• ✍️ WORDS ✍️

    Welcome Guest!

  • Words Moderators: Shambles

Discussion: When did you write your best poetry?

Strawberry_lovemuffin

Strawberry_lovemuffin

Bluelighter
Joined
Jun 11, 2002
Messages
15,525
Location
Melbourne, Australia
For me it was during breakups of romantic relationships.

Either that, or when I was feeling desperately lonely during periods of singeldom. I've rarely, if ever, written a 'happy' poem but I admire those who do. :)

Tell me, fellow poets - when is your best art born?
 
all my poems are equally amazing :p XD

but my best writing when i'm really tired, frustrated and sad.
 
after losing every single friend i had and not leaving my house for a year except to go to school
 
I used to think that my best poetry was written when I was depressed and suicidal and angry and such....and I still think that my angry writing is very good; but the older I get the more I find that what I really appreciate is the calmer more thoughtful stuff, when I have time and space to sit down and really examine a feeling or an idea from the leverage of content. :)
 
I think I write my best stuff when in high spirits. I struggle to write anything if I'm depressed. Although writing can sometimes be a way out of depression, a therapeutic exercise (although I won't necessarily write good stuff when going through that process, because I'll feel unsure of myself and my abilities).

I've definitely had periods of outpouring after relationships have broken up.

I think the best stuff comes when there's a compulsion, an inescapable need to write (in order to purge an overabundance of feeling, or to compensate for something that's missing).
 
I have yet to write my best verse; I haven't lived/felt enough yet.

I also need to get into a proper form. Freestyle isn't working for me at the moment.
 
Not so much the "best" poetry, but i was writing the most between the ages of 19 - 21. I was truly by myself for the first time in my life (no support from family, i'd broken up with my first serious, live-in boyfriend, living week-to-week) and while it was scary as hell, it was my first taste of real independence. I'd take a notebook with me everywhere I went and would just write and write and write. Occasionally i'd actually suprise myself ;). From then i've had artists block - and not just with poetry, but with my painting/sketching as well (i'd painted and sketched all of my life). I'll occasionally write/paint/sketch something, but it's been so long since i've been inspired to consistently do so, that i've lost all confidence in my ability. It's beyond frustration now, i'm now resigned to it.
 
It might come back, samadhi. I had resigned myself to it too (over 6 years without writing anything) until recently when I've had a bit of a renaissance! Not fooling myself any of it's any good, but at least I'm writing again and moreover, interested again.

It might surprise you :)

(Wordy) said:
I think the best stuff comes when there's a compulsion, an inescapable need to write (in order to purge an overabundance of feeling, or to compensate for something that's missing).
Click to expand...

^ Word, Wordy :D I've had to get out of bed in the middle of the night before, with a compulsion to get something down. Written on drink coasters, on shopping dockets, it's like it just purges out of you, and it's going to come out one way or another however inconvenient - you're just providing the conduit. None of what I consider my better stuff was written at a time when I'd planned to write.
 
When I'm upset. Usually during a breakup, obsessed periods with girls who I have no chance with (happens to me alot) and when I'm generally feeling down. This is for poetry.

For prose/short fiction...pretty much whenever inspiration strikes me.
 
I won't lie--I haven't written much good poety. Lots of crap, but not many good ones. But, the ones that were good were always written when I was:

1.) Alone.

2.) Felt an especially keen link between my imagination and my reason, allowing each to temper the other.

3.) Following a unique insight that I knew wouldn't come again.

Re Noodle:
Ditto. I'm really trying to experiment with rhyme more, as I'm increasingly certain that I'll never be good at free verse. I read Whitman or Eliot, and then realize it's all over. Besides, I like rhythm. ;)
 
I think I write best when I'm feeling passionate.

Even if they passion is hate, jealousy or occasionally love.

I wrote a piece called "the day i die", which is most likely my best piece. I watched my girlfriend cheat right in front of me. The next morning I felt severly depressed but decided that I loved her too much to make her feel guilty.

If the pain of heartache was too much and I was going to end it, I didnt want her to feel responsible for something bad and though she should see the positive of my death.
Sound crazy but I think delusion thoughts are part of my schizophrenia.

If I try to write something to be a good piece of writing it never happens, it always must surround real emotion.

I find writting essential to expressing these things, often its also the safest way.
 
Retrospectively, my poetic inspirations were fueled entirely by my love of literature and philosophy. As I studied these subjects, virtually independent of my course work, I very physically felt as if my mind were massaged, physically stimulated. My surroundings, the people I knew, the activities I participated in were merely outlets for what was almost entirely an intellectual process.

My girlfriend frequently asks me why I do not write poetry for her as I once had. The answer has nothing to do with the depths of my feelings for her but the utter lack of mental, linguistic, philosophical stimulation I have received external to our relationship. These influences (T.S. Eliot, Joyce, Derrida, Sartre, Foucault, Rorty) were distinctly external to the visceral subject matter of my writing, and, unfortunately, without these influences I feel utterly unable to write, and, moreover, lack the desire to do so.

Kind of sad really . . . sometimes I wonder what I would/could have become if I had pursued literature and philosophy with greater vigor. But I quickly cheer from the realization that my present commitments have accomplished the extraordinary as well (deep participation in three death-row exonerations, a Masters Degree in Public Administration, and soon to be law school). However, I am beginning to feel my creative energies returning. The thought of the intellectual stimulation of Law School almost makes me salivate . . . equally, so too does the prospect of beginning life's incredible journey of marriage.
 
So far some of the best I have written came from instances already stated: times when your nearly half awake and half asleep lying in bed, times when there seems to be no way out, times when the feeling of being alone and completely separate overwhelm me, but i agree that the best is yet to come!
 
I don't really fancy myself a "poet," but to the extent that I do my best writing (comedy or otherwise), it's almost always inspired by:

(1) Being in a very good mood; AND

(2) (b) Being in deep relaxation mode ;) by myself, or

(2) (a) Surrounding myself with positive stimuli (positive intelligent people, nature, Manhattan, intresting conversations;

(3) Examining an issue from an alternative, sometimes absurd, point-of-view.

(4) Feeling that indescibable hunger to "create."

Good thread.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top