I just read this: https://bukowski.net/manuscripts/displaymanuscript.php?show=poem1991-00-00-the-longest-snake-in-the-world.jpg&w=3277 that is considered poetry? or am I missing something? now I wrote this not to long ago: i wish i wouldn't mind being around people so much but for the most part i find them so an noying but at the same time i wouldn't want to be all by myself in complete isolation in conclusion i like people only close enough to make them out as a human being but not that close where i recognize any details. *** ok, why is what Bukowski wrote considered poetry but what I wrote isn't? let me add this poem as well: https://tinyurl.com/vweq4e5 After that, I'll never feel bad for what I write after The Niceties.
That one's easy to answer. It's because you're not Charles Bukowski. What I mean by that, simply, is that you're not a heavyweight literary icon who can publish something, anything, call it poetry and have the literary world accept/publish it as so. If you want an even grosser example of how anything can be called poetry, check out Jack Kerouac's Book of Blues: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Book-Blues-Penguin-Poets-Kerouac/dp/0140587004/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=jack+kerouac+book+of+blues&qid=1586282060&sr=8-2 All that said, I'm not altogether sure I disagree anyway. The author, just like an artist, can label their work whatever the hell they please. Whether others agree or not is entirely up to the individual.
interesting you brought that up. I was almost going to ask about that. I agree and that's what I thought.
Keep doing what you're doing. It has a nice humble quality about it and I find it far more readable than most of the stuff offered up as poetry.
Also, have you looked into imagist poetry yet? https://study.com/academy/lesson/the-imagist-movement-poems-examples-key-poets.html
Thank-you I just bought Book of Blues. I read a little sample of it and man I love how smooth the words sound when read. I can hardly wait until that arrives.
Not to put too much of a dampener on your purchase, I'll just say I hope you enjoy it more than I did. I had similar feelings and expectations as yourself when I ordered mine, but to be honest I found a lot of it unreadable. Seriously, William Carlos Williams. Simply wonderful stuff. That's assuming you haven't tried him already and rejected him.
I like WCW, I'm currently reading his book now. I bought the book used so if I don't like it I'll donate it.
That's a bit drastic. Let it sit on a shelf gathering dust. You never know you might fancy having another dip some time in the future. That's what I just did. I dug it out after our conversion and gave it another try. Still found most of it unreadable.
This. Although Bukowski is regularly lauded as a profound poet, it really is a matter of personal taste at the end of the day. One of the modern poets I've read recently, Zachary Schaumberg (burg? berg? I don't know), he wrote a lot in list form, and to me that's not necessarily poetry. That's a list. But a girl I went to college with brought him to our poetry class because to her he was brilliant. I think one of the reasons why I struggle with poetry is because it is built so deeply on personal taste. Personally, I love Kerouac. And Ginsberg. I also love John Donne and Edna St. Millay, and all of these other poets that have nothing to do with each other. Eliot, and Whitman. I'm not too sure who makes the rules on how you become famous for poetry, but honestly, if you like writing it and you like reading it, that feels like it's enough? Also, side note, one of my favorite bands, Modest Mouse, have a song called Bukowski, and there's a line that goes, "yeah, I know he's a pretty good read, but God, who'd wanna be such an asshole?" I don't know if I answered your question or just rambled for a while, but I hope this helps.
Yeah, poetry is like wine: a bad poem is one you don't like, and a good poem is one you do like. The difference, however, is more objective than that. Poems run the gamut from appallingly awkward to annoyingly incomprehensible. Enigmatic, sentimental, writer-centered prose with little crafting of the emotional content is not poetry. Between these extremes are poems crafted to engage the thoughts and feelings of a targeted audience. More about that when I have enough posts to qualify... Que
Kurt Vonnegut once asked a poet what poets do. She replied, "They extend the language." By that, I think she meant that poets put words into services that they weren't intended for, in novel ways that aren't intuitive. Literary conventions like meter and line spacing and word breaks and even definitions become putty in their hands, infinitely moldable into shapes that haven't been seen before.
Below are some of the quotes that helped me make up my own mind of what poetry is and is not... Poetry is what you are looking for and the poet has found--that step beyond which you were about to take but were not certain of the way. -- Carleton Noyes Prose is about something. Poetry is something. -- Susan Ioannou Don't tell me the moon is shining. Show me the glint of light on broken glass. -- Anton Chekhov A poem fails when it strays too far from the song. A song fails when it strays too far from the dance. -- Ezra Pound Writing free verse poetry is like playing tennis with the net down. -- Robert Frost Awkward, enigmatic, writer-centered writing with little crafting of the emotional content is not poetry. -- Qwerty Writing that tells the reader it is raining is not poetry. -- John Oughton
Ay, he’s great. A progressive of his time and an example that all sorts of styles can be classed as “poems”. They can be long or short and they don’t even have to obey a strict set of guidelines or punctuation. Here is one of his (shorter) poems. Indulge.
A lovely poem, and second only to This Is Just To Say when people are asked to name their favourite WCW poem.
Who says that isn't poetry? It is - if you say it is. Mind, when you say it is, people will read it as poetry and judge it against what they understand of the word - which is pretty nebulous and opaque when you get into the finer details.
Yeah, me too. I'm still a work in progress when it comes to getting my head around quotes like those and other advice from famous and not-so-famous poets. I have a very poor ear for rhythm (the sound of meter) and I avoid rhyme because it's difficult for me to do well and tends to look (sight) monotonous. Mostly, I try to show rather than tell--give readers the feeling of being rained upon rather than just tell them it's raining...
I used to have that question too, still have actually, but as time goes by I think I'm getting closer to the heart of it. Poetry is subjective and it can be perceived as such depending on the person's standing point at that time. I used to question haiku. I really couldn't understand their appeal. I had to watch them from a completely different angle in order to understand what's the big deal about them. I watched "24 Frames" by Abbas Kiarostami and then I understood how he perceived the essence of haiku. They're like snapshots of one's personal observation and what they saw, what they heard or smelled, created an emotion that couldn't be described by simple words such as "sadness", "happiness", "loneliness" in depth. They're unique emotions, unnamed and left for the audience to experience them in their own way. I highly suggest you looked up for Kiarostami in case you haven't heard of him. I love his work and he really helped me dive deeper into poetry. So, I guess that poetry, just like beauty depends on the eye of the beholder. If the eye finds a fitting point of view, it might perceive it.
Yes, haikus are wonderful. So much packed into so few words. Reminds me of something a friend told me years ago about the density of a piece of writing where you get more concise as you move from a 50,000 word novel to a 5,000 word short story to a 500 word flash fiction story to a 50 word poem to a 17 syllable haiku. I will definitely look into Kiarostami. Thanks.
Also @OP @op... ...your poem was crappy, it wasn't very entertaining was it? Face the facts, and that's why you remain in our remedial English thread. Meanwhile Bukowski is funny if you like that sort of thing (hic/fuck/bitches' titties from a mailman perspective/fuck/hic/bitches)... My Dublin lady-poet sent me 'A Radio with Guts' 10 years ago, and it is a lot of fun, Bukowski...see Larkin. Rock the mic!
Had he never heard of handball? Yes, it's not tennis, but it's an equally legitimate sport. Of course, Frost is free to exclude blank verse from his definition of poetry. But if he did, he would find that most of the poetry I've seen recently in the New Yorker and elsewhere isn't poetry at all. That view is far out of the mainstream now ... consider the works of our recents Poets Laureate, most of whom use blank verse on a regular basis. Dance doesn't have to have the formal shape of a waltz, a cha-cha, or a foxtrot to be a dance. It doesn't have to conform to classical ballet. It is what it is. A useful analogy for me is that poetry is to dance what prose is to walking or running.
