Sad Poetry

Today I was in a really good mood and wanted to write a poem. I expected it would somehow reflect my mood, but instead it turned out to be sad. After reading it to my suite mates I bemoaned that I could only ever write sad poetry – or at least, only ever write good poems that were laced with melancholy. My one friend said that she preferred poems like that, because they seemed more real, whereas happy poems tended to seem too unrealistic and optimistic. This same friend is a self proclaimed cynic, which probably effects her opinions, but when I tried to think of all of my own favorite poems, this rang true.

Poetry isn’t sad by nature, but I don’t think poetry is inherently happy, either.  I know that growing up, I would write when I was in a bad mood, and most likely accidentally trained myself to only write sad poems. So how can I un-train myself / still be able to write well in a happy poem? What are all of your thoughts on happy vs sad poetry?

The Poetry Hangover

Or, in other words, that feeling of reading a poem/collection of poems that are so beautiful and inspiring that you feel you can’t read or write any more, ever.

I’m the emotional sort of person to cry at everything from sad commercials to happy endings in movies, so I’m never entirely surprised when I’m affected by writing enough to get one of these Poetry Hangovers, but it’s still an inconvenience, considering being a creative writing major and the need to be inspired to complete writing assignments.

The inability to write and read that I get with this is because my head feels too full of other words.  It’s like listening to a song through headphones while trying to compose new music; It’s near impossible.  The Hangover continues: Continue reading “The Poetry Hangover”

Quotes

Sometimes when I’m feeling more disillusioned with poetry as a whole (usually thanks to relatives who tell me that I’ll go nowhere with a degree in creative writing) I look through a collection of quotes about writing that I keep on hand. Recently I’ve been coming down with something (like just about everyone on campus) and haven’t been able to find words as easily as I’d like, so here are a few of my favorite quotes about poetry and writing in hopes that they help you guys through the usual fall colds/viruses:

Continue reading “Quotes”

Musings on Personal Poems

Earlier this week I took a few older poems I had and wasn’t fond of, and created a “Franken-poem” out of them. It turned into an amazing piece about a very long and personal journey. Because of the nature of the poem I wasn’t sure if I wanted to show it to anyone else or keep it to myself, and this led me to thinking about what we owe our peers, our poems, and ourselves, respectively.

It’s my belief that poems are inherently personal because a writer can’t write without infusing some of their own emotions and thoughts into their work (and feel free to disagree with me on this in the comments). I know the poems that get caught in my head are those that were written from personal experience.  The reason that I want to be a writer in the first place is to be able to give someone what others’ words have given me, and therefore I felt I owed it to my community to share this poem (not that I think it is revolutionary or earth shaking, but I like to think that every poem has the potential to matter to its readers the same way it does to the writer).

Then I began thinking about what the poem itself deserved: do poems only become what their readers think of them? Can a poem mean as much if it only means so much to one person? This is all pretty silly and hypothetical considering the answer doesn’t matter–poetry would still exist even if there were no readers because sometimes words have a way of blooming out onto paper despite whether there’s an audience for them or not.  But still perhaps poems deserve the opportunity to be seen by a new pair of eyes.

Lastly, I thought of what we owe to ourselves when we write poems.  Assuming that all poetry is personal, is it more or less of a catharsis to write it if we are sharing our work? I suppose this is, ironically enough, a fairly personal question, considering it probably changes from person to person, but I think through writing this post I’ve helped decide the answer for myself.

Poetry – and through it, the thoughts that we simply can’t shake and decide to impose on the universe –  is a part of its writer, and maybe, deep down, we like to share even the really personal poems for the same reason we like to share anything else: to know we’re not alone.