The Joy of Poetry

Hello darlings,

In advance of this blog, I have not shared my poems with many people. Being that poetry is a fairly sheer medium to express oneself, it's not something that I generally show at dinner parties. By sheer, I mean exposing, transparent and/or revealing of my sex life and partners. Secondly, I never know how people will interpret it. Will they start analyzing the poem...and therefore me, or will they just enjoy it for pure enjoyment sake, relating it to their own sexual or erotic experiences?

Inevitably, I am asked where my poetry inspiration comes from; who I am writing about; what was happening when I wrote a particular poem...etc, etc. So when it comes to revealing poetic inspirations, I have established some ground rules:

The Poetic Rules:

1) I never kiss and tell (i.e. reveal the source/inspiration/person of said poem). The reasons for this are basic privacy and respect but also it's not always a specific person that inspires a particular poem.  Also, the mystery of not knowing where the hell I come up with this stuff also keeps some of the fantasy alive for the reader.  That said, I will say that sometimes a poem stems from an event, a combination of times, places, or experiences that happened, or pure fantasy on my part. We read a lot in popular culture about songwriters writing nasty songs about their ex lovers and the pain they caused. This is the anti-thesis to my love poetry.  I'm not on a mission to divulge the particulars or identities of my lovers, when I had a particularly good lover, or not.

2) Sometimes, but not always, I will write a poem about a particular lover and may or may not share it with them, either at that time or in the future.  This guideline serves two purposes: a) If my lover knows about my "poetry" hobby, I wouldn't want them to believe I was only searching for new material and therefore using them for the sake of my art.  This is distasteful and really never leads to "The Good Stuff" regardless as it was not created from true passion; and b) keeps the time lines of poetry writing somewhat vague and therefore more intriguing.  I'm not trying to keep a chronology of sexual events here.  If I wanted to do that I'd just keep a diary.

3) The metaphors that I use as a "back drop" to my poems are common, every day things, events or places that most people can relate to.  For example, in The Grand Storm, the metaphor is a life raft in a nasty sea being torn apart by strong winds and rains.  However, the reader quickly learns that the "life raft" is a bed and the "ocean" is a hotel room. This particular poem also bears a few other personal reminders of the blessed event although one particular one is hidden so well only the other person who participated in the event would know what I'm talking about.  (See Guideline #1 as to why I will leave it at that.)

So those are the basics.  I enjoy writing in general and if I thought I could actually make a living at it on a full-time basis, I'd probably go for it.  Until then, I'll continue reach for my tattered poetry note book and hopefully the inspirations will continue to manifest before me.

The Joy of Poetry

The joy of my poetry writing is also attributed to my writing style.  I strive to draft a poem that would add to the experience for both the reader and the writer.  For example, I never rhyme words.  I think rhyming in love poetry is tacky and limits the essence of the experience.  Even when I'm drafting a poem if I accidentally rhyme words I will purposefully go back and re-write and come up with an alternate.  I only have one or two poems where an occasional rhyme sneaks in, but it was not on purpose.

I also prefer the "&" symbol for "and" for pure aesthetic reasons.  Not much mystery there.  I just like the way "&" looks in the poem.

Another thing I never do is utilize crass verbiage or offensive statements.  For one, they they look ugly in the poetic type and I consider them next to cheating.  Part of the creative outlet of poetry writing is trying to articulate a specific encounter in a beautiful way.  I have been considering throwing out the odd "f" bomb to see how it looks and works, but it must be done in a way that it doesn't distract from the experience of the poem.  Overtly saying "we fucked in a hotel room" just doesn't convey the same message as "lying next to you between rented sheets and walls," does it?  There was so much more going on at the time.  See how in that context it doesn't work??  Hmmm.  I'll have to ponder this one a bit longer.

Ok now that I've divulged a bit of info on The Joy of Poetry and my writing particulars, I need to get writing some poetry!

-L