Poetry is . . .
Radar(Baba)O'Riley
Posts: 947
Dante said, "Poetry is things that are true expressed in words that are beatiful."
Samual Johnson said, "Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth by calling imagination to the help of reason."
Samual Taylor Coleridge said, "Poetry is the best words in the best order."
William Wordsworth said, "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings."
Robert Frost said, "Poetry is a way of remembering what it would impoverish us to forget."
Emily Dickinson said, "If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that it is poetry."
W.H. Auden said, "Poetry is the clear expression of mixed feelings."
Elizabeth Bishop said, "Poetry is hundreds of things coming together at the right moment."
Gwendolyn Brooks said, "Poetry is life distilled."
Mina Loy said, "Poetry is prose bewitched."
And I ask you, dear jammers and poem hammerers, what is poetry to you? Why write it? Why carve it? Why serve it on virgin silver and lay it on the porch just to see what creature sniffs and drools and bites?
Samual Johnson said, "Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth by calling imagination to the help of reason."
Samual Taylor Coleridge said, "Poetry is the best words in the best order."
William Wordsworth said, "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings."
Robert Frost said, "Poetry is a way of remembering what it would impoverish us to forget."
Emily Dickinson said, "If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that it is poetry."
W.H. Auden said, "Poetry is the clear expression of mixed feelings."
Elizabeth Bishop said, "Poetry is hundreds of things coming together at the right moment."
Gwendolyn Brooks said, "Poetry is life distilled."
Mina Loy said, "Poetry is prose bewitched."
And I ask you, dear jammers and poem hammerers, what is poetry to you? Why write it? Why carve it? Why serve it on virgin silver and lay it on the porch just to see what creature sniffs and drools and bites?
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Comments
"Outside the Law (What Makes Us Feel Good)"
Poetry is not supposed to rhyme.
Poetry is not supposed to be about dragons and rainbows.
Poetry is about spilling your raw emotions into the open air so they can be oxidized into words.
Poetry is not being afraid to spit in the face of the traditional rhyme,
the traditional rainbows,
and love
and life
and other things that tragically tend to go wrong.
Poetry doesn't cover up what is inside simply because what is inside may not make children giggle or 2nd grade teachers buy paperbacks en masse from Schoolastic.
Poetry explodes with a vibrant display of passion or an oppressive veil of death.
Poetry cannot be contained by what makes us feel good.
Poetry is not for us.
Poetry is for them.
It is for you.
It is for whomever decides to pick up a pen, a keyboard, a piece of chalk, a crayon, or a bleeding finger
and scrawl across some medium the essence of what makes him HUMAN
and ALIVE.
Our daily existence cannot be packaged nicely into a sweet chocolate shell like some 3-cent toy in a KinderEgg.
There is rot that must be expelled.
There are epidemics picking off our friends.
The guy who sold you tomatoes last week was stabbed to death in an alleyway last night for 23 bucks and half a pack of cigarettes.
The world is not pretty.
The world is not fairy tales with princesses and dragons and a set rhyme scheme and iambic pentameter.
Order is not an option.
There is no need for fluffy puppy dogs and dragons;
love at first sight;
dew drops on rose petals.
That sunshine can be blown up your ass on Sesame Street
or Poetry Dot Com.
This is the real thing, folks
This is the stuff that makes us tick,
that's on our minds.
This is the world as seen without our bullet-proof rose-colored glasses
Poetry is the art of self destruction
A crafty guise of thought creation
Stretched tightly over degeneration
Pleas strung together
like bows on a cartoon kite string
Just subtle enough to worry the ones
who have too much to worry about already
It's a means to your end
that might leave a thumbprint
on college English profs in their
"Twisted Bleeding Suicide Hearts" club
It's a way to realize everything
you've never allowed
An excuse
Poets aren't supposed to be happy
because true poets all know
happy poems
are as revealing
as faked orgasms and bottle tans
Poetry is the self destruction
of the pathological meat eaters
tearing flesh from the little man inside
and chewing and swallowing and excreting
Poetry is a hand twitch misconstrued as insight
Poetry as self destruction
is an invisible art
when properly executed
A subtle call for the death of the meat eaters
Somebody drop a fucking A-bomb!
Poetry is the nest of cock roaches
we all overlooked
and forgot
I've expanded my definitinon a little beyond that.
No prob, mah man. Just saw this post and those two "offerings" sprung to mind. Didn't mean to put a damper on the whole thread. Like I said, I'm in a much better mood nowadays.
please, i'd like some more.
Cool. Did you write the review for the "Outlaw Book" too? Are you included in it?
You haven't dampered or dampened or dammed this thread. So far, all three responses of "What Poetry Is" are pretty similiar. They seem to be explosions of emotions. Whether those emotions are Love, Hate, Revenge, Disgust, Admiration, Constipation, or Revelation is what makes poetry poetic, I think.
BTW your name sounds like Chinese food. hehe
I've often had the desire to post some stuff here. Never felt comfortable initiating though. But this topic just seemed like one I couldn't pass up.
Perhaps I'll put a few more in here and there. I'm glad it's appreciated.
Yah, I wrote that review. There was another review on there which really pissed me off. So my review was more of a retort to that tunnelvisioned review. Then I removed the censors and updated my review a little bit for my private purposes, since I had to edit myself for epinions.
And actually, CranMalReign is just a completely random name I came up with when I got banned from a message board for using "Nippleskin". I wonder if it has anything to do with the Cranberry Mall where I worked at the time?
i understand because i felt the same way myself. mind you i am not at the level as the rest of you but everyone here is very supportive and encouraging.
i really do hope you'll decide to share more with us in the future that was just some truly incredible work you laid on us.
Well, I'll keep a closer eye on this forum then, and contribute when I feel appropriate and comfortable. Keep a look out for me.
Yeah, happy phantom!
When I write, it is all the things I would have said if I had the voice to do so. It is why no matter how many times I read my work, in my head it always sounds so correct, so apropos, though my voice cannot inflect the ennui that I propose.
I dream on the page. I fret, I nag, I worry the words as they go. Occasionally they burst furth as a supernova of lingual froth and I can barely control the pen or the typing hand, and it is they who hold the leash merely allowing me the sway as I sniff in the breeze. You have heard me say it before: I bleed.
Poetry is what all people would have said. There are people who read what we say and write and dream and do and say to themselves "why can I not do that? what is missing from me?" It is the quiet voice you must watch.
Poetry is self knowledge, however deprecating or even arrogant, it is true self on a page... if one is being honest. I believe false poetry to be easily seen from a distance and is therefore quickly discarded on approach.
Poets are artists in a window with glass planed through the soul.
Poetry is courage of word, thoughts that stay, opinions that may only matter briefly but to be remembered as long as the letters don't fade. Poetry is the art of realtime progression, a plotline that regards structure as a foundry, though limiting, and metaphor the freeing of caged captivity. Words are never as they seem and poetry is therefore proof that magic can exist.
People have asked me what I would do if all other things were taken from me...
I would write.
Yes, they say, but what if your writing was taken from you or lost?
I would die.
Poetry is my insanity on spread, my sanity enthralled. I am merely the conduit, the paper the lodestone, and all things flow through me. There is a force that contends me to write, compells me, to the point of wordlessness. I tend to babble, I am doing so now.
Poetry is and are the things I always wanted to say. I can tell someone that I love them better in a diary than I can in real life. I can relate fear or anticipation better on paper than in any ordinary conversation.
Oh there are the certain individuals, rare but true, that allow me to vent verbally as I do on the page, but I tend to get the wide-eyed-holy-shit-look-of-freak from most folks who hear me in such a state. I feel ashamed, as if I have been caught masturbating in public and then I feel angry because someone shat upon the thoughts that mean so much to me. Poetry is, therefore, self verification. These thoughts are mine and I share them because I feel that since they affect me so profoundly, there are times when my chest hurts I feel them so, that others MUST know, MUST be told. I cannot help it. It is my calling.
If ever I lost my hands, I would truly invent telepathy.
I now have the burn, I can feel the pain in my heart and the rise of the blood pressure as my mind seeks to find the volcanic plug and reduce it to ash here and now. I could go for days. I have gone for days.
This place... to find receptive eyes for the words that come to mine... I don't know what I would have done without it. I have written some of my best work in honor of those on this board and many times with the thought, admittedly, of trying desperately to blow people's minds, mine included. I wanted to write better than I ever have, say more things and mean more things than I ever have...
Funny thing is, I don't know if I've succeeded or not. I am very particular and sooner or later I may look at this work I've done and say to myself, it could have been better.
Even if it was all for love.
LOL Poetry is frustration. This, here, all of us, you, me, we go outside and smell the world, those cracks in the sidewalks you can feel if you concentrate, right through your shoes... the ability to watch someone from across the room and KNOW them, make love to them with your mind... stepping aside on the sidewalk as someone approaches and knowing that the rest of your day may forever be altered because of it...
I cannot... I don't....
It's all poetry. Every last drop. And I suppose this was my page on which to breathe.
Two words: Pish Posh.
I saw that.
I assure you, with some of the shit we post around here, Tickle Me Elmo could say "You're my Nippleskin friend" and no one would flinch.
Genius. This whole passage was exactly what poetry is to me.
Thank you.
see what i mean cranmal?
they are very supportive and encouraging. no judgements, no ridicule - although on ocassion there have been the threat of spankings thrown about.
Of course not. I am his Nippleskin friend. pshaw!
It's really not that embarrassing.
seta, as always, I delight at seeing your light flicker. I would say more, but then that wouldn't be me.
That is the stupidest thing I have ever read.
So when you laugh, does milk come out your nipples?
I'll hafta get to know you better before I divulge that.
Post it here. I'm curious.
seta
throwing up on a strangers shoes, a really really cute and talented strangers shoes.
although his big red shoes were full of head cheese so who knew!
And the two Pink Persons met just beyond the Great Chest Valley of Hair and lived happily ever after. Right over the heart.