Poetry

Pre-College Issues High School Life
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<p>Does anyone enjoy poetry? Like reading, or maybe even original composition? I personally really enjoy reading poetry. Not for analysis for AP Lit, but I just like taking my own meaning away from it. </p>

<p>"What a lumbering poor vehicle prose is for the conveying of a great thought! ...Prose wanders around with a lantern & laboriously schedules & verifies the details & particulars of a valley & its frame of crags & peaks, then Poetry comes, & lays bare the whole landscape with a single splendid flash." -Mark Twain</p>

<p>^That is exactly what I feel about poems. They lay out an entire situation in a few lines, but they don't give details. Every person finds their own details upon a common background. It's awesome!</p>

<p>I'll share two of my favorites.</p>

<p>If you have eagerness in your heart, it means you are alive,
If your eyes are filled with dreams, it means you are alive
Learn to be free like the wind,
Learn to flow freely like the river,
Embrace every moment with open arms,
See a new horizon every time with your eyes,
If you carry surprise in your eyes, it means you are alive,
If you have eagerness in your heart, it means you are alive…
-Javed Akhtar</p>

<p>Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.</p>

<p>In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.</p>

<p>Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.</p>

<p>It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
-William Ernest Henley</p>

<p>Anyone else? Feel free to add whatever you like. I'm sure we have some creative people here on CC.</p>

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<p>I like bacon. I’m eating some right now.</p>

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<p>I<code>m a writer, not a poet. Sorry. I got a 70 on our poetry unit test…it</code>s pretty sad on how bad I am considering that I`m an OK writer.</p>

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<p>Lol, you don’t have to be a poet to appreciate poetry. I personally can’t write poetry for my life. I just love how poetry can be simultaneously intricate and blunt, or how it can mean something new to each person. I’m sure you have at least one favorite poem lol. Or if you don’t, take 5 minutes and try and find one you like, and find what it means to you. It’s a great exercise in self-introspection.</p>

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<p>Hazel Tells Laverne, Katharyn Machan
last night
im cleanin out my
howard johnsons ladies room
when all of a sudden
up pops this frog
musta come from the sewer
swimmin aroun an tryin ta
climb up the sida the bowl
so i goes ta flushm down
but sohelpmegod he starts talkin
bout a golden ball
an how i can be a princess
me a princess
well my mouth drops
all the way to the floor
an he says
kiss me just kiss me
once on the nose
well i screams
ya little green pervert
am i hitsm with my mop
an has ta flush
the toilet down three times
me
a princess</p>

<p>The best poem yet in AP literature… But analyzing 1 or 2 a day is getting tiring… Sure, poetry is fine, beats having to go through huge novels and has a unique style, but meh, I’m more of a math/science person and my teacher has worsened my view on poetry…</p>

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<p>I used to write a lot of poetry, but have been so writer’s blocked recently. I also feel like I haven’t really felt passionately enough about anything to need to write a poem about it rather than just think it over.</p>

<p>I think there’s also the aspect in which I don’t really like writing without meter or rhyme because I feel like the line between art and pointless banalism is indiscernible without it, but when I use meter and rhyme, I have to force some words in that wouldn’t be there otherwise. Anyway, I was amused by my own creation enough to post it up:</p>

<p>Tonight I thought the winds were ocean’s waves
And happy was I for a moments time,
Believing I was home in coastal climes.
A song as peaceful as the sleeping graves
And holy as a church’s hallowed naves
Emerges with a voiceless, metered rhyme
That moves as much the gods as lowest slime,
Reminding all that always time enslaves.
It melts the stones on which we built our shrines,
Gifts to the stars that endless circle round
Until to gaze brings dizziness to numb
The thirsty, never sated, yearning minds
Who drink until they stumble to the ground,
Perceiving Earth as though it were a crumb.</p>

<p>Not nearly as good as I wish it were. When you read too much Milton it gets to your head, and you want all poetry to live up to his unreachable standards.</p>

<p>/pedantry</p>

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<p>^Writer’s bock happens to everybody. I currently have it right now: I can’t write my darned Columbia supplement! :open_mouth: My solution is to constantly think about the topic. Just try and create verses in your head during your free time. Listen to acoustic music to help you focus on the poem. Read good poetry that you enjoy to inspire you. You have to create inspiration, else the writers block will just simmer and be there forever. Just keep thinking about your poems, and you’ll find inspiration.</p>

<p>As for meter, I agree: poems in meter are usually “better.” However, not necessarily, and just because they are in meter doesn’t make them “good.” Don’t limit yourself like that. Allow yourself the ability to explore. Maybe your writer’s block stems from the fact that you aren’t allowing yourself to fully express your ideas. You said it yourself: you have to add extra words for meter. In that type of case, meter is limiting, not enhancing your creativity, and you should find an original method.</p>

<p>Oh Milton. I love his poems, especially his sonnets. “They also serve who only stand and wait.” I have an incredibly ambitious goal of reading Paradise Lost before the end of senior year, but right now, it seems unlikely. </p>

<p>And your poem is quite good actually. I enjoyed it. It was very eloquent, although I see your problem with adding words. Your meaning also is slightly unclear, but that is the beauty of poetry, is it not?</p>

<p>I think that this is the standard Italian sonnet, with the 8 + 6 format, if I’m not mistaken. </p>

<p>MY ADVICE: Try out free verse. Give yourself a little more creative license, and see what you come up with.</p>