/lit/ - Literature

>>7190992

I do. It's good for the soul and spirit. Then bury it on your hard drive like I do

>>7190992
Yeah I like writing it. Do I have to get anything out of it for it to benefit me? Does a hobby have to have tangible benefits beyond "I like it"?

Everything's a waste of time

>>7191008
What do you use to write? Word?

>>7191009
Good point.

>>7191015

I hand write everything in a notebook in pencil. Then I rewrite and rewrite and correct etc. It doesn't touch Microsoft Word until I'm happy looking at it in printed form

>>7191022
Do you ever share your poetry in any form?

>>7191108

Ummmm not exactly. I vanity printed an early collection for friends because some were actually asking me about it and I wanted to be fancy. But other than that, they stay in DOC format on my HD

>>7191116
Thanks for the insight. For some reason the idea of writing poetry just for oneself appeals to me. I feel like it could be meditative in a way.

May I ask if you have any background in writing?

>>7191126

I have a degree in English. I've been paid to write criticism and write articles now and again.

>>7191129
Probably a meaningless question, but do you have any advice for a beginner? I'm guessing the answer is to just do it.

>>7191250

Not a meaningless question. Actually one of my professors (a respected poet) told me to read as much of others as possible, learn the techniques and then establish your own voice. Practice. It's incredibly difficult.

He told me he could "feel the words form" in his mind but I'm not at that point and may never be

>>7191348
I disagree that immersion is important for learning to write poetry, at least not as much as for learning prose. If you have any talent at all, you'll naturally find the ways poetry can work for you

>>7191348
>feel the words form

I know this feel but it almost never happens when I actually want to write, or it goes away as soon as I start writing things down.

this is why they talk about the muse, I've no doubt. it's like when you've played a video game many times and one day suddenly everything feels great and you're lining up headshots like it's nothing and you want to say 'where is this coming from?' it seems as though a pro player has taken control of your hands and there is no work left for you to do

reading poetry is, oddly enough, sort of like writing poetry. you're reading out words and speaking them as though they were your own. at its best you are experiencing it as though it were your own thoughts forming. so it almost works like practice—or at least growing accustomed to the sound of poetry.

as you read more and more eventually you start to get visited by the poetry ghost. he sees you sitting idle and decides to have some fun with you, so he sticks his fingers up your arse and suddenly you start just rattling off verses in rhyme about something you didn't particularly care about until a few seconds ago. now you're reciting a narrative poem about a girl who goes off into the woods to pick mushrooms or some shit like that

sometimes it goes somewhere. usually it doesn't. but every time the most remarkable thing is that something seems to be speaking through you—words just go together without your willing—and it might be a daemon, or a muse, or God, I don't know. You tap into that airy something which puts your whole mind into the poetic mode, where things just begin to fall into place.

And when it's over you start the long process of editing.

For a while, every new word I learned, I wrote a (usually shitty) poem incorporating it. Lots of bad poetry actually formed the backbone of a rigorous, auto-didactic approach to language.

I managed to write a few good poems as sprinkles on the birthday cake

>>7191403

I think it was Ginsburg who said that poetry was communication between the writer and God and the more God did the better (apologies if I'm misquoting). It is a very subconscious process, and not something you can force.

>>7191403
>reading poetry is, oddly enough, sort of like writing poetry. you're reading out words and speaking them as though they were your own. at its best you are experiencing it as though it were your own thoughts forming. so it almost works like practice—or at least growing accustomed to the sound of poetry.
Isn't this the process of digesting all art? Whenever I watch films, I imagine myself as the director or one of the actors in the film and how I myself would've interpenetrated those scenes, whenever I view art, I imagine what type of mindset I personally would have to be in to have created such a work, etc.

>>7191370
Can you name a poet who you have a high amount of respect for who didn't read that much before creating great works?

>>7191008
>not writing your poems on tree leaves and letting the wind take 'em poems away from you.
Topjaja

>>7191597
Are there any papers or books on this? Sounds interesting.

>>7191614

My poems aren't good enough to be written on nature ._.

>>7191370
I teach and publish poetry. Reading poetry is the single most important part of writing it, trust me. Any poet or teacher worth their salt will tell you the same.

>>7191657
Post work?

>>7191009
Muh nihilism

>>7191785
literally the least important part of that post

go be a semantic autist somewhere else

Cock

dickenson looks so fragile in that pic, i want to take her and do the rock bottom or the back breaker on her

>>7190992
why else would you write poetry

Yes, I write poetry And yes, maybe is a waste of time, but I like it And that"s more than everything to keep doing it. I share it on my blog of tumblr because is a good place to be an incognit writer.