Thursday, October 16, 2014

Day 15 - 40 Days of Writing - Poetry

"but in the end

if we're lucky
we'll have the love 
of a precious few
maybe the ability to stare
death in the eye"

I am not shy to say that I loathe / hate / dislike  am ambivalent about poetry. OK, OK... Most of it. I love Yeats, and Keats. And Robert Burns. and a few isolated bits and pieces from others... I love the poems that Doralice puts on her blog... they are pretty [insert expletive] awesome... but really not much more. I only own poetry books that people give me. I have never purchased a book of poems.

If you navigate to my previous posts from 2011 you will see my desperate and unsuccessful attempt to try and find the magic in poetry that so many postulate that it has... (the posts start with "My favorite Line is.." if you are curious).

I even took a Coursera course to try and get it, figuring that I was reading them wrong or something along those lines. But, I found so much of it to be sad and pretentious and boring and far too much work to enjoy.

Maybe it is that I prefer Hemingway like poets, meaning that they use simple images, words, phrases, and images that make conjuring up the magic story that poetry can be, so seamless and easy.


Is this really true?

Anyway, that line above appeared in my feed on "The Facebook". 

The whole poem can be found here.

So, I know now that what it is is that I am not a fan of most of the post modern poetry, I love the romantics, the ones who use and understand words with so much more grace, who don't try to fray you out of feeling a place in our world, I don't like the ones that push you into spending hours trying to decode what in the hell they mean, that make you feel like you are sitting an a very uncomfortable perch as you try to find meaning in them, that seem haughty and petulant with words meant to tease the reader. Those, I find difficult. I can't read them without wanting to throw the book they are written in across the room.

I don't need a poem to make me feel good, I can be pushed to sadness, and anger, and any other emotion but I need to connect to the words. I fight bitterly to do that in those times when I have sought to read poetry.

But that makes me ask, what makes you tick when it comes to poetry? What poems do you love? what poets have inspired you enough to purchase a book of their poems? If you write poetry, what inspires you? Do you feel ridiculous (exposed, vulnerable) when you do?

I am just trying to understand.

2 comments:

  1. Stigmata, 1899





    I should have been built

    like this city: walled

    to keep the world out.

    But look how my body

    opens, opens. It seeps

    in drops, in rivulets.

    I hide in my room

    to go out of my head,

    wandering for hours

    with Jesus, Mary.

    Elisa slaps me awake,

    You're losing your mind!

    But Auntie, really

    it's here where I left it.

    Catherine Sasanov


    ReplyDelete
  2. I found it here http://www.forpoetry.com/Archive/catherine_sasanov.htm

    There's a second one up there; that's all I could find online. I thought you might like her as she has spent a lot of time in Latin America

    ReplyDelete

Your comment is awaiting moderation, it was just easier to go this route than to have those insane word verification boxes that are shockingly hard to read!

It should show up in the comments shortly, thank you for commenting!

BN