Hello Bob,
I agree with you fully on the issue of art/therapy, and I can also agree in general about the appearance of feelings and words like `loss´ or `grief´. And I can go along with the importance of images, but should we consider the whole poem as being an image itself, not only extracting certain images that appear within the the poem? And if we consider the whole poem as an entity that is itself an image, what part might `feelings´ that are embedded within it play?
I have a feeling (!) that you´re going to ask me for an example. I´m leaving the office soon and won´t be back till Monday, but I´ll have a look over the weekend and see if I can a. work out what I think I mean, and b. find a poem to illustrate it, but I won´t pursue the topic unless you want me to ;-)
Best wishes, Mike
--- Alkuperäinen viesti ---
Hi Terri, Christina, David, and Everyone who's reading,
Yeh, I guess poetry's got to be personal more than merely private. If I can
write about my grief in a personal way (and not let a reader think they may
be intruding in on my private feelings) then I feel it's a poem that's
aiming to be art rather than therapy.
And I sense that writing about "things" in poems explores feelings better
than writing about the feelings themselves. (Ooooh, that sounds a bit of an
OTT statement - but I think it's what I prefer to read - because I remember
the images more than the big abstract words like "loss" or "grief" or
whatever. The images say more.
In the poem I want to know more about the fall! I can see someone falling!
Then I can wonder what the fall (metaphoricaly) is from... (falling out of
love, falling from grace...)
Hey, it's too early in the morning for this! (LOL!)
Bob
>From: Christina Fletcher <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Lost from view
>Date: Wed, 22 Jan 2003 18:37:41 EST
>
>Terri, it's certainly not my experience at all. The poem you published not
>so long ago was written in a few minutes of grief shortly after my mum
>died.
>I fiddled with it afterwards but it got worse so I reverted to the original
>draft which was the result of immediate feeling, not an intellectualisation
>of feeling. I'd go much further than that and say that most of the poems
>I've written that others have told me touched them, or have been published
>because of the 'emotional content', were written in a spontaneous way,
>usually followed by a great fit of sobbing. That's, of course, not how I
>write when I'm trying to do something that isn't directly emotional. But I
>think it's probably different for all of us and I doubt very much that
>there's anything we can say other than 'this is what happens to me'.
>bw
>christina
>
>
> > I have to agree with grassy here. I rarely manage to write anything
>worth
> > reading if I try to hit how I feel head on. Taking a sideways look,
>though,
> > translating the emotion-words into actions, things and so on can end up
> > saying it better.
> >
> > I often find it's good exercise as well; mental physiotherapy - a bit
>like
> > scales for musicians. If this feeling were a fruit/piece of clothing/
>item
> > of domestic furniture - what would it be/look like what might happen to
>it?
> > You've got some of that in the poem. If it were mine, I'd scrape away
>the
> > overlay of abstraction (pain, hope, mind etc) and focus down on the
> > cave/bone image and see how that could get the reader to feel what it
>feels
> > like.
> >
> > Hope that helps
> >
> > Terri )O(
>
>
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