Poetry Blog

Please be frank. Quite possibly it's all shit, and it only seems better to me because I'm personally invested in it.

On December 16 2011 01:19 Imperium11 wrote:
You're right. I regret posting this now, The value of these is personal, not literary, and should have been kept as such.

On December 16 2011 03:46 Boonbag wrote:
if you want to seriously write you must not read anything other than what you write

if it doesn't improve quit

On December 16 2011 04:04 jeeeeohn wrote:


This doesn't make sense. Becoming a better reader is paramount to becoming a better writer; and contrary to popular belief, writing takes many, many years to master. Prodigies like Asimov and Lovecraft are few and far between. This comment actually makes me mad.

Anyway, here's my advice: you're going to write a lot of poems, and you may not feel good about all of them (in a literary sense, I mean), but with every batch you'll have at least one good one. To Sustain Oneself is that good one. Keep working on that!

And on posting work to the public eye, here's a quote: "When it comes to criticism, there are two kinds of writers: those who bleed externally, and those who bleed internally."

You're going to feel bad at every pithy comment and every negative point, but it really is a balancing act between taking the reader's opinion into consideration and just feeling good about it. The only opinions that really matter are yours and your publisher's.

If you want opinions from other writers, I suggest Critique Circle or Critters Workshop--and more TeamLiquid, of course.

On December 16 2011 04:13 Boonbag wrote:


you're wrong, if you read you parrot unless you read shit or that means you have no reading ability

On December 16 2011 04:17 Chef wrote:
I'm split between the idea that reading a lot or reading nothing so that you're uninfluenced is best.

I used to think that if I didn't read anyone else's work I'd develop a completely unique style. I can't deny I learned a couple of things this way and have gained something out of it. But after years of that, when I finally did start to read a lot, I realised that I basically followed the cliches anyone who doesn't read a lot does. If you don't read you aren't aware how trite and overdone what you're saying is.

To brutally paraphrase the ideas of T.S. Eliot on the matter, your own work finds its place in the history of literature. It must interact with everything that has come before it. It must seem as if it could not be taken out of the history of literature. Eliot loved making allusions in his poems, and in doing so he greatly increased the complexity of his poems. If you recognized the allusion, there was a huge layer of meaning added without him being forced to belabour the point.

Yet, what happens with a lot of people who say 'read a lot and you'll get better' is that they also are kind of bad at writing. Their work becomes incredibly bland because they are not interacting with the work of the past, they are merely mimicking it. You have to think critically and understand what's happening in order to really gain something from it, otherwise you just end up writing crappier versions of what's already been done.

Going back the first point, if you haven't interacted with any literature so that you can be a blank slate, you're actually kind of fooling yourself. You have an idea what poetry is supposed to be. That came from somewhere. Yet because you haven't interacted thoroughly with it, you have a very simple idea of what poetry is and what it's supposed to do. In our culture, this usually means really romanticist stuff, because that's for some reason remained very popular despite being a century displaced. When I look back at the first things I wrote, thinking they would be completely original because I read very little of other people's work, I realised that it was all extremely cliche, extremely simple romanticist stuff. It was a box I was stuck in.

So like I said, I'm split. Both directions lead toward a very rigid and narrow understanding of poetry. I think great writing comes from a different direction. Not necessarily a happy medium, but in making sure you are able to make poetry your own regardless of both influences. Reading a lot is fine, but it won't make you a good writer.

modern poetry is very specific
if you find inspiration within what you read, then you already failed because you already lost your fight versus veracityp.

On December 16 2011 04:18 jeeeeohn wrote:


and a voracious reading appetite.

On December 16 2011 04:17 Chef wrote:
But after years of that, when I finally did start to read a lot, I realised that I basically followed the cliches anyone who doesn't read a lot does. If you don't read you aren't aware how trite and overdone what you're saying is.

On December 16 2011 04:17 Chef wrote:
Yet, what happens with a lot of people who say 'read a lot and you'll get better' is that they also are kind of bad at writing. Their work becomes incredibly bland because they are not interacting with the work of the past, they are merely mimicking it. You have to think critically and understand what's happening in order to really gain something from it, otherwise you just end up writing crappier versions of what's already been done.

On December 16 2011 04:27 Chef wrote:
I'm not sure how much I believe in natural talent. Your example of Lovecraft is interesting though, because if you call what he had natural talent, what we really mean is that he had a really messed up life and a lot of mental health issues that resulted from it. That can make writing interesting, but the actually ability to convey just what you mean (or as close an approximation as is possible) comes merely from practice and active efforts to improve.


I'm not sure what you're referring to as 'modern poetry.' If we're talking about modernist poetry, T.S. Eliot and many other modernists were certainly not afraid to draw on the past. If we're talking about poetry rap or whatever that thing is where people go on stage and talk their poems at people in seedy bars, then I have no idea because I've heard very little and didn't like it. We don't study that in academia.

I think you'll be hard pressed to find a widely recognized poet who doesn't make allusions though. You may not be aware of the allusions, but you can be made aware if you buy a Norton edition or the like. Although if you don't read poetry at all, so that your own is uninfluenced, there's kind of a paradox in taking what you say poetry is about seriously, since you don't read any but your own. How can you know what modern poetry is if you don't read it?