Writing Meta: Why don't I get poetry?

[amanuensis1]

During insomnia night this week, I read a professional insititution's glossy creativity publication that had been given to me. The photos were pretty, the essays...not as horrible as they could have been, the poetry I thought was appalling. Schmaltz, doggerel, sentimental claptrap. Amateur pirouettes on a page, terribly proud of themselves for showing off their cut-apart structure and boring as spit. These students didn't even know how to write limericks; there was a two-page spread of them and not one of them had the correct scansion of a limerick. God. I read through the book thinking, what the hell did they reject?

Is it just me? I always admit that I don't have a poet's soul; I have no inclination to write poetry other than funny doggerel, and very little poetry resonates with me. Sometimes it does. The moments are rare, but wonderful. Is it just me, is most poetry dreadful cloying crap? Just because you're grieving or in pain, that doesn't mean you can create good art.

Comments

[violetisblue.livejournal.com]

"Is it just me, is most poetry dreadful cloying crap?"

I love poetry, but very little bad writing is worse than bad poetry.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

That's a simple, elegant way to summarize what I was feeling--thank you! Bad fiction doesn't give me this fleshcreep the way bad poetry does.

[daylyn.livejournal.com]

I hate poetry. And I truly suffered through (and promptly forgot) any of the poetry I learned in school (and I was an English major! Okay... I haven't really forgotten T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland", but that's about it.)

Okay, there have been a few poems that don't make me want to gouge my eyes out, but that's few and far between.

Um... yeah... I guess I really don't like poetry.

[rexluscus.livejournal.com]

ICON WIN

[melannen.livejournal.com]

There's such a thing as good poetry, but people who haven't bothered to learn proper scansion for a limerick? Should not be trusted with anything resembling poetry. (And I say this as a former college lit mag editor who would have killed to get a properly scanned limerick once in a while.)

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

I would have rejected everything with incredible glee. "Doesn't scan, doesn't scan, doesn't scan, scans but sucks, doesn't scan..."

[son-of-darkness.livejournal.com]

UGH!!!! Poetry is the bane of my existence. I hated all the crap we had to study at Uni and any conversation I have with someone about poetry generally ends up turning into a one-way rant-fest on my end. Can't stand the stuff.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Ha, I'd love to hear your rants on that! My rants aren't very good rants, on poetry. They just go, "STUPID. CLOYING. DUMB. PRETENTIOUS."

[rexluscus.livejournal.com]

I think there's so much bad poetry because it looks easy to people who don't know any better. It doesn't require a large volume of writing, like a novel does, or even a narrative, for that matter. So people who think the hard part about writing is generating a lot of text think "oh, poetry, I can do that."

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

I believe your theory! I hadn't stopped to think about it that way. I just assumed that everyone who writes poetry does it because they think, "I feel so DEEPLY about this; I should write a poem, because that makes good poetry, when you feel deeply."

[bookshop.livejournal.com]

A manuensis said to me,
this terrible poem I see!
the rhyme doesn't scan,
it's worse than a plan
to publish this effrontery!

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

REJECTED REJECTED REJECTED

[pennswoods.livejournal.com]

I don't enjoy most poetry either. But I think that's just a reflection of personal preference and not necessarily because the poetry is bad.

When I read, I read for narrative, unless I'm reading a research paper, in which case I'm reading for an argument. Thus, the only poetry I really seem to like is that which tells a story.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

(Beautiful icon!) I seem to like sonnets, if they're well-done. They require structure, so, maybe that helps give them something.

[gmth.livejournal.com]

Bad poems are one of the banes of my existence. I don't even like what is the generally accepted as good or "classic" poetry. That month when people post a poem per day on their journals? I HATE that month.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

I don't hate it, but, oh, I scroll riiiiiight past it nearly every bit of it, yeah. Good to know I'm not the only one!

[melonaise.livejournal.com]

It seems like successful poets must write THOUSANDS of poems in order to cull through them to pick out the least gooey 50ish to publish.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

It reminds me of L. M. Montgomery's Emily books, where her teacher combs through her writings and says nearly all of it's terrible, but there are a few good lines in her poetry, and when she's disappointed he says, no, that's praise, to have ten decent lines of poetry in all that. "For want of ten good men, Sodom would have been saved," he says.

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

I hate most but not all poetry. But there are poems that I love.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

You know what I can't find right now? One of the few wonderful pieces of poetry on LJ I ever saw, a twist on Persephone, and I'm sure I would have saved it and I CAN'T FIND IT ON MY HD ANYWHERE. It had this line that went something like, "and I said to him, give me the fucking fruit." Where the hell is that?

[golden-bastet.livejournal.com]

I think you need a Billy Collins break!

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Who? *googles* Eh, now I gotta sort through all those links to find his works. Not inna mood.

[ella-bane.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, I hear you. I'm not a huge fan of poetry, but I like it enough to have some favorite poets. There is so much out there considered great that I consider dreck, so eh, I don't get poetry either. <3

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I even have a favorite poet. Shakespeare, to me, is a playwright. :D

[adina-atl.livejournal.com]

I see your non-scanning limericks and raise you...haiku with the wrong number of syllables.

Other than that, I agree with you too much even to make a good comment.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

haiku with the wrong number of syllables.

*facepalm* JUST. OMG.

[amorettea.livejournal.com]

I am not a fan of poetry. Mostly when I read it, I think, if you had something worth saying, why didn't you spit it out instead of prance around pretentiously. My brother, who is aware of my opinion, gave a lovely book for my recent birthday called "B is for Bad Poetry." It's all the way downstairs or I'd quote from it.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Is the book full of really bad poetry? That could be good for a laugh!

[effie-chan.livejournal.com]

How about dirty limmericks then?

There once was a whore from Peru
Who filled up her pussy with glue
She remarked with a grin
Since they pay to get in
They could pay to get out again, too.

(stolen from Christopher Hitchens)

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Perfect! Scans properly 'n' everything!

[maya231.livejournal.com]

I agree with the first comment. As did Douglas Adams, I think. I love poetry, myself, but there are not that many poems I love, and the older I get, the rarer it is that I will find a new poem I like. I don't even really like reading new poems these days, because the ROI is so low.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the poems have to be in a book and the person has to be centuries-dead for me to risk it.

[crescent-moony.livejournal.com]

Poetry, like prose, can be fantastic, or it can suck. However, as it is a more difficult art to master, it's even easier to find sucky poetry than it is sucky prose-- and that's saying a lot. Only about 1% of all people can write poetry worth reading-- the rest just think they can, and annoy the shit out of everyone else in the process.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

as it is a more difficult art to master, it's even easier to find sucky poetry than it is sucky prose-- and that's saying a lot.

*nodnods* That makes TONS of sense. I guess I haven't considered that writing good poetry is hard, which should be the linking afterthought to "so many attempts at poetry suck," but I hadn't made that afterthought leap.

[christwise.livejournal.com]

I don't read a lot of poetry but I know that all my attempts at writing it in the days of yore went in the pretentious file. It looked kinda like the garbage.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Oh, that place! Yeah, I'm glad I never had much of a yen for it; I'd be feeling guilty about the trees I killed. ^_^

[venivincere]

Well... I do love poetry, and I enjoy writing it, but I have to agree with you that most of it is utter dreck, and those who profess to be poets or lovers of poetry very often can't tell a good one from verbal vomit. It takes a great deal of distillation to say the essential thing in few words, and even more to get it to rhyme and scan, if you're writing in a format that requires that. Less is more, but less doesn't mean chop your thoughts into fewer words, it means choosing the right ones, the ones that are freighted and assempled the way the subject calls for them to be.

I'm not a great poet, but I do write stuff that scans and rhymes properly, and tries to say something, probably in a way that is sick-making to many because I can't always let go of the $10 words. :-D But I'm well aware it's not for everybody, and that's OK.

If I thought that all people liked verse,
I'd be likely considered perverse.
The polite, (in my aid),
Would say, "Oh, her mind's strayed."
The uncivil would say, "It's a curse!"

Pretentious? Probably. Feel free to poke fun. At least it scans and rhymes properly. :-D

[effie-chan.livejournal.com]

Wow, did you come up with that on the spot? That's impressive.

Wouldn't you have to drop one syllable from the second to last line, though? For example the "oh" is not vital.

[dmlpacker.livejournal.com]

Right now, I'm in a Modern Lit class, 80% of which is poetry. I admitted to the teacher straight out that I have no particular liking for poetry in general, but especially modern poetry. There are truly beautiful, resonant pieces out there, but most are too contrived for me. The classics I could at least appreciate because of the rhyme and intricate structure. But sometimes, it seems to me that modern poetry is all about "breaking rules". Writing simply for the sake of creating something new or investigating a "taboo" topic (not because you care).

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Eh. I bet there are plenty of critics ready to expose bad modern poetry for sham. At least I hope so. ^_^

[melpemone.livejournal.com]

I love good poetry. Something about the way the words fall together and evoke such intense emotions gives me goosebumps (of course, sometimes it's the emotions and sometimes it's the talent. I'm an okay writer, but an appalling poet).

I appreciate the classics (except John Donne! Bane of my high school years!), but I can't connect with them. My favourite poets are Charles Bukowski, Leonard Cohen and Sylvia Plath, which probably says more about me than I'm willing to admit. :)

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Plath had some good s**t in there. No question. Not everything she wrote connected with me, but a few did.

[melusinahp.livejournal.com]

I love well-written poetry that speak to me personally, but I think what equals well-written can differ very much from person to person. I love it when the language sounds musical and when it sends me unusual images or inspires thoughts and feelings in that vague poetic way that snowballs into more concrete thoughts. I tend to prefer free verse Sylvia Plath, e e cummings kind of stuff that doesn't tell you anything overtly, but which inspires you to think on your own.

"Just because you're grieving or in pain, that doesn't mean you can create good art." lololol. No, it just means all your friends have to tell you that you do. ;P

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

lololol. No, it just means all your friends have to tell you that you do. ;P Oh, GOD. That is so true it's tragic in and of itself.

And I like free verse when it manages to show me why it had to be verse, rather than prose, why it had to be divided up into stanzas like that, into lines like that. I'm not being sarcastic; the best free verse poetry in my opinon DOES do that. Shows you why it's poetry.

[fabularasa.livejournal.com]

I think you're talking about one of the perceptions of modern, post-Romantic poetry, which is that poetry somehow arises out of emotion. Thus people who are, for instance, grieving or in pain, or excited about their new dog, tend to gravitate to this art form. Because of its shortened form, non-epic (i.e. lyric) poetry does lend itself to the showcasing of emotion, but what I think of as the Romantic Mistake says that this emotion must be your own, must be somehow drearily confessional. Classic lyric poetry is as much about a constructed persona as about the elegant structure of rhythm and meter.

Most of my favorite poets were dead by the first century C.E., however, so don't listen to me. The English-writing poets I do like learned all their lessons from Catullus and Horace anyway. So I think what you are saying is not that you don't like poetry, but that you have no patience with confessional poetry.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Is all modern poetry confessional? Rather, is the majority of modern attempts at poetry aimed that way, is that why so much of it falls flat?

The defining "world tragedy" moment of my youth was the Challenger disaster; I wept and grieved and ached for days. And then I had to read newspapers and school publishings and literary magazines that all printed poems written by people similarly wracked with grief for Challenger, and they. Were. DRECK. Pure dreck. I laughed, actually laughed out loud that people would print this s**t. That might have been the day I understood that grief does not make one a poet.

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

I'm no fan of poetyr either, but I don't often admit this out loud. Conversely, though, I really like certain song lyrics. Okay, I want to quiz you because you may never have heard this song...do you get anything out of these lines?

You get mistaken for strangers by your own friends,
When you pass them at night under the silvery, silvery Citibank lights,
Arm in arm in arm and eyes and eyes glazing under.
Oh, you wouldn't want an angel watching over you,
Surprise, surprise, they wouldn't wanna watch
Another uninnocent, elegant fall into the unmagnificent lives of adults.

If I played the music along with it, though, would it help?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgRsYkKb1eI

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I like this experiment!

First off, never heard the song. The lyrics alone don't "connect" with me, reading them. The use of "Oh" and "wanna" and the repetition of "surprise" make them look pretentious on the page, and I want to turn away in boredom. However, listening to the song, I really like the marriage of lyrics and music; the music connects more with me and the lyrics give me something to sing, something to wrap my mouth about and actively live the music, does that make sense? It's not so much, "Oh, I love these lyrics and their meaning," but they feel good in the mouth as accompaniment to the music. And, of course, the use of "Oh" and "wanna" and the repetition of "surprise" sounds perfect in the song. The lyrics give me a way to participate in the music, even if their meaning doesn't "touch my soul," as they say.

This, by the way, is characteristic of my reaction when someone posts song lyrics for open perusal. They rarely connect. I scroll past and mutter, "Put 'em to music and we'll see."

Hey, I really think I like this song! Now, having said all that, I probably should watch the video--I didn't watch it, just set it to play and listened while I typed up this reaction. :D Thank you for making this experiment for me! Wanna give me any others?

[derawr.livejournal.com]

I pretty much hate poetry. I think, though, that I only feel that way because people view me as the perfect sounding board for their writing. Because I won't say anything critical or "mean" to them. When people come to me, they rarely want constructive criticism -- they want pats on the back. I've learned to hate poetry.

I literally feel like puking every time somebody shows me a poem filled with rhyming couplets. Sometimes I wonder if people think that's the only criteria for a poem.


(I do like some poems though, and it always surprises me.)

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

When people come to me, they rarely want constructive criticism -- they want pats on the back. I've learned to hate poetry.

Oh, there's a Pavlovian response for you! I'm sorry that's the outcome, but I can't help but laugh. Yeah, I would like to be the harsh critic of poetry. "Childish. Schmaltzy. No."