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msagaraI started my writing life as a poet, published a few pieces in University reviews, and then embarked on my life as a professional liar -- which is to say, a writer of fiction.
Every so often, however, I have the same compulsion that used to drive me into the corners of crowded rooms, with scraps of paper and a pen I stole from some bewildered stranger, and I write poetry.
KP and I were discussing poetry tonight. Or rather, we were discussing a collection of poetry which I thought should have been severely edited before it saw print -- because had it been, I would have loved it. I know that poetry is hard to edit -- but oddly enough, while I would not touch a single word of the same writer's -prose- (or most prose, really, as I'm not a line-editor for other's work), I would fiddle all over the place with other's poetry, if allowed.
I'm not sure why. In fact, I'm not sure why I write the poetry, because there is not only no intent to have it published, there is an active intent to have it buried.
Anyone else?
Every so often, however, I have the same compulsion that used to drive me into the corners of crowded rooms, with scraps of paper and a pen I stole from some bewildered stranger, and I write poetry.
KP and I were discussing poetry tonight. Or rather, we were discussing a collection of poetry which I thought should have been severely edited before it saw print -- because had it been, I would have loved it. I know that poetry is hard to edit -- but oddly enough, while I would not touch a single word of the same writer's -prose- (or most prose, really, as I'm not a line-editor for other's work), I would fiddle all over the place with other's poetry, if allowed.
I'm not sure why. In fact, I'm not sure why I write the poetry, because there is not only no intent to have it published, there is an active intent to have it buried.
Anyone else?
no subject
Date: 2004-06-18 09:16 pm (UTC)The past five years, I've devoted most of my (non-day-job) writing to poetry — largely narrative verse. I have a collection doing the rounds (somewhat desultorily at the moment; Arizona summers do sap one's energy), and am working on a cycle of linked stories I hope will eventually become a fix-up verse novel. Some, I've manged to sell to fiction markets as short stories (The First Heroes, just out, has one) and am trying to market myself as an anthology whore willing to spin out on demand fluffy tales with line breaks. So far I haven't cracked the print genre magazines; I probably need to write more explicitly skiffy stuff for that.
Why? Because, at least right now, I'm better at poetry than prose. Narrative verse plays to my strengths as a writer, and diminishes my weaknesses. And, to be honest, it's plain fun to write. Especially Greek myth sex farces.
---L.
no subject
Date: 2004-06-18 10:07 pm (UTC)I think of narrative verse as a kind of prose, but more precise, more constrained in form. I don't write it though; do you write much blank verse?
It's funny. Toronto has, on its subway trains, Poetry On The Way (among the various ads the TTC sells). I love to read them, and have missed stops because I do. But at a distance, I can tell whether the author was male or female, and I've never been wrong; it's kind of like a game. My husband can't tell; we've debated my call a couple of times, and he finds it bemusing. But he doesn't write.
no subject
Date: 2004-06-19 08:16 am (UTC)I used to write mostly in blank verse, until I (finally!) learned how to rhyme a few years ago. Since then, I've mostly been working in stanzas — as much, now, because I'm still teaching myself how to use them well — or couplets. A couple of stories I have in mind for down the road will likely be blank verse (won't know for sure, of course, until I try them and see).
I am curious, btw, what collection you were talking about.
---L.
Re: rhyming
Date: 2004-06-19 08:48 am (UTC)I'm sort of like that with formal or classical structures (except Saxon poetry, whose two-beat two-beat is somehow subtle enough to fall below my radar); I lose the -words- to the rhythm. The moment I become conscious of the rhythm, there goes the poem; after that moment, it's all about measured beat. I find it overwhelming, and always have.
If it can be slipped to me in a way that I'm not aware of, I can read whole it, but almost only then :/.
But... I have a feeling that if it weren't for the rhyming, I would probably be able to read the actual syllabic work, if that makes sense; the rhyming is a big signal for my subconscious reader that things are about the get -loud-.
Re: rhyming
Date: 2004-06-19 09:18 am (UTC)---L.
Re: rhyming
Date: 2004-06-19 10:35 am (UTC)Re: rhyming
Date: 2004-06-19 12:21 pm (UTC)---L.
Re: rhyming
Date: 2004-06-19 01:08 pm (UTC)Re: rhyming
Date: 2004-06-19 01:32 pm (UTC)---L.
it occurs to me
Date: 2004-06-19 08:15 am (UTC)I think, when I started my first novel (the one that became the second book) I was without question a better poet -- in the modern, blank verse sense -- than I was a prose writer. There are a lot of conventions in modern poetry that I had difficulty shifting away from (in particular, the use of description -as- description, as something that refers to an object, or in fact, the use of any description at all).
Re: it occurs to me
Date: 2004-06-19 08:23 am (UTC)One thing I like about narrative verse is that, in addition to description and language being concentrated, so is the voice.
---L.