write.



nice to see you here

 

[Rogueslady]

hello, rogueslady

very quickly (am about to head out the door to work), what's throwing this piece is mostly the mixing up of your sea allusions with land-based ones. for example, you put in the word 'fence' - it jars and not in a good way with all the watery images. you could opt for 'reef', perhaps, or something else water-related.

you don't need 'like', it works well enough as metaphor without it.

'strides' - hmmn, the only striding would be on the ship's deck, and then it'd be a strange gait in rough seas - perhaps some reference to gaining your 'sea-legs' might work better. 'strides' feels too land-locked and clashes with all that's watery in this write.



nice to see you here

thank you I see what you mean now so I will look it over again and try to improve it! I am glad to be here