A Bit of Ink - Writers Forum

Nikatu · 10-13-2006, 11:51 AM

A Bit of Ink

There’s something false in poetry
A fraud in every verb.
Read a poem and feel joy.
Read the author's description and
discover words of death and suffering,
sorrow and angst.
Take a college course and study
But a single long dead poet.
Try to decipher from forgotten words
The author’s feelings and thoughts
sexual prefrerences
and his barber’s name
when he wrote the stanzas.
When in truth he put only as much
Into his poetry as I do
A bit of ink.

Why? Because we had nothing better to do
Than write lies.
______________________________________________

Kamisama · 10-15-2006, 06:12 AM

Bingo.

A+

That isn't to say that learning how a poet felt and put feelings into words is unhelpful. Of course, the problem with learning how other poets work is that one inevitably steals his or her style. This is why I rather not go into depth with another's writings.

There is the rhetorician and the rhetor. I'm sure we rather be rhetors than rhetoricians. For the the idea of rhetoric was stealing style and simply spitting it back out in different words. The Content and the Form (style). Understand the form and the content, now reword the content and change the style up a bit. In my vision, it's stealing.

People say it's not stealing style because people are paraphasing style with paraphrased words. It's all paraphrase.

Paraphrased poetry pushes people into plastic personalities.

J.R. MacLean · 10-15-2006, 10:41 AM

Nik: I find this to be cynical and shallow take, that is nonetheless provocative.

improvements? the punctuation is haphazard, it would be stylistically better to be more consistent, particularly in a prosy piece.
cheers
J.R.

cbaird14 · 10-15-2006, 02:22 PM

Wel there was something quite thought-provoking here, (not to steal J.R.'s description), but I found it wasn't consistent. You begin by talking about the discovery that an author's intented meaning and a reader's interpreted meaning are different. This is a very interesting phenomenon and one that our culture is basing much writing upon, however, you end by talking about lies.

It seemed that you had an intelligent thought and either rushed it or got confused while trying to sort it out. Both maybe. The prose style could be an indication of rush, but maybe you intended that I'm not sure.

I would recommend thinking for a while about what you are trying to say and then trying to say it more clearly. Others have mentioned punctuation, I would echo that advice.

This topic is one that intrests me very much, I am looking forward to what you have to say.

Thanks
Chris

golfprincess · 10-15-2006, 02:27 PM

It makes me think that maybe someday one of my poems could be famous, and maybe they'll dig through my life to figure out why these words come out of my pen. And the answer won't be there, because some of the things I write about have nothing to do with me, but go along with the ryhme rather! Awesome poem, I really like how it is making me have to think. Most poems don't do this but rather make me realize right off what the poet was trying to say. GREAT JOB!
MUCH LOVE,
GP

Nikatu · 10-17-2006, 10:51 AM

So I've reworked the piece a little bit according to the comments (or at least I hope so), but I really don't want to remove the last part. I'm not trying to be contradictory, but I am trying to make a comment about what I had just written, this is the second time I've recieved a comment about removing that part (one IRL), so does everyone seem to be having trouble with it?