What Bad Poetry Taught Me
Before I became a novelist, I wrote a ton of poetry. Notebooks full of it. Some of it bad. Some of it awful. Some of it pretty good. I submitted, quietly and without telling anyone, several of my favorites to some literary magazines and got maybe a dozen or so published. I was in my twenties at the time, and I remember the day my free author copies came and seeing my name next to something in print. I even considered pulling together enough poems on a theme for a chapbook competition. But then I started writing prose.
I realize now that poetry was actually a great stepping stone on my path. Here are two lines from two different published poems:
Daddy breezes in
Smelling of his sins
and
My grandmother has
hate tattoos
carved into her skin
Now, I am not trotting out my old poetry for the collective groan they are likely causing. LOL!
BUT, I realize now how poetry taught me to be a spare writer. Every word counts. Every adjective. I don't have a long-winded exploration of what the hate tattoos are--from the Nazis. I don't say what the dad in the poem's sin is--alcoholism. You get it without a lot of words.
Here's another exercise. Pick something on your desk or outside your window to describe in perfect detail. Write quickly. 50 words. Now cut 25 of them. Now pick different adjectives and do it with 15. Now get it down to a line of poetry with 10.
You get the idea.
Anyone else start with poetry? Still write poetry? Read it? And what has it taught them? And any lines you care to share?
Peace,
E
I realize now that poetry was actually a great stepping stone on my path. Here are two lines from two different published poems:
Daddy breezes in
Smelling of his sins
and
My grandmother has
hate tattoos
carved into her skin
Now, I am not trotting out my old poetry for the collective groan they are likely causing. LOL!
BUT, I realize now how poetry taught me to be a spare writer. Every word counts. Every adjective. I don't have a long-winded exploration of what the hate tattoos are--from the Nazis. I don't say what the dad in the poem's sin is--alcoholism. You get it without a lot of words.
Here's another exercise. Pick something on your desk or outside your window to describe in perfect detail. Write quickly. 50 words. Now cut 25 of them. Now pick different adjectives and do it with 15. Now get it down to a line of poetry with 10.
You get the idea.
Anyone else start with poetry? Still write poetry? Read it? And what has it taught them? And any lines you care to share?
Peace,
E
posted by Erica Orloff at 7:12 AM
17 Comments:
I wrote a lot of poetry when I was in my teens - I won at editor's choice award for an anthology. My first ever published piece!
When I did creative writing at university, we had a module on poetry and for some reason I really struggled to stay interested in it. I think it might have been because of all the technical stuff we were taught. When I write poetry, it's emotional-from-the-heart poetry. I don't want to be worrying about iambic pentameter and schwa.
naomi:
I am the same. That's why I call the post BAD poetry. It doesn't follow anything, I don't think, that they would teach you, but they are meaningful to me.
E
I started with poetry too, mostly free verse. I think it taught me to make every word count, how to present concrete images, use similes and metaphors, etc. Here's a poem that won first place in Thinker Magazine's (A University of Louisville publication) first annual poetry contest:
A passing car awoke me one night.
It sounded like the ocean,
then like drums.
It awoke from a dream
about drunkards and birds.
You were in my dream but I’m not sure if you were a drunkard or a bird.
Let’s say for now that you were a bird.
Let’s say a bird hit by a car near my house
while I was dreaming about you.
A drunkard was driving
and you, caught on the grill of the car,
played drums on the radiator.
So loud I thought the drums were me.
Let’s say now the drums were me,
and you a bird beating, beating
me until I bled on the sheets,
and let’s say the car drove all the way
to the ocean, and salt water washed you away,
and you, exhausted now,
drowned and let me go back to sleep.
Okay, you can stop laughing now. I was only 19 when I wrote that! :)
Jude:
There's some imagery that is really cool in there!
E
Thanks, Erica. I think I won $100 for that poem, and I think it was the first time I ever got paid for something I wrote. They had an awards ceremony, and I had to read it in front of an auditorium full of people. Argh!
I had fun in my creative writing classes, but sometimes when I read that old stuff I wonder how I ever received academic credit (all As, even) for such drivel. LOL!
Jude:
Yeah . . . I wrote some pretty cliche-ridden crap in college, too.
E
Hey Erica!
I'd actually enjoy reading your poetry. Post some more! And, yes, I have notebooks full of teenage angst. Yuck.
Weez :)
Ditto on the notebooks full of teenaged angst. Ditto on the YUCK!
If I shared lines, you'd probably think I was DOING lines :)
I still write all sorts of goofy stuff, for birthdays and family events etc. But only to amuse the family. Haven't written anything serious in a dogs age.
Hmm? Not sure why?
lainey:
I know, I sometimes wonder why I don't write poetry anymore. Is it that the prose fulfills me? Or that I am too embarassed as a self-editor with the crap I write in poems?
Also, I never write happy poems--maybe that's it. They are always dark and violent or dark and brooding--and I'm just not that person anymore and haven't been for a long, long time.
I don't write poetry nor do I read it. I do one much better -- I *listen* to it. Current rap artists such as Eminem and Ludacris are today's poets. My current favorite poem is a song called "Runaway Love" by Ludacris. Check out the first verse:
Now little Lisa is only 9 years old
She's trying to figure out why the world is so cold
Why she's all alone and ain't neva met her family
Mama's always gone and she never met her daddy
Part of her is missing and nobody will listen
Mama is on drugs getting high up in the kitchen
Bringing home men at different hours of the night
Starting with some laughs -- usually ending in a fight
Sneaking in her room while her mama's knocked out
Trying to have his way and little Lisa says 'ouch'
She tries to resist but then all he does is beat her
Tries to tell her mom but her mama don't believe her
Lisa is stuck up in the world on her own
Forced to think that hell is a place called home
Nothing else to do but get some clothes and pack
She says she's 'bout to run away and never come back.
I love Luda.
karm:
I do, too. I have loved that song from the first time I heard it--especially since it's really shining a light on child abuse and has a social message, and isn't just about the next party or whatever--there's a place for that too. I just like him--and Eminem.
LOL! I started with R-rated comic strips in the 4th grade. But like poetry, it taught me to use my words sparingly. After all, you can only fit so much in a blurb hovering over someone's head. :)
marcia:
That's great! I'll never look at those blurbs the same again.
E
Hi Erica,
I was one of those kids who detested poetry, even in high school. It wasn't until college that I learned to appreciate and eventually came to love the art form--and that was because I was forced to write it as a creative writing student--and yes, it was BAD! LOL
I Read Michele's entry and couldn't figure out how I had posted already under someone else's name.
I hated poetry until I took a class in college about the poet Robinson Jeffers. His words reached through the pages and pulled me into a world I had not thought existed... poetry with attitude.
Changed my life, literally and figuratively. That class and that professor got me start doing the one thing I had always wanted to do in my life, but had somehow convinced myself to give up: writing.
Years of bad poetry followed. Writers groups. Poetry readings. Poetry slams. Judging. Reading. Performing.
I didn't start writing prose fiction until about 6 or 7 years ago.
Like Erica, I learned economy of words, and the necessity of the right words. Anyone can see a green painted door. The right words can make that door unforgettable.
Erica, since you asked, I'll share some of mine.
bare
kamikaze dive
of rain as evening works
to chill night
with a fire
candles and wine
but desolate now
and sliding
into the clay of an empty
bed, sleepless
but toward
dawn finally the dreams
then awake
again alone to
ponder no lover and
another vacant day
empty is
bare feet on a frozen
morning's floor
while it's
screams echo off
bare walls
the rooms
filled with the furniture
of memories
OK, now we can have that collective groan.
ewoh:
No groan at all. I like it a lot. The clay imagery was brilliant.
E
Thanks for that Erica. I still cringe at some of those lines. They feel heavy handed ;)
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