I tend to write best/most when sparked by an emotion, whatever it is, and I've sometimes worried that that means I can only write when something happens or I feel a certain way. It's very true that when something happens the first thing I want to do is write about it especially if it is anger. I've noticed with liking someone though sometimes I don't want to write about it and I've wondered if that's because I don't like liking people, not any more, and if that's me suppressing it. See my first poem of the three published here if you wanna, that explains it pretty well. But I also force myself to write when I'm not inspired. I try to write every day. Sometimes I'm better about it and sometimes I'm not. Often I'm not happy with what I come up with but I view it like practice: I need to at least flex the muscle. I've also found as I've gotten older I've started writing fictitious poems or poems from other points of view, etc, stuff that isn't directly inspired by anything in my life, and I think that's very good and healthy and it encourages me that my poetry isn't completely narcissistic or only fed off of my own experience. That's an interesting experiment. Now I am going to try writing poetry about food and see what I come up with.
I used to think that I wrote best when I had an emotional impetus, but now I tend to think that I write best when I'm in the practice of writing every day and my imagination is used to instant action. I always found it weird while getting my BFA that professors would stress that the "I" in a poem may not necessarily be the writer, but I think it makes sense that most people assume that the "I" generally is the writer, as poetry writers generally do not explicitly set up protagonists or characters in the same way that fiction writers do, fiction being the literary medium that most people are most familiar with. This is not to say that I don't write poems where I am not the "I" in the poem anymore; I do, but generally the "I" in my poems are a fictionalized me or a character speaking with my voice in the way a lazy dad reads a story to his kid. While I think that the drive to write poetry may begin with narcissism, successful poetry doesn't rely on it. In some ways, that's why I like playing with found poetry as there are so many beautiful fragments of things that focus the attention in ways I wouldn't think to. As for your poems in Corvus, I have a clearer idea of what you mean now. I haven't dated American women for a long time, but when I compare the relationships I've had with Americans against my relationships with women who are not Americans, it makes me wonder if there's some cultural element that makes us less inclined to be intimate with each other. I don't mean less inclined to have sex, which there is some evidence for, but I mean to be open with each other and to recognize love/lust/desire/like as ranges of emotions rather than strictly defined words. This is something I've discussed with some good friends, who in general are in agreement with me, but they're hardly a fair sample as they're of similar disposition, age and attitude in regard to women as myself. If you're writing about food and trying that super-low calorie thing, make sure that when you do eat you get enough vitamins, especially B vitamins and vitamin C, especially if you plan to continue smoking and drinking. I knew a dude that got beriberi because he existed solely off booze and got laid up for two weeks, unable to walk. Granted, his "wife" had just stolen all his savings, his house and his kid and refused to have anything more to do with him, but regardless, vitamins are important.
This post has spawned some great discussion. Yes, people generally assume the "I" is the writer which can make for interesting discussions. And if they see elements of a poem that reflect your life they think the whole thing is true! I have sometimes prefaced my poems by describing that my formula for writing is 25% truth, 50% exaggeration, and 25% 'poetry'. It varies of course but I rarely write anything that's 100% my own life. I suppose this poem might be an exception but it's also extremely broad and so I think it escapes being "autobiographical" in that way. It's a feeling I've had so many times with so many people. I'm just tired of it. See, what I have a tendency to do which is kind of fun (and reflective of the way I think) is I will write poems in which I am a character, not the "I" at all. I'll take, say, a situation in my own life, maybe where I don't like the way I'm acting, and write a poem about it from the perspective of an outsider/the other person in the situation that then critiques on me-the-real-person-in-the-scenario. I wrote a poem called "Old Age," the whole of which I won't post here as I'm trying to get it published and quite like it, but it starts: As for American women, American men, and intimacy: intimacy is hard and dating has taught me to avoid it, or at least seek to avoid it prematurely, which then ends up shooting one in the foot when one meets someone who is actually willing to be intimate - causes one to drive them away at times, if you will. Dating makes one worse at dating and yet better at dating. You learn to separate out the chaff pretty quickly but it remains very difficult to figure out if the wheat you keep is actually the wheat you want. This is getting very metaphorical very quickly. I would say, it is probably not just a problem with American women - though I don't think you're really implying that. I love food so much I think I'd have a LOT of difficulty only eating once a day. Edit: Charming to see that as soon as I begin talking about matters of the heart I distance myself with use of "one" as opposed to, say, "I." Telling, natch?I always found it weird while getting my BFA that professors would stress that the "I" in a poem may not necessarily be the writer, but I think it makes sense that most people assume that the "I" generally is the writer,
This is not to say that I don't write poems where I am not the "I" in the poem anymore; I do, but generally the "I" in my poems are a fictionalized me or a character speaking with my voice in the way a lazy dad reads a story to his kid.
(or something like that; this is from memory) In that poem the "me" that's appearing is the "someone sort of similar, less convicted hair" - then the rest of the poem goes on to talk about how neither two end up happy in the poem - but the focus is definitely on the "you", not me-as-the-author's brief, almost cameo appearance. You never do end up with the girl
you know you're meant
to end up with, so you find someone
sort of similar, less
convicted hair...
Oh, it's not so bad after the first few days. Sometimes I shrink my stomach down by doing this when I don't have a lot of money. The amount of food we eat vs. what we need are startlingly different. I enjoy food immensely, but I also like to exert a certain amount of control over certain things in my life. I know you said that these lines were not exact: I've never thought about writing about myself as a peripheral character. I think part of it is that I don't know how I appear to other people, or at least I haven't thought about it much except in the context of their immediate reactions to me in a social situation. That could be something to explore though. As for your edit, 1=I, no? :)I love food so much I think I'd have a LOT of difficulty only eating once a day
but why break the line, "you know you're meant/"? It seems to me that you could get more play out of: You never do end up with the girl
you know you're meant
to end up with, so you find someone
sort of similar, less
convicted hair...
I don't know, that break just seemed a bit awkward to me, but maybe it works better in the context of the full poem. You never do end up with the girl
you know you're meant to end
up with, so you find someone
sort of similar, less
convicted hair . . .
Re: the edit, mais bien sur, humano. I'll dig up a copy of the poem and send it to you privately, or alternatively, I could send you a link to me reading it on Soundcloud (maybe both). I have problems with line breaks. I am thinking about them. I wish I could find more to read about them. My guru was telling me there's an article out there about the different ways and uses of line breaks but I've been unable to find it. I think it would help me. Half the time when I write about myself as a peripheral character it's because I'm commenting on or critiquing my own actions. I have a tendency to break things out in the 3rd character in conversation, too, which is why I feel like it's just a twerk of my communication style: I'll be talking to a friend, say something, and then throw out what I think their reaction is in the third person. Hard to explain. Example: Friend Brian: blah blah blah Me: I like ducks, they're so dumb looking. [pause] Brian's like "You're so weird, Emily." Brian: [opportunity to either disagree or agree with what I think his reaction is] Really works best in person, don't think it translates well on the page here.
I do that too, especially when someone is on their phone for no reason. That drives me nuts. Yeah, send me stuff. I made a soundcloud recently, but I haven't played with it much. On the list of things to do. I have not seen the article you speak of. I think. I left a bunch of books when I moved last time and of course they were the boring ones on shit like poetics. Line breaks are something that are very important for me, especially because of my own style of writing where I generally don't like leaving just the one meaning, but rather layers of exploded images. Anyway, you're familiar with poetry forms, and in those the line breaks are generally dictated by the form. For free verse, lines are of course, broken in many ways. You can break by breath, to create sub-images or supplementary images, whatever but there are ways of breaking lines that weaken rather than strengthen. This doesn't mean that you have to break lines so that they can all stand alone. Some poems do that, but more often than not it comes across as a bit weird and for me, usually it feels forced and artless. Anyway, my general goal with linebreaks is to create tension and to get the most meaning I can out of the sum of my lines. For this reason, I sometimes write my first draft as a blob and then break it, or else write the first draft, then squish it into a blob and re-break everything. To show you what I mean, I'll use a little poem I shared already. The lines, when unbroken amount to nothing special: A relationship is as simple as locking eyes with someone across a crowded room. That beautiful someone you imagine the rest of your life with for the rest of the day. But, by breaking it, we get different tensions and meanings:I'll be talking to a friend, say something, and then throw out what I think their reaction is in the third person.
Or A relationship is as simple as locking
eyes with someone across a crowded room.
That beautiful someone you imagine
the rest of your life with
for the rest of the day
Both of those are a bit heavy handed and graceless though, in my opinion. In the first one, the tension isn't well managed and therefore is inconsistent feeling. The second one is more consistent, but it feels like being strangled and the first line (among others) end weakly. Instead, I went with: A relationship is
as simple as locking
eyes with someone
across a crowded
room. That beautiful someone
you imagine
the rest of your life
with for the rest of the day
This way, it feels controlled but not controlling. The first line is long enough that I feel like it gives the opportunity to reflect. "*Is* locking eyes with someone 'easy'?" Then, there's the physical space between the idea of locking eyes with someone and the crowded room. Then next line gives more room for thought on one meaning and then the next line modifies it. All that said, playing with line breaks has made me really really picky about them. A relationship is as simple as locking eyes with someone
across a crowded room. That beautiful someone
you imagine the rest of your life with
for the rest of the day.
I know my line breaks are...well, "distinctive." They have been known to bother people. When they work, they really work. But for me the way I break the lines is often the only way TO break the lines. So I try and consider them part of my "style" and in the meantime try to learn more and experiment with them. Edit: I know I have a tendency to write lines that drive up towards a tension and then break before the tension - the subject, perhaps? - resolves. I think that's what people don't like.
That's how I would do - just playing - much more to respond to in your post, of course, but not right now. A relationship
is as simple as locking
eyes with someone across
a crowded room. That beautiful
someone you imagine the rest
of your life with
for the rest of the day.
I would go further and edit (this is just me playing. when i go and edit something it's about me putting it in my personal style, I'm not saying I think it would necessarily be better this way - just wanted to see how I'd warp this to my own voice) to this:
It is NOT the same as what you posted though. A relationship locks
eyes across a crowded room.
Some beautiful someone,
the rest of your lives
imagined for the rest
of the day.
That's interesting. This construction forces "your" to refer to "A relationship" and "Some beautiful someone", eradicating the implicit "I" of the poem. Also, there is no real "who" to whom the eyes in "eyes across a crowded room" belong to, which forces it to also be a verb in the context of the singular line. See? Line breaks are wicked important!