Input C&C please
kyl...@my-dejanews.com
think. Many people should be able to relate. It's something we all do(or at
least some of us).
Input
Free to decide the indecisions, I require
a function to release the pressure of
monotonous overtones of plots and plans
and reverberations bouncing off my ear. I caught
onto the spinning line of consecutive
content entering my consciousness, the
adding of information to my memory and
stray thoughts spurt out in lost time and
space continually replaced, continually overrun
by information, input across my cerebrum.
I moved stored energy and connect to old file
drawers in the recesses of dark corners
I never use. I made the cortex shiver, I made
it shake the loose tendrils of memory to accept
new, elaborate images of info experienced.
I heard, I saw, I conquered life with more
enticing schemes I cracked with new
stimuli absorbed and reduced the
function to basic language and adaptation and input
this dream-day into my mind.
揖yle Holloman
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Michael Stephens
see no easy fix here. I'm afraid I'm going to have to echo what so often
gets said here and tell you to read more poetry.
Sorry.
ms
<kyl...@my-dejanews.com> wrote in message
news:7fnfif$k1s$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com...
> -Kyle Holloman
Heidi Stephens
clever take, but too weighty to be poetic.
hts
> 揖yle Holloman
>
> -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
> http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
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Jerry H. Jenkins
Poems that descibe processes and little else don't usually
have much appeal. When the process description is expressed
in terms that resemble specialized technical lingo (as in a
manual, as Heidi points out), there's even less appeal
except perhaps as a curiosity or an exchange beween poet and
reader of similar specialized background.
I know the precision of compound words, expecially of the
latinate or greek variety, makes them appealing to writers
who want to communicate clearly, but poetry usually requires
a different approach. Its success is often achieved by the
use of simpler terms grouped into synyactical units that
evoke broad and general reactions rather than the
concentrated focus associated with precise vocabulary and
complex. almost neologistic, words.
I hope this helps.
Jerry
kyl...@my-dejanews.com
"Michael Stephens" <mikestephe...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> Well, I tried to enjoy, but couldn't. I know that's not very helpful. But I
> see no easy fix here. I'm afraid I'm going to have to echo what so often
> gets said here and tell you to read more poetry.
>
> Sorry.
>
> ms
>
> <kyl...@my-dejanews.com> wrote in message
> news:7fnfif$k1s$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com...
> >
> > -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
> > http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
>
anew with a work without feedback as to where I may have gone wrong. I know
how the poems reads. It is very convoluted, caught it its own web, so to
speak. I posted it to figure out how to draw out the mess within the lines.
Any help you could give would be of use. I don't give up on poems. I think
that every poem is a work in progress, a pursuit for perfection that really
never ends.
On the other hand, I just wanted to let you know that I do read poetry rather
extensively and have for quite a number of years. Don't let one poem lead you
to think otherwise. It sounds very dismissive.
kh
kyl...@my-dejanews.com
"Jerry H. Jenkins" <jerry_h...@csi.com> wrote:
> Kyle,
>
> Poems that descibe processes and little else don't usually
> have much appeal. When the process description is expressed
> in terms that resemble specialized technical lingo (as in a
> manual, as Heidi points out), there's even less appeal
> except perhaps as a curiosity or an exchange beween poet and
> reader of similar specialized background.
>
> I know the precision of compound words, expecially of the
> latinate or greek variety, makes them appealing to writers
> who want to communicate clearly, but poetry usually requires
> a different approach. Its success is often achieved by the
> use of simpler terms grouped into synyactical units that
> evoke broad and general reactions rather than the
> concentrated focus associated with precise vocabulary and
> complex. almost neologistic, words.
>
> I hope this helps.
>
> Jerry
>
> kyl...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
> >
> >
> > -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
> > http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
off. Thank you.
Stephen McLeod
No one should be deliberately cruel when she or he is presented with a poem like this. Many will be indifferent. I am not being either here. I am telling you what I think. I am a writer. I have been working at being a writer for over 20 years. I have a great joy in writing and it breaks my heart (Rule 1: NEVER use "break(s) my heart" in a poem. Rule 2: Don't follow the rules, especially rules that include the word "never".) at the same time. I would write the Poem to Lay Down Before the Thundering Hordes, but I fall short. Learning to make poems requires an ability to deal with falling short.
But sometimes, I write something that gives me joy. I don't know where it came from, but I do know that it is the result of work and more work, and listening, and reading, and writing, and living a life where language is music, and transcendence waits in the most ordinary and daily events, waiting there for me to find it.
At the beginning there is the false idea (everyone has it) that one can just make poems without having any craft or skill. The stuff one writes then, at that stage, reflects just that: no craft or skill. Sometimes, even often, them "poem" itself will say it as in the piece bellow: ("stray thoughts spurt out in lost time")
So really there are three choices. One: you could go on writing drivel and every once in a while show it to someone who will tell you the truth about it. Two. You can stop writing. Three: You can start practicing and developing your craft.
Should you decide to take the third option, you will have FIRST to read poems, memorize poems, great poems. You will have to understand that poetry, like all other art forms, is a public utterance. Your audience is potentially everyone, even when the poem is addressed to an individual (as in Shakespeare's sonnets.) You will have to get a tough skin and learn to expect that the poems you write will be basically bad for a long time, just as you would expect if you were learning to play the violin the sounds you would be making would be harsh and annoying. You will find a teacher. Or a teacher will find you. You will submit yourself entirely to the teacher until it is time to stop doing that. You will imitate and practice and do all sorts of exercises. You will find out that there is a "voice that is great inside [you]" (Stevens, from Evening Without Angels). You will learn to listen to that voice in the drafts and revisions and endless rewriting that goes into the making of a poem. You will learn to separate that voice and uncover it as a Michelangelo uncovered the marble from his David. You will never entirely succeed. You will become a poet.
Some suggested reading:
(for classics, get anthologies at first, such as the Norton Anthology
of Modern Poetry, The Oxford Anthology of English Poetry, and the Oxford
Anthology of American Poetry. For contemporaries, look up their books
on Amazon.com, but see if you can find them in journals first such as The
Paris Review, The New Yorker, The Nation, The Yale Review, Poetry, Ploughshares,
The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, and a zillion others).
Classic poetry in English:
Shakespeare
Ben Johnson
George Herbert
John Donne
Wordsworth
Keats
Shelley
Robert Browning
(some) Tennyson
Modern (modernism in English-language poetry begins with the
first three on this list)
Gerard Manly Hopkins
Emily Dickenson
Walt Whitman
W.H. Auden
Wallace Stevens
H.D.
Robert Frost
Dylan Thomas
John Berryman
Sylvia Plath
Theodore Roethke
Robert Lowell
Elizabeth Bishop
James Wright
James Merrill
Amriri Baraka (Leroy Jones)
Younger Poets:
Laurie Sheck
Jori Graham
Yousef Komanyakuu
Lucie Brock-Broido
Me (Stephen McLeod)
Jack Myers
Charles Wright
Charles Simic
Timothy Liu
Henri Cole
Phillis Levin (esp. her forthcoming book Mercury)
Richard Howard
Also read poetry in translation from the Spanish, the Great Chinese
poets, Dante, Italian, etc.
Michael Stephens
<kyl...@my-dejanews.com> wrote in message
news:7frj32$9qp$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com...
> In article <7fns4t$kav$1...@bgtnsc02.worldnet.att.net>,
> "Michael Stephens" <mikestephe...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> > Well, I tried to enjoy, but couldn't. I know that's not very helpful.
But I
> > see no easy fix here. I'm afraid I'm going to have to echo what so often
> > gets said here and tell you to read more poetry.
> >
> > Sorry.
> >
> > ms
> >
begin
> anew with a work without feedback as to where I may have gone wrong. I
know
> how the poems reads. It is very convoluted, caught it its own web, so to
> speak. I posted it to figure out how to draw out the mess within the
lines.
> Any help you could give would be of use. I don't give up on poems. I
think
> that every poem is a work in progress, a pursuit for perfection that
really
> never ends.
>
> On the other hand, I just wanted to let you know that I do read poetry
rather
> extensively and have for quite a number of years. Don't let one poem lead
you
> to think otherwise. It sounds very dismissive.
>
> kh
>
You're absolutely right and I apologize. So many posts to go through every
day, I tend to toss out these stock answers without thinking.
As for the poem, I have no suggestions, and as far as I could tell, neither
did anyone else. I can appreciate your not wanting to give up on it. I used
to feel the same way. But I've outgrown that (if outgrown is the proper
term). Wish I had more to give you, but I don't.
ms