So why write poetry

Not unusually I came to poetry as a way of expression and escapism when going through a difficult time in my life. Plath was my first poetry love and since then I've worked hard learning the craft.

Anyone else care to share how they came to poetry?

poetry spoke to me

and i heard the sound of a voice i'd known

all my life

was i 8? 10? 12?

possibly.

but certainly i was at a tender age

when actions sever the distances between words

and sew them back in a quilted tapestry

that is knights and swords and all of fire flush and flash

and angels bare-backed

dancing.

i had no toys, no weapons, no previous experience

to be wise enough to fight it off,

it took the basest part of me

and in stealing my eyes my strengths my fears

it came quick to fill the gaps

and made me whole.

For me it was a way of dealing with my emotional turmoil and pain. I still only tend to write poetry when I am depressed.

George Barker (who had his share of turmoil & pain) opined that we write poetry for the same reason we shit - "because we have to." Hey, there's drugs for pain - but if poetry therapy works - go for it.

When I found I loved poetry it was from an english assignment. My class was told to write a poem about something you enjoy. At the time I was a D&D addict and I tried to write about a paladin. It turned into a poem about the legendary sword Excalibur. The teacher held me back after class and told me that it was one of the most well worded poems she had heard in her 18 years of teaching. I've been writing ever since.

Poetry came to me through the Japanese hokku master Basho and through Whitman and through Mary Oliver. But mostly, it was during walks in the nearby park, mornings after great sex, afternoons on my patio or front porch. Elemental passion brought out the poetry.

My love of poetry began when I was very young, but it took form when I was about 8. I made a book, complete with (absolutely awful) drawings to illustrate my favorites, which included Nancy Byrd Turner's "Those Who Venture," an all-time favorite. I don't know about other kids, but I was always dreaming of wandering off and having adventures in distant lands. That started my collection. Then, my mother's very good friend, who was a published poet, influenced me a great deal. She was smart and interesting and, oh, could she play piano, so, of course, I wanted to be just like her. (I fell far short.) Then I found Longfellow and the rest is history.

For me it is just for the pure joy of ink on page.

And the fact that the paper is a much better listener than any of my friends.

I write fantasy books the most but I have written my fair share of Poetry in my time, however I don't know if I should stick to prose and leave my poetic urges to die on a hill like a rejected Spartan baby.

Here's a link to a poem I wrote about Alan Moore, his iconic beard, and the man behind the facial hair...

http://teenauthorsqb.blogspot.com/2007/05/jacobs-poems-tribute-to-alan-moores.ht...

Please give me some feedback on it. The poetry I enjoy most is my vague knowledge of the Metaphysical poets and the Romantics. We're studying Gwen Harwood's poetry in school.

I have always loved to write (my parents tell me that even before I could read, I would sit with a crayon scribbling lines across paper for hours, and when they asked me what I was doing, I would proudly declare, "I'm writing!" lol). As a child, I enjoyed writing stories, but as I got older and my life grew more hectic, I started experimenting with the shorter and more intense medium of poetry. That's how I found my niche.

I still remember the first poem I fell in love with: Mark Strand's "Keeping Things Whole." I was at a week-long summer camp for young writers, and a girl there recited it to me from memory, practically in one breath. I still get chills when I hear it...

Then I discovered E.E. Cummings, Rainer Maria Rilke, Pablo Neruda, Jorge Luis Borges, Jane Hirshfield, Mary Oliver, Wendell Berry, Billy Collins, Mark Doty,Jorie Graham, Denise Levertov... the list just keeps going. :)

I wrote poetry before I even knew what poetry was. It's been a natural thing for me ever since I could remember.

Despite being subjected to the Rime of the Ancient Mariner too early -- 7th grade--I didn't write off poetry. I went on to E. A. Poe who seemed pretty cool to my 14-yr-old self. I started writing poetry after reading Poe. It connected with a lot of my teen angst.

For a long time I wrote only when I had an emotional crisis, or when an idea for a poem hit me over the head.

In the past few years I've started to write consistently through the week, both to check my emotional pulse and to see what connections I can make between seemingly disparate things.

My enthusiasm for Poe as a poet has waned from what it was when I was a teenager, but I thank his posthumous self for getting me started.

I was a child. It was a form of expression, escape, a way to process my life. Early on, my family read and sang to me. It must have been the Dr. Seuss, the rhymes and songs and stories, as well as Enid Blyton, Joan Aiken and Spike Milligan (I grew up in England). Words captured my imagination. As I grew up, stories were a way to become someone else, to inhabit an alternate world free of worry, a way to create a safe place. I read, I wrote. And the poetry just came. I won an award at 16. It was about the Falklands war, in which several family members were fighting. It was full of angst but it captured that moment in history for a confused and anxious teen. After that, my parents lost interest in reading my poems (they "don't get" poetry) but they continued to think it was a nice idea for a hobby. In college I wanted to study poetry but they were paying and convinced me to stick to journalism and minor in creative writing. And I kept writing and writing, in all forms, but the poetry's where my heart it. To this day. I also journal sporadically but intensely. I am in a writers' group, I attend conferences, and I'm just now starting to send stuff out for possible publication. But that's not the point, is it?

I'll second that!

Oh Hey Anne...funny but true!

Whenever I see topics that ask "why write" or "why paint, act or any other sort of passion, I feel compelled to tell this anecdote I heard.

Several years ago, Jerry Lee Lewis was a the university of southern california hosting a free conference and tutorial for young aspiring comedians, provided they give him the right answer to convince him that they deserved his tutelage.

The basic answer he was looking for was something along the lines of, "I've got something inside of me that I want to share with the world. And it's comedy." He wasn't looking for people who had been doing it all their lives or people who were told that they're good at what they do. Instead, he was looking for people with passion.

It's a lot like the early Simpsons episodes where Lisa Simpson meets Bleeding Gums Murphy where he talks about the fire in the belly and the saxophone was how he got it out.

Everyone inside of us has that passion. And for most of us, it happens to be writing poetry. It's one of those things that I can't seem to explain other than to use the word passion.
I mean, why do some people crave Chinese food at 2AM while others want Mexican?
Why are some colors more pleasing than others to people?

It's all passion, I guess.

Yes I just feel compelled to write at times!

I write poetry when I've got nothing better to do, which is quite often, really. Sometimes I get inspired by Yeats or Tolkien

"and scribbled messages were everywhere apparent, and I have this thing
I must do without knowing what it is or whether anyone
will be helped or offended by it. Should I do it? And there, it was gone"

from John Ashbery, Flow Chart

I can relate to what you are saying Sorlil...poetry as expression & escapism. Nothing helps me process experiences more or better. Writing poetry really helps me organize my thoughts & let go of painful feelings. Hate to sound trite? or like a cliche but it's true for me. Poetry & books are there for me in a way that people are not there for me. Make sense? A book or poem will never say "go away I'm busy come back another time". LOL

Puke them out or cry them out I'll add.

#

I write poems because I feel them emerging out of my brain. One day I'll write a Eulogy to the 1990s, the next day I'll write a satire of Emo poetry called An "Emo" Poem (Satire is Laughter with Knives), or maybe I just feel like making an Ode to the Foot called "Beast of Bunion", I start with a title and a half formed unconsious idea, and work from there.

Why write poetry? Why not? Sometimes because one must. Why did Shakespeare write? Why does any artist create?

How To Be a Poet
by Wendell Berry

(to remind myself)
i
Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill ¬ more of each
than you have ¬ inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.
ii
Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.
iii
Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.


Source: Poetry (January 2001).

for me it was pablo neruda and the generacion del 27 (lorca, alberti, aleixandre, hernandez, etc etc).

Poetry to me is an expression of myself, my soul is lifted away from the hassle of life. Every time I write or read poems I feel something light and I can't deny the merriment that linger in my soul.

I could only ever write when things seemed to be going well in my life. Although I only ever wrote during the most uncertain time in my life. The time that I was teething through adolescence. What youth!? Spent with the word and pen and regret. I think a lot of my poems were the writings of regret; the regret of not living and instead writing. It was a seemingly infinite loop which ended with patience and age. Every now and then though I still have a slight itch. Its an itch that I think was never really scratched-Poetry.