GalacticCactus Forum
Forums => English & Linguistics => Topic started by: pooka on June 29, 2007, 12:01:39 PM
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I used to write a lot of poetry when I was younger, of a sort I would not hesitate to call "bad poetry". From my current perspective, I would say what made it bad was that I was doing it either simply for the sake of writing poetry (in terms of cool people write poetry, not poetry for poetry's sake) or else I was doing it because I was afraid to say something plainly.
Then in my early twenties for a variety of reasons, I became alienated from having an emotional life and told one of my close friends I had renounced poetry (which she though was funny, like surely poetry is really broken up about it.)
As I was thinking about poetry today, and why it exists, it occured to me to wonder whether there are ever thoughts that are more clearly expressed as a poem than in prose -- Sort of like how a drawing can sometimes be more accurate than a photograph, or how exposure time interacts with depth of field in photography. Well, I don't know if this will result in my writing any poetry, though my emotional life has grown back somewhat.
Just wondering about why you all don't write poetry. Maybe you do.
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I used to write a lot of poetry, too, and a lot of it was pretty bad. What can I say? I was a teenager.
Towards the end of college, Ruth and I started going to a poetry group with some of our friends. It was good because it made me write when I wouldn't have otherwise, but we stopped going (and stopped writing) when everyone started graduating and moving away.
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I never really learned to appreciate poetry.
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I write poetry, and for some things, verse expresses better than prose.
Every now and again, my kid and I will have a conversation in Haiku, just because we can. He cracks me up, that kid of mine.
He told me today that he'd hate to be a battery, because they are either working or dead. And he'd like to have other options.
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He told me today that he'd hate to be a battery, because they are either working or dead.
But that's not true. Batteries have quite a long shelf life where they're sitting around, doing nothing, but not dead yet.
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If the battery is not dead, then it works.
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Ah. The confusion came because while I would say that it works, but I wouldn't say that it's working.
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I used to write a lot of poetry, too, and a lot of it was pretty bad. What can I say? I was a teenager.
Precisely.
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But why do teenagers write poetry, be it bad or otherwise? It is time for me to begin making peace with turning 40. I guess I begin to envy the young, rather than disdain them. Much as a teenager only has painful memories of being a kid, and then when you become an adult you realize how great childhood was. I am in conflict whether to start having that attitude the middle aged have about the fertile years. You know, "Thank God that's over." I suppose I would have to wait until it was actually over to thank God for it. If I choose it, that's something different.
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I, like the rest of y'all, wrote poetry as a teenager. I'm actually pretty slick with meter and rhyme, but no good with the free form stuff.
However, I am enamored with other people's poetry. There's just something about a small catch of a phrase that ends up expressing something perfectly, or stirs up a feeling in me that a longer prose phrase just couldn't...it's wonderful.
(Is it 'enamored with' or 'enamored of'? I tend to think it's the latter, but I'm not sure.)
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I'm actually pretty slick with meter and rhyme, but no good with the free form stuff.
Interesting. I'm quite the reverse. Anything I've ever written that rhymed can best be described as bad doggerel. (Down, boy!)
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My free form stuff was just never profound, I guess. To me it was all to emotional, to teenagery, and quite a bunch of schlock. I didn't write that much of it.
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Is it 'enamored with' or 'enamored of'?
Does it matter? But then, I can't be bothered to even remember which is right and which is "wrong" -- different from or different than.
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Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage says that "enamored" is most often followed by "of," less often by "with," and even less often by "by," which some language commentators frown on. But it doesn't say that anyone objects to "enamored with."
In theory, "different than" is incorrect because "than" is a conjunction and must be followed by a verb clause, not a noun phrase. In reality, though, people use "than" as a preposition (meaning it's followed by noun phrases) all the time, so I don't see the problem.
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I'm actually pretty slick with meter and rhyme, but no good with the free form stuff.
Interesting. I'm quite the reverse. Anything I've ever written that rhymed can best be described as bad doggerel. (Down, boy!)
Then you were probably just using the wrong meter and rhyme scheme. Lots of angsty teenage poetry is unfortunately written in iambic tetrameter (or a rough approximation thereof, because a lot of people are bad with meter), giving it a rather bouncy rhythm that clashes with the content.
baBUM baBUM baBUM baBUM
baBUM baBUM baBUM baBUM
It automatically makes any poem sound much too lighthearted.
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Not all my rhyming poetry was written when I was a teenager. In fact, most of it wasn't. I find trying to rhyme awkward and uncomfortable, and it shows.
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I'm much better with rhyme and meter. I took a poetry writing class in college and the instructor didn't like rhyme and meter, so I wrote almost all of my assignments as sonnets and then edited them into free verse.
I think I need some form of structure in order to be creative -- if I had the formal structure for the rhyme and meter I could think of something to write about, and then once I had the basics of the meaning of the poem I could play around with the language. But to try to come up with an idea to write about and a form to write it in was too hard -- I didn't know where to start and couldn't come up with any ideas.
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Not all my rhyming poetry was written when I was a teenager.
I was just using angsty teenage poetry as an example.
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I figured. :)
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I'll have you know that my badly metered poetry was SUPPOSED to be light-hearted.
*mutters*
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We figured.
;)
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I was never so cliche as to produce ansty teenage poetry. Probably because, like Porter, I never learned to appreciate it.
I suppose it's mildly ironic that I now write songs (which I tend to think are full of cliches). Dammit, brevity is hard! Poetry would've been good practice for me.
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I'm trying to imagine Narinia all goth/emo writing angst poetry.
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Yeah, have fun with that. I think I wrote 3 angsty poems, and that was in 8th grade. I even won an award for one! :)
My later poems were in the tradition of my wonderfully talented grandfather, who was a real poet: rhyming, and on various subjects. They were actually quite nerdy, as almost all teenage poetry is, but not angsty.
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I was assigned with making the Branch Mission Plan we workshopped in 5th sunday into something frilly that goes good on a fridge magnet. I was thinking acrostic poem. So here's what I have to work with:
1 Invite Everyone
2 Overcome your natural Fears
3 Pray for Missionary activities
4 Love thy neighbor as thyself
5 Stay focussed
6 Reactivate less actives
7 Better fellowshipping
8 Meet and greet
9 Patience and Perseverence
10 More Social Events
11 Share Blessings/ Testify when faced with criticism
I'm thinking with very little alteration, this could become "BOTULISM".
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Exactly what everyone wants in their kitchen.
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Early on I was thinking "Spoilers" would work, which is something people would be reminded of a lot. Then they would go to the fridges and before you know it, everyone in the branch has gained 10 lbs.