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Poetry and the Such Like
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Okay, I don't know if this actually goes in here or not, but I'm sure a nice admin person will move it if need be!
Anyways, was just wondering what people felt about the realm of poetry. I write a lot, but I don't always publish a lot.
HOWEVER (bringing me to the point of my topic)
I do have a Deviant Art account. Anyone else? It'd just be cool to share more poetry to more people and stuff. So yeah... I don't know how the URL for Deviant works, but I'm SubtleMelodrama. Feel free to add me, read me stuff, tell me it's good, tell me it sucks.
Eh...aye.
xox
Anyways, was just wondering what people felt about the realm of poetry. I write a lot, but I don't always publish a lot.
HOWEVER (bringing me to the point of my topic)
I do have a Deviant Art account. Anyone else? It'd just be cool to share more poetry to more people and stuff. So yeah... I don't know how the URL for Deviant works, but I'm SubtleMelodrama. Feel free to add me, read me stuff, tell me it's good, tell me it sucks.
Eh...aye.
xox
Post edited by JustV on
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Anyway, poetry [and discussion] of is where I'm in my element - it felt like poetry was my life for a few years, a while back. I used to attend a Poetry Class (discussion group, really, nothing more) where we had the most insightful, wonderful group leader...I don't think I'd hold the views of literature I do today if I hadn't met him. Eventually he encouraged me (and another woman) to permit him to publish some of our poems (his is The New Century Press, which is based in Durham) and although they're not on sale in Waterstones it was still an enormous achievement. Granted, most of the people who bought my book were family and friends and friends of family etc...but it was still a great experience.
That said, my poetry is personal without being personal in that way. I admire people who can lay their feelings bare in a poem, as I find it near-enough impossible. In my book I wrote about everything that popped into my head Northern Irish politics, plants, Thunderbirds, banshees, straitjackets, whether women should keep their maiden name on marrying, my childhood piano teacher's ghost stories, fairytales I'd read as a child.... I also did some adaptations of other poems - such as Mrs Attila which was inspired by Carol Ann Duffy's The World's Wife and Indomitable which was my skewed version of Emily Dickinson's Hope is a Thing with Feathers. I was probably quite mortified at the time, but I feel a lot of pride now. I would love to be "a poet" but I don't think that'll ever happen. Also, I could never publish (or make public) any poems I write after break-ups or the like, they're strictly cathartic for me. Anyway, if you did want to read any of my poetry you can PM me. I won't hold my breath.
In terms of poetry in general, it's hard to shut me up once I start blathering. There are so many different types of poetry...and poet. Some of my favourites are:
Dorothy Parker, Whitman, ee cummings, Sylvia Plath, Mary Oliver, Tennyson (The Lady of Shalott was the first poem I could ever recite off by heart), Emily Dickinson, Rilke, Robert Bringhurst, Leonard Cohen, Margaret Atwood, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, Anne Sexton, Poe, Edna St. Vincent Millay, GK Chesterton, J. Milton Hayes, Carol Ann Duffy, Christina Rosetti, T.S Eliot and the list goes on (and on).
I adore Sylvia Plath's poetry despite everything people say to try and put me off, and I can spout Daddy or Mirror or Lady Lazarus at the drop of a hat. My old poetry group were convinced you had to lean toward Plath or Hughes, but I could read both of their work ad nauseum.
I have little time for the Romantic poets, by and large. I'm starting to be able to tolerate Keats and Coleridge in small doses.
Which poets inspire you, then? I'd be interested to know, as the answers people give usually surprise me.
:yes:
My ex wrote out a poem of his in my birthday card the first year we were together, it made me blush but I loved it...and I still love it despite things that happened between us. I cannot fault the description of eyes as "big love-crumbs", best metaphor ever. Gorgeous.
I also adore untitled [Buffalo Bill's / defunct]. A very vivid and concise description.
:eek:
The Romanticists where the best.
Just like to add Wordsworth and Shelley into the fray.
Oh and Alexander Pope aswell.
Diff'rent strokes.
Admittedly, I forgot to mention that I've come to quite like Byron. I appreciate his wit, and read a very, er, candid biography of him that made me appreciate his writing that little bit more. Burns wrote some fantastic poetry, too. They're just not the ones that really speak to me.
Walkindude, I'd never have had anything published if I hadn't had the encouragement of such a wonderful person...who has their own poetry printing press. You're right, I can't imagine how rare and difficult it is to get a book of poetry published otherwise. It's a good idea to contribute to magazines, competitions etc.
all mine is on a website i made
(for anyone who's interested, the link to my site + poems is in me sig)
poetry mags are hard to find though and when they are they are usually expenisve
You can do self publishing via comapines but it costs a bomb.
Advice from writers, publihsers and poetry publihsers ect have al said don't expect to get your poems published. Most likely faftre you die you could get them published but thats it. Others have said write other books first then your agent will indulge your poetic streak.
Don't suppose they'd print mine?? lol
Oh and one of my fave poets is Emily Dickinson
Are we allowed to write our poems on this board, cos I would like to know the standard of everyone else writing.
A poetry threa?? Interesting. I might be a bit imbrassed though.
I am afriad I go for the classic rhyming couplets style that is so often derided by so called "serious" poets lol.
But there is humour in there, and some are happy and upeat. Some are werid. Some are modern. Some are old school. Some are straight forward and some are abstract.
here goes.....
rise to the heavens like an unbroken star
pharoh their God, revered from afar
work hardened faces look up and adore you
no greater ruler was ever befor you
they rise to your calling to take up your fate
come see them mourning, in tombs they will wait
Seriously I do. I liek the dark stuff with good imagery. Nice touch with the tombs at the end.
Very Emily Dickinson.
I can't come up with one on the spot, not original anyway. But I might get some of my old poenms and put them up...maybe......
there was a young boy who lived at loch earn
his hair was so greasy it looked like a perm
he liked little boys as more that just mates
just ask louis, he'll give you goo rates
he had a slight problem with his little man,
he'd see the school master and up it would stand
infected it got, one sunny day,
all slimy and rotten they chopped it away
so now this poor boy has no pleasure at all
from women or men, his knob is too small
this was not written about an ex btw
Only ones I can come up with is one used in Blackadder and one used bby my family for years;
Row, Row , row your boat
gentle down the stream...
Belt off.
Trousers down.
Isn't Life a scream?
Hey!!!!
and
The Boy stood on the burning deck.
His pockets full of crackers.
One fell down his trousers....
..and paralysed his knackers!
hair adorns soft skin
silk upon polished glass
a mirrored image; marbled grace
light reflecting in your face
white ribbon entwined;
ebony divine
a stem of etched crystal
bleeds a sweet liquor
red - it melts into my tongue
a waft of perfume fills my senses,
and stains the air with roses
violins stroke notes
as voices drift away like sand
folds caress your swaying hips
ribbons sweep the floor
as i watch you pass me by
Very flowing and moving. Like your taking along with the words, like riding the wind.
Very good stuff. I enjoyed
Ever read Chaucer? Wouldn't be your cup of tea.
My favourite poem is by Shelley, Ozymandias:
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said:—Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
I love poems *sighs in contentment*
I just loved this, very evocative of feelings and faith.
I concur, that's tolerable.
The only Shelley poem I ever really liked was Ode to the West Wind, especially:
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies.
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened Earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
I have to say that I'm a big Chaucer fan, I don't know about anyone else but I think he's hilarious.
Suicide In The Trenches
By Siegfried Sassoon
I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.