Poetry to the Prose writer

[Princess Ivy]

I've never put much stock in poetry (other of course than the thrirteen yearold 'i'm differerent' phase all kids go through which produces such hideous work). I've believed that it is frivolous, not half so good as 'proper'writing. That all of the good poetry has been written...
How wrong can any person get?
Modern Poetry, Like modern Art, and 'old' poetry and art, can be beautiful. Poetry is a very complex and diciplined form of writing. To wrest a complex idea into a short poem, and few words, while exploring deeply. I am impressed. I'm not going to be converted into a poet. I don't beleive that I have a gift for it. But i am going to give it a lot more study and consideration, for word usage and placement, i think its far more diciplined than prose.

Quick excercise:
write a poem, 6-10 lines, use only one adjective.
try it, and see how difficult it is to convey your thought and idea accross in such brevity.

[Tsujigiri]

I write poetry, mostly for myself but especially since my son died.

I think to write poetry you have to have something to write about, the only compositions that I really feel comfortable sharing, are simple things such as Jisei, which is Japanese death poetry:

Should I awake no more,
I would join the dawn.
Should I weep at this,
No more than the dawn.

Grant McMaster
2003

The Japanese follow slightly different rules with their poetry and most of it is stunningly beautiful in it's composition and simplicity.

My western poetry is slightly different and as I tend to write that when I'm in a fairly bad emotional place it isn't something that I tend to offer up for criticism.

[cleasterwood]

I started writing poetry when I was 12, then dipped my hand into lyrics, and eventually it lead to writing novels. Poetry tells a story too sometimes. Although a disciplined artform it does have it's advantages in helping kick start other forms of writing.

Here's one of my poems written after I started working on my first novel.

Title: I'm not your typical...
I'm not your typical girl next door. I'm not what you think at all.
I am merely a wife, a mother, a lover, and a friend.
I am a child trapped in the body of a woman
Who struggles to stand apart from the norm.
Though words spill from my hands like rain from a cloud.
Darkness looms ready in the soul beneath my flesh.
After years of abuse, neglectful words and sorrow.
It's a surprise I didn't end this life a long time ago.
Yet here I sit with my fingers at the ready,
To share with the world all that I wish to offer it.
Fantasies of a psychotic mixed with the love of a poet,
Songs from a writer whose only instrument is her voice,
Stories from another life that fill pages of a fictional world.
And through thick and thin somehow I still survive
To write these words that help free my mind.
And what my heart can not bear, I bury away inside,
until it festers demonically into the words on a page.
These things keep me separated from a world of normalcy.
They make me the person that stands before you today.
So once again, just let me remind you as I stand to leave.
I'm not your typical girl next door. I'm not what you think at all.

[Circus Cranium]

Bind me up and lock me in
A room that's made of rubber
Send me to a shrink so
I can blame it on my mother

It's plain, I'm insane
Got a fever on the brain
Sitting laughing softly sinking
While my mind goes down the drain.

**********


Hmmmm.........(counts on fingers), that's one adverb...........you're right, it's hard to do it without adjectives.

[cleasterwood]

Here's my quick little piece. I forgot to add it earlier.

Behold the rose wilting
as tender love dwindles.
Resentment breeds like fire
Within a bleeding heart.
Rain soothes no pain
as tender love is shredded,
and love dies.

[dustinzgirl]

Originally Posted by Princess Ivy

Quick excercise:
write a poem, 6-10 lines, use only one adjective.
try it, and see how difficult it is to convey your thought and idea accross in such brevity.

What words come adjectively
And stages set previously
When English is consecutively
Forced upon us heatedly
I would not do this normally
But what fun is normal, poetically?