How would you describe the poetry you write?

diannone

If you're like me, you might struggle a bit to answer this question. I think it is a worthwhile question to consider. It forces us to think seriously about the poetry we write.

Answer the question any way you like. I'm not after anything in particular. Don't feel compelled to "label" your poetry with terms like haiku, free verse, love poetry, nature poetry. etc.

superjill

When I'm asked this question (and I'm surprisingly asked it a lot, by people who don't know anything about poetry), I say:

It's freestyle, so no particular form and usually no rhyme.
My poetry used to be mainly relationships: with myself, lovers, and the world.

My poetry has moved into what I'm personally calling "life coachy" poetry, where I illustrate a bigger issue and leave the reader with an action they can take.

Tony

Most of my poetry consists of words with the occasional punctuation mark.

chameleon

I've actually never been asked the question before. I just write.

diannone

SuperJill: Please say more about this "life coachy" type poetry. I do that too, but I am trying to do that; hopefully without sounding preachy. I am training up as a certified life coach now. My emphasis will be on work and careers because that is where Ive been working for the past 30 years.

Tony: You are too funny. You probably should use more punctuation and fewer words in future poems. LOL.

Deb: Really? Most poets I know personally hate to be labeled. If you looked back over your poetry in the past couple years, how has it changed? Perhaps it hasn't. Any words to describe that change?

Tony

I guess my point is this, Don: the poetry I write expresses "me." And I can't categorize that very well. The older I get, the more I take on a wider range of subjects and styles.

If it's about anything, it's about reinvention -- constant, churning reinvention at the personal and social levels. Other than that, it's wide open.

chameleon

diannone wrote:

Deb: Really? Most poets I know personally hate to be labeled. If you looked back over your poetry in the past couple years, how has it changed? Perhaps it hasn't. Any words to describe that change?

I guess that's precisely my point, Don. I don't examine my poetry looking for trends, I don't try to label my poetry or fit it into any particular "kind", and I don't work in any particular genre. I just write it what feels right to get across what I want to say.

diannone

Tony: I like your term "reinvention." It's very apt in light of what the world needs; at least from my vantage point. Was the word "revolution" a predecessor to reinvention in your life?

A few lines jump into my head:

don't tear it down
rebuild what's broken
and is still important
where do you begin?
where else, but where you are
reinvent it
like a hawk improves his circling of prey
and like a painter turns herself over to God
for the final brushstrokes

diannone

Deb: Yep, I hear ya.

Speaking of styles, describing the poetry poets write, etc., I love this one on Billy Collins' style:

"Collins has little interest in set forms or rhyme or meter. His poems are meant to imitate the sounds of speech, mini-essays broken up into stanzas. They don't fully justify themselves as poems; there is no compression or intensity, no startling image. They often have some rhythm, but they never quite make music. As even Collins's admirers admit, one leaves his poems understanding their theme, but no line divorced from its context has the power to haunt. Yet these must be poems because

nowadays typing a
paragraph
and pressing the
Enter key every
few
words
is how we
separate
poetry from
prose."

Source: Friedell, Deborah, Poetry for Dummies?, Yale Review of Books, Spring 2004

superjill

diannone wrote:

SuperJill: Please say more about this "life coachy" type poetry. I do that too, but I am trying to do that; hopefully without sounding preachy. I am training up as a certified life coach now. My emphasis will be on work and careers because that is where Ive been working for the past 30 years.

I was a life coach for 4 years. It didn't work out for me, but I may get back to it again in future. No matter what I do, I still am and will always be a life coach at heart. With which school are you training?

The key to not sounding preachy is metaphors. And stories. Show don't tell. I have one that I wanted to write about how television and video games are bad, and after letting my pen flow, it turned into a beautiful story of a little boy on a bus, how we were playing together, and how his father told him to shut up and handed him a portable nintendo. Then I take the reader on a journey of what kind of adult this kid will grow up to be, having been shut down like that. I end saying that he should learn a game.

I have one where the message is "beauty comes from within" and the lines I use when I get to the preachy part are:

I learned from watching Lisa all I needed I already had in my closet but had never put on:
A tall back
A smile
A twinkle in my eyes
A loving heart that sees beauty in everyone
And that these 4 things can never be re-created by any artist. I have the originals.

The day I got the courage, discarded vanity and slipped on these accessories is the day I heard the words directed at me for the first time,
"God, you're beautiful."

I suppose I should take my own advice for my Veg poem, eh? Hm. I'll have to think on what kind of showing not telling I could do.

sinema

I don't get the whole thing of "style". A good friend read some of my work and said my style was all over the place. When in fact I think she meant my genres. Her next comment was that I should try to hone my work into a consistent style...(genre, I guess). I told her she should start reading more.
I don't choose any particular style, it just sometimes falls in my lap when I write, so I go with it. Always with varying degrees of success, or not.
It's all about the writing. All about the writing.

diannone

SuperJill: Just a quick thank you. I'd like to talk with you more about your experiences in life coaching. I have a consulting practice base in my original field that I can work off for life coaching. We should talk.

diannone

Sinema: I wouldn't worry about style or genre. You write well and enjoy your writing, and I presume others like to read what you write. That's enough.

Your subtitle says it all: contradictory statements expose basic truths. Yes, indeed they do.

superjill

Sinema: Style within the same piece of work, sure, but across all our works? No way! I don't like the poets who get up and do the exact same poem with different words on stage every time. I like to see people who stretch beyond and try on new styles.

Don: Sure! pm me

ytserresty

Don: Before, I would like to think that my writing style is more on following a certain rhyme scheme or meter... I often write about love and relationship... I really like to write those poems which doesn't need music to be musical (much like Alfred Lord tennyson does)

Lately however I felt the urge to break free from that style and I felt the need to reinvent myself... maybe a few months I can answer your question in a different light. thanks man, good day.

Rax

i have no idea what style i write in. but topics i think i started from trauma based poems and then when i got here in gotpoetry i just went all over the place. haha.

things i often write bout: trauma, love, moments
things i want to write in the future: more politics or my personal waterloo: happy poems

things i ultimately want to write someday: a merge of law and poetry. let me just share one of the passages i fell in love with while in school. (made reading boring stuff much easier, and learning much more interesting)
from Justice Isagani Cruz article: "a quintessential constitution"

"The constitution must be quintessential rather than superficial, the root and not the blossom, the base and framework only of the edifice that is yet to rise. It is but the core of the dream that must take shape, not in a twinkling by mandate of our delegates, but slowly 'in the crucible of Filipino minds and hearts,' where it will in time develop its sinews and gradually gather its strength and finally achieve its substance. In fine, the Constitution cannot, like the goddess Athena, rise full-grown from the brow of the constitutional convention, nor can it conjure by mere fiat an instant Utopia. It must grow with the society it seeks to re-structure and march apace with the progress of the race, drawing from the vicissitudes of history and dynamism and vitality that will keep it. far from becoming a petrified rule, a pulsing living law attuned to the heartbeat of the nation"

(hehe. not exactly poetry poetry but a topic I want to be able to write someday)

Tony

sinema wrote:

I don't get the whole thing of "style". A good friend read some of my work and said my style was all over the place. When in fact I think she meant my genres. Her next comment was that I should try to hone my work into a consistent style...(genre, I guess). I told her she should start reading more.
I don't choose any particular style, it just sometimes falls in my lap when I write, so I go with it. Always with varying degrees of success, or not.
It's all about the writing. All about the writing.

I think there's a third element to discuss here that works better as a descriptive term for this sort of thing, and that's "voice." I think of voice as the thing in your work that makes it unmistakably a product of "you" -- the sensibility, attitudes toward life, emotional response, etc. Hard to define.

I tend to write in a large variety of styles -- rhymed, free verse, formal structure, etc. I also write on a broad variety of topics, and that probably qualifies as writing across a lot of different genres -- political, social observation, spiritual work, etc. But I think, also, that there's a distinctive voice in all the works -- a certain approach to simplified language, an avoidance of passive voice, a use of subtle humor, etc. -- that makes all those poems "mine."

I think the development of a distinctive voice is unavoidable if you keep writing. I don't think that's a bad thing -- far from it. It provides a unifying force for a diverse body of work, and that's crucial for becoming a strong poet. It's the link that allows you to simultaneously work with a variety of tools and processes while still remaining you.

Voice changes over time, of course, and you can always step outside the voice in order to work different angles -- but the development of voice is, in my mind, something almost inevitable.

diannone

ytserresty: Interesting. Tennyson is a favorite of mine. Reinventing oneself is a good thing. I do it moment by moment.

diannone

Rax: This is great! Love the idea of merging law and poetry. Great passage. You could do a lot with that...

diannone

Tony: Amen to "voice." I always wanted to be a ventriloquist.

lordfuznut

How would I describe the poetry that I write?

Incessant, under/over-rated, shite.

Orison

The poetry I write, all is related to what i'm going through or what I've been through in the past/What happens around me or has happend around me.

I find it hard to write about just simple things of life, because it has no interrest in me whatsoever if I don't have a connection somehow with it/her/he at that time.

Though how you probleby have noticed, I write in rhyme, I still have a lot to learn yo, perhaps I'll find out, just need some time.

lukaki26

I will write from left to right
untill there's nothing left to write.
I have the rite not to describe
my work to somebody else.

If I write what I like,
and I like what I write,
each word should serve
to speak for itself.

diannone

LFN: You are quite the Paul Winchell, aren't you? Throwing your voice around like a meteor shower may spray star dust across the universe.

And Lord, just about the time we think we have it figured out, and have found our way, there is this Zen insight: "The obstacle is the path."

lukaki26

Amen!