Generation Y doesn’t like being called Generation Y. But they like poetry, evidently.
Tired of reading? Try radio.
Poet Hound is seeking your poetry tips. Help her out with an answer to the following questions:
1. How can you support living poets?
2. What are some tips for reading poetry?
3. How do you seek out inspiration?
4. What are the appropriate steps to take when submitting poems?
5. How do you keep submitting after many rejections?
Poems read with too much concern as to “what the hell does it mean” will always miss at least half of life, maybe much much more.
Yes, but poems that mean nothing to anyone but the writer are worse. They are impostors, pretending to be literature while making a mockery of all that human. Now, a poem that means nothing at all even to the person who wrote it is far superior for it means that the poet is at least as human as the rest of us – if he admits he doesn’t understand his own poem. But then I’d wonder why he wrote it? What’s the point? A poem doesn’t necessarily need a meaning, but it does need a purpose.
No related posts.
I have a blog coming up which you may find of interest where I talk about Browning’s answer when asked to explain an old poem, that once both he and God knew what it meant and now only God knows. In the blog I look at a poem I wrote back in 2000 that I can’t remember a damn thing about hardly and ask if it’s a good poem. I’d post it today but Dave King’s expecting my blog on book burning.
As for your last sentence, I’ve said something similar about novels BTW, a novel doesn’t need a plot but it does need a point.
Thanks for helping me out and posting my questions! I hope to gather some tips to feature in later Friday Poetry Tips posts but I need a few more responses first, and your post will definitely help that. Thanks again.
Now, a poem that means nothing at all even to the person who wrote it is far superior for it means that the poet is at least as human as the rest of us – if he admits he doesn’t understand his own poem.
That is a paraphrase of a famous author/poet, who said that?
It goes something like … when I wrote it two knew what it meant, now only God knows.
Brian, the quote you are thinking of can be ascribed to Robert Browning.