my poetic ramblings

[escorial]

Poetry is all about emotions for me and without that it’s just a set of words trying to convey a feeling. There are many forms of poetry and often one feels there is an elitist quarter who define poetry in the category it has been labelled. There is nothing wrong with that but it’s not the aim of my words to defend the high brow nature poetry can be held in, which exists in many other forms of artistic endeavour. For me the word in all things is evolve,poetry,music,painting...they all begin with what has been experienced before and one’s own interpretation of the reaction you feel about any form of art you would like to follow is the thing that attracts me to poetry. Emotional poetry for me is about putting words down that’s main aim is to release an energy that might otherwise manifest itself in other negative ways, you could even call it poetic therapy tinged with emotional content but here i am labelling for me what should probably be just for my eyes only and leaving it at that. To write a piece and put it out there is to open up your work to many different points of view on the merit of it and the category others will possibly suggest it belongs in. I myself feel more comfortable with the free verse notion of poetry and like the open and lucid nature of some work i’ve read that is classed this way.

All poetry is written with some emotional input from the poet and the degree of personal attachment to the words about feelings,topics can often be enhanced and appreciated if the poem is about an experience that has never been felt by the poet . What you have there is probably a poet who can interpret the empathetic use of words to convey a point of view with a lesser degree of emotional experience. After all no subject has been left out by poets over time and the works i read are always based on the notion that the poet over time experienced the overall theme of the piece but one is aware that this is not the case and yet one can fully appreciate the ability to make a set of words convey an experience by pure empathetic response to watching,looking at other human experiences of all things poetic.For me poetry is not about the journey of conveying my words to others but to enjoy the experience of sharing a bit of me with others who will be far more distant from the piece and take from it their own personal opinion on what they have read.Does the title emotional/theraputic poetry exist in one form or other and does it have it’s place in the world of poetry if it hasn’t. I say yes and go back to the word evolve to find a place for such a category to be added to the others forms of poetry. I believe this type of poetry is not out to change things but to change the poet and for me poetry has changed my life to the extent i’m comfortable to share it.

[ned]

hello Escorial -

interesting, are you saying that writing is primarily an outlet for your emotion. (hard to gauge minimalists)
which is fine - we writers are blessed that we can express ourselves, or at least try, and happily engage in the process.

for me - it comes down to ideas that occur, tragic or humourous, emotional or not, that I endeavour to relate to other consciences.
it's because I get a kick out of connecting in some way, that I wish to hone my craft to connect even better.

is this a dichotomy? - writing for the sake of the writer - or writing for the sake of the reader -
but they might happily coincide, of course.

[escorial]

yes Ned it is about me writing what I find hard to express emotionally.... You feel the need to connect or to be read...which is cool and I think if were on a forum we all must feel that way to...have you written a piece you would never share to anyone..?

[ned]

interesting question -

Plenty! - but only because the writing is so bad - not because of any personal matter

of course, any poet worth the name puts a certain amount of their own emotions into their poetry
that's part of the craft - to put it across so it chimes with the reader, not despite the reader.
- whatever the motivations of the writer.

easier said than done - that's why good poetry is hard, I guess.

Ned

[escorial]

the best critic is oneself but i reckon to get another pov can often enhance or even change our own opinion on what you consider a poor effort.....would you consider putting one of your bad poems up to see if you might change your mind from any other pov's on it....?

[Bloggsworth]

I cannot pin to my mythical cork-board any single reason as to why I write poetry, it is often more a case of the mumbled randomlings of a post-modernist poet. Quite often it is the case of a whole phrase which, uncalled for, pops into the front of the brain, a phrase or group of words which invite me to develop them. One such was "Feint ruled by age and alcohol" when I was talking to an inebriated Scotsman who was trying to sell me fire extinguishers. Memories both romantic and familial can trigger an outrush of confused verbiage, which I may, or may not, bring to order at a later time. On occasion a failed poem has triggered a different and better one. I do worry about the form, by which I don't mean verse form, I mean the right word in the right place, for instance "Soft Falling Snow" has more musicality than "Snow softly falling." I say musicality in the sense of ear-sound, I have often thought that the title of that best selling book "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus" would have flowed better widdershins, i.e., "Women Are From Venus, Men Are From Mars."

[escorial]

interesting point about the different use of similar words to describe something...i think the dialect/accent we speak in has a massive bearing on how we see words together...sometimes as you say the right word in the right place is very personal to each of us and often correct use is a matter of opinion...

[bree1433]

That's an interesting idea. I know for me when I'm writing poetry it depends on what I am going for. I often let my poetry be an outlet for my emotions. Sometimes I'm even surpised by what I write down. Those generally don't see the light of day. For the others though if I believe it may make an impact on someone I will share it.

I like putting the emotion into my poems because they mean more to me. Hopefully it will also strike a cord with someone else. When I write my nature poetry I like to show others the beautiful place I live, and how much it means to me.

I agree with your thought that the poet will always put some kind of emotion in their poems. Just a matter of how much.

[escorial]

the act of writing a poem about a subject matter that concerns you or affects you is one of the things that makes me wonder about the poet and what makes them tick..sure many great poems have been written from a distance and given a brilliant account of the topic in hand but the poet who i think writes from experience will often bring to a piece alot of inner turmoil and joy that echoes through out for me. I often read headstones in the graveyard and find that the more recent ones don't rely on the tried and trusted formula but now seem to have that phrase,words that meant something to the person buried beneath...seems some people have words and meanings that helped them through life..words that they connected with and felt that they showed the person they were in life. A song, a phrase a poem a saying is often used in a religious ceremony that gives meaning to a persons life that is so powerful that it often makes me think about the person if i come across that song,saying once again.It kind of seems to sum up one life in a sentence or a song but the emotion and power that words can express is basically a thing which took all there life to realize no matter how long or how short a time they lived. People are often more poetic than they realize and it's often over hearing a conversation that i pick up on just who poetic so many people are..so many i write down and so many i forget but it's out there and so many will never be published or heard and maybe that's the real beauty of poetry..the ability to express ourselves without knowing how profound the individual can be.

[RHPeat]

escorial

What do you feel about the denotation and connotation of words in poetry and which do you think is more important when writing a poem? Is poetry more about telling your emotions to another within the poem or is it more of a suggestion to drive the human experience toward an evoked emotion within the poem? How would describe the showing and telling that everyone always talks about in poetry? Is that just so much BS? Why is either concept any better than the other? What do you feel is the difference between the two concepts?

When it comes to language in general I always see it a form of communication before anything else. It is just basic, or else why participate in it? Poetry for me is just heightened communication that has artistic form. That it is intentional composition, just like music, sculpture or painting; it is the deliberate arrangement and organization of form by the writer to obtain an evoked responses from another human. That poetry is empathic; that it offers the writer's ability to understand and share feelings with another.

a poet friend
RH Peat