• ✍️ WORDS ✍️

    Welcome Guest!

  • Words Moderators: Shambles

Question on poetry in general

Doctor Love

Bluelighter
Joined
May 23, 2000
Messages
2,973
Location
San Diego
Well poetry writers, I just had a quick question for you all. Where do you turn for inspiration on the poetry you write? I have a new found love for writing poetry and I would just like to get a few ideas so I can expand my writing skills. I have so for used situtions that I am currently dealing with in my life. I have also found that music boosts my creative juices. Any other thoughts?
 
hi, i'm seemore.
it makes me very happy to read that you've found affection for this most beautiful art form. as a poet, sometimes i get so sad about the state of poetry, i feel it is in it's death throes, but reading your post renews my vigor, believing that with each passing day, another poet finds his words.
anyway, you seem to have already found the spot i mine for most of my inspiration. everyday situations, universal truths, things that everyone can relate to, these are the best subjects, in my opinion, for poetry.
many people get bogged down in the love or lack there of, and stick very close to these, but an important part of any art is to evolve. always try new things. i have always found landscpes and certainlocations provide alot too. much of my favorite poetry comes from inanimate oblects and the poets view of them.
also, as a poet, i find inspiration everywhere. from a bible laying bloated with rain in a gutter behind a bar, or the glow a pregnant woman eminates that brightens even the most mundane of spaces. so always keep a little notebook in the breast pocket of tyour shirt. you never know when inspiration will strike.
and, the most important part. read read read. there is nothing worse than a poet that doesn't read poetry. don't copy, but certainly allow them to influence you, especially during the beginning. i wrote like jack keouac for years.
soem to start out with maybe, t.s. eliot, charles bukowski, jack kerouac, walt whitman, guiliame appolinaire, etc... and, obviously, you'll find some good ones here as well.
well, i've rambled on enough. it just makes me so excited to have a new poet ask for a little help. i am presently attending college with the intention of becoming a literature professor, but at 27 and four more years left, it will be awhile, so it thrills me to help where i can now.
i hope i wasn't over zealous and scared you off, but just remember, if all this seems like to much, just write.
because that, at base, is what we all do.
seemore
 
Inspiration is anywhere you want it to be, anywhere you can find it.
A random song lyric can get me going.
An old picture of someone I knew, or even someone I never knew. People's faces are the most interesting of things.
Another poem, book, story, commercial, movie.
Anything that causes words to start forming in your head, or beg for you to immortalize them in your own phrases... then write about them. I'm with you, music is one of the driving forces. But the way I feel at any given moment seems to be the key in getting me to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard which is usually the case.)
Keep it up, and have fun with it sweetie. It's one of the best releases imaginable. :)
 
the only times i feel the need to write are when i am very upset. its more of a cathartic thing for me, and helps to release the sadness a bit.
because of this, i havent written in a while, because life has been quite tolerable :)
 
One additional piece of advice with poetry:
PLEASE try to be original. A startling new metaphor can send you spiraling off into new directions at the drop of a hat. Writing "Her love shines so bright," or "I'm empty inside," is overdone, trite, cliche, and tells the reader absolutely NOTHING. There's no image there. Nothing new is being said. However if you say something like "Through her eyes, a wedding ring as yet unfelt glimmers," or "Tired like the dray as the mercy-bullet enters his head," then you're pushing an image, and saying something unique.
Thousands of artists painted portraits. There's only one Mona Lisa.
 
hmmm inspiration
im inspired when my heart becomes active telling my brain it cant sleep unless i write down teh mental dhioreha that goes through my mind.
im inspired when a peice of literary work leaves me with questions about life, the human exsistence or my heart
im inspired when i come acrossed question that have no diffinitive answers
im inspired when i read my friends poemetry and i want to exspress something i couldnt tell them in cut and dry launguage or idea.
And lastly im inspired when something in my life moves me to words or tears. When its soemthing that i think by sharing i will 1> get a cathartic feeling or 2> or help someone though something that they may be exsperiencing.
-phil-
 
any topic. no topic at all. a color, a sound, a shape. breath on the back of a neck. the blur from lifting your head too quickly. chemical explosions in the brain. confusion. sadness, distance, and separation. the paradox of being angry with someone who's right. disappearance and manifestation. the ugliness of beauty when it disappoints you. attraction, repulsion, acceptance, rejection, and all feelings in between.
 
hey, seemore again,
one more thing i thought of that might help.
don't get too stuck on making something original. for years i would sit in front of that vast white page twist and gnarl and gnaw on my brain trying to eeck out something original. most pieces from this period came out sounding clunky, unnatural, no flow to them at all.
you are different. you are an individual. just like your thumbprint, without even trying, you are unlike anyone else in this world.
I do agree with baron. starting points are inportant, and what the world doesn't need is another miserable, self indulgent poet.
Leonard Cohen said, "The time for the tragic poet, sprawled on a marble staircase, wrapped in his black cloak is over. we need poets of action to illuminate these new paths opening up on all sides."
be one of them.
seemore
[ 04 October 2002: Message edited by: SelectionIll ]
 
^^^nice quote!!!!!!!
i get inspiration from everything around me. ive posted poems on everything from heartbreak (standard really), to happiness, to a chick i saw on my lunchbreak, to a piece of toast, to a slug crawling on the wall of my shower. the biggest problems i fight arent lack of inspiration but are two main things:
1. the inability to put what i want to say into words. i think we all feel this from time to time. i find just writing and writing and writing etc. then pulling out all the bits that are close and trying to piece them together works for me lol or getting inspiration from the bits of writing that come close and trying to write again with them in mind.
and....
2. fatigue. i always write my best when im dead tired. and its always a fight to actually pick up the pen and not go to bed. and its even more of a fight to think enough to get some words down. in fact its a fight i usually lose.
so there you go. theres inspiration all around you, all you have to do to see it is over-think every single thing in your life, make a desparate mess of your life because of said over-thinking and then feel patheticaly sorry for yourself coz your life is such a mess, but instead of trying to fix it, wallow in your depression and write about it :D (disclaimer: anyone who reads this, please dont get offended, it was mearly a joke about how i personally view my life half the time. i wasnt refering to impressions i get from other peoples writing in this forum, and if you get offended by this you take yourself too seriously anyway :) )
hope that helps ;) heheheh
[ 04 October 2002: Message edited by: harraser ]
 
all you have to do to see it is over-think every single thing in your life, make a desparate mess of your life because of said over-thinking and then feel patheticaly sorry for yourself coz your life is such a mess, but instead of trying to fix it, wallow in your depression and write about it
It hard to get offended by the truth, well done for your honesty, Cos that Quote fits me 100%
 
I allow myself to get incredibly worked up over something petty, then I turn to writing to release my tensions. It works wonders for hate poems that most people find great, even if I think they suck.
 
Top