What is poetry?

[monkeyjunky]

I started this thread because i noticed that in the words forum, the majority of posts concern poetry and the medium seems to attract a certain kind of person - that are found in abundance on bluelight!
I want to find out what poetry means to everyone here; why you read it, why you write it, and maybe an individual definition of what poetry is.

I'll start then. I love the way words can sound when placed in in a certain way. I love the ambiguity of the english language - the way that one line can imply a whole host of different meanings. I love the depth of poetry - how rhyme scheme, form and metre can back up a theme, or contrast ironically with it. Writing poetry encourages you to think much more creatively - I usually write in the third person, because i think of poetry as a means to arrange my thoughts in an orderly way - any fool can rant and rave but it takes more careful thought to come up with different ways to say things.

So to sum up, i think of poetry as a way of arranging my thoughts into carefully organised forms that (hopefully) are made up of original images and pleasing sounds!

 

[EverythingsEventual]

My main reason for writing...

Is to speak the words to people that I don't dare say out loud.

The main reason I read poetry...

1. To gain insight into someone else's life
2. To see if someone who has been through a similar experience to me can bring a new slant on things


One thing that concerns me is that I never consciously arrange my poems into a form. I know nothing of structuring a poem, I have problems understanding grammar! Often I will open a new thread, write the poem and post it, and rarely will I amend my work.

It's a strange way of working, but it works for me.

 

[monkeyjunky]

what i mean by structuring a poem isn't some of set rule to follow - for example if the emotions described in the poem are desperate frantic you could either have the poem being very disordered or conversely very neatly arranged - sylvia plath does this a lot.
I basically mean using every possible means at your disposal to reinforce your message.

 

[PhorIndicator]

I think we write poetry to confirm our own existences. To say, in essence, this is who we are. The spoken word has a way of flittering away into nothingness. When we write, we are forced to align and arrange our thoughts into a specific scheme individual to every person that signifies who that person is - and confirming that they (and their emotions, longings, vulnerabilities, experiences - all of them) - do indeed exist. I think this is true of all art to a degree, but writing and poetry to a greater degree because of its use of words.

Writing poetry is a cathartic experience for me, I feel like I am purging myself of everything inside and getting out into a solid form that can be anything, without limits.

I do think a certain kind of personality is predisposed to writing poetry, and that most poets pick up this vibe fairly quickly when they see another writer.

Tolstoy defines art as the "spiritual union of two souls" - in the case of poetry, the writer conveys his/her emotion onto the paper and the reader receives the emotion at the same time. In many ways, it's almost a form of telepathy using words to transmit emotions.

I think most of all though, poetry reminds us that we are not alone. It confirms our very humanity, and does so unashamedely and vulnerably, yet boldly and without compromise.

In our interactions with people, we're constantly and invevitably forced to make compromises. Not so with our art. Our art yields to no one else but ourselves.

 

[alostlittlebird]

For me, poetry is expression of a kind of learning. I don't usually start writing poetry with a full idea already in mind. I just have some situation or concept that is bothering me or that I am thinking of. I write down what comes to mind in a way that makes sense to me and suits my emotions of the whole thing. Afterwords I feel like I've learned something by exploring the idea much deeper.

I really love reading other people's poetry because it is as much the way they you imagine their meaning as the way the meaning was meant to be taken. And then if you're lucky, you can talk to them about it and understand what they were saying.