Die to Create

Since I was about 8 I've never written anything worthwhile by hand. It has to be typed. I do occasionally take notes or start something, I'd rather throw it away than re-read my handwriting. On the other hand I do think that the meaning is important as opposed to just how it looks. So my thing about typing is something I can't understand. (This seemed to be related to the thread but now I can't see any connection.)

What's a poetic life? Lots of love and flowers and passions? Well, maybe. But these things don't define poetry anymore. In the old days there were accepted subjects that poetry could be about (like the fall of Troy), but now poems can be about anything:any life, any feeling, any observation, just anything. Unshackled from the dogma of verse, it's pretty much what you want it to be (like art). So a poetic life, in turn, could be anything as well. What I want: the poet's life. To be able to make a living writing poetry. I don't do it "to express myself", I can do that by talking and arsing around on this forum. I do it because I enjoy it and have ambitions surrounding it. I'm realistic though: I think even Armitage had to keep his parole officer job quite some time after he'd hit the big time. By the way - a first - today I got paid for that one I mentioned before. 30 Canadian dollars = £13.11 Better than a poke in the eye with a burnt stick.

I write nearly all my poetry out by hand now. Neat drafts go onto the laptop but they always get f.ucked around with and then I always misplace the newest draft file.. so sometimes I go back to writing out by hand again. I thinks its nothing artsy at all.. I'm just a technophobe. I'm always a lot more protective of my first drafts than any others.. because they always seem like they need improving. Always. Fairplay to you Paul, by the way.. I was just interested because the Canadian mags I used to read in the poetry library always seemed pretty high calibre and full of poems from all over the place.

I disagree... I know plenty of elder people who still write poetry... for the sheer enjoyment of it. I also look forward to doing the same myself when I'm old. However, I think that the best written poetry comes with talent, vision and skill, rather than age. Being utterly honest, I cringe at my earlier poems because a lot of them were about how much I hated my mother/school/the popular kids, and how much I fancied boys. So. I think your view is an interesting one... but it worries me that maybe we have a nation of unbalanced elderly poets... heh.

no no i cringe when i look back at my [earlier] poems because i was not/ am not a poet, and they were terrible poems. no don’t be silly. n/a no and yes insert smiley here...

So now you can say who it was with??

I think there's something in this. Lots more people write poems when they're in their teens than do when they're older (I suspect,) so I imagine it does come partly from a kind of quest, from uncertainty. However, I think Rilke has a point too - and I would suggest that when you no longer feel the need to write poetry it's because you've given up on that particular quest, rather than achieved the ends. Nothing wrong, therefore, with an aged poet refusing to put down the sword.

Could a young poet have written this? I went by footpath and by stile Beyond where bustle ends, Strayed here a mile and there a mile And called upon some friends. On certain ones I had not seen For years past did I call, And then on others who had been The oldest friends of all. It was the time of midsummer When they had used to roam; But now, though tempting was the air, I found them all at home. (Thomas Hardy. From "Moments of Vision".) d.beswetherick.

when writing poems, one is the poem; the poem is one. achieved poetry is a state of yearning to being, but it is never earning or boeing, though it is frequently boring. i only cringe when I look back at YOUR earlier poems. the need to write does not diminish with age, in fact it increases because one is no longer capable of those occupations which so fascinate the young poet - alexandrine hand shandies and fessing with sestina turner. rilke was a poof. are you 90, one-legged one? If not how do you know? none of the above need apply.

a poet's way of life - you make mental notes of what your bacon sandwich tastes like for later, instead of just swallowing it.

(..... search for a poetic life?) no - it's a search for personal clarity, which might involve being obscure (Is not achieved poetry a state of being rather than one of yearning?) I don't know (Why (if you are utterly honest) do you cringe when you look back at your earlier poems?) I don't cringe at the really old ones. I either like them or think someone naive wrote them, which is endearing. (Does not the need to write poems diminish with age for the above reasons? ...Assuming that you settle into some sort of contentment with increasing maturity.) Can't answer because I dont go along with the assumption. (That piece by Rilke earlier implied that ones best written poetry comes with experience. I say it is rather embarassing if you feel the need to write poetry at all at the age of 90...) I agree with Rilke. Though I think you can go off the boil. I can't equate the word 'embarrassment' with age.

Freda, love it :-) sometimes it gets overpowering doesnt it, writing so much down, you cant even get out of the kitchen let alone the house Most of my best stuff was written in my late twenties and thirties, so now from my 40+ perspective - I look on lots of my earlier stuff with pride. I do find now that I'm concentrating on my novel, I'm keeping off the poetry. But I know a couple of idle weeks and i'll be at it agin probably do some while I'm in Rhodes, nowt like a foreign holiday to go a musing and a poeting

I'm suffering extreme paranoia at the moment, Andrew (not from you, obviously). I'd sooner wait till it's actually in the magazine (they pay you as soon as you sign the contract). I know this sounds a bit arsey, but I don't want anything to ruin this for me. Rest assured, as soon as it's in (September issue), I'll reveal the magazine, because everyone here should submit something.

Paul good point about expressing yourself, why bother with poetry if all you want to day is say something, just say it then. this goes back to a previous thread, where I talked of the sort of things I looked for in poetry, and know your poems are chock full of that kinda stuff such as structure, awareness of the language you're writing in, meaningful manipulation of rhyme and non-rhyme, grammar, striking imagery and phrase-making, metaphor and simile etc ie the stuff of poetry, not 'what it means' I still cant get over Drew dissing 'The Waste Land' because it's about Royalist tendencies or some such plueeze (that's just for Karl BTW)

Actually I notice it's ole 1leg who's me going on this wot is poetry biz fair play to you Ileg, you know how to start a high - class row, speaking of which I was nearly chucked out of an opera for the second time in my life yesterday during a production of Carmen at the Churchill in Bromley, (BTW it was my girlfriend's fault both times, well mainly anyway)

It's all getting a bit obscure for me. To me poetry is attemtping to get you to feel what I feel. Some do it in song, others musical composition, others in stories, painting most in general conversation or even stoney silence. Failure is commonplace throughout but that's life. I don't see how there can be any more or less to it and I don't connect with this idea that poetry or any kind of creative action is some kind of entity; a world into which we all must qualify to be amongst the great and the good; a force by itself that we try to latch onto. I just don't see that.

due to sensitive nature of this thread, above post has been edited and now reads as below. yrs, irving washington etc etc Xx’x xxx getxxxx a bit xxxxxxx for me. Xx xx xxxtry xx xxxxxxxxxx to xxx xxx xx feel what I feel. xxxx do it xx soxx, xthexx xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx, others xx xxxxxxx, paxntxxx most in xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxx xx even xtonex xxxxxxx. Failure is commonplace throughout but that's xif. I don't see xxx xxxx xxx xx xxx xxxx xx xxxx xx it and I don't connect with xhis idxx xxxx try xx any kind of xxxxxxxx action xx xxme kind xx entity; x xxxxx into xxxxx xx all xxxx xxxxxxx to be amongst the great and xxx xxxx; x force xx itxxxx that we try to latch xxxx. x just doxx xxx that.

I don't see it as having anything to do with age not because I'm elderly as I am but because I know of so many older people who still write poems and have seen many really good onces. As I have often said on here every experience in life has got to be lived before one is really qualified to talk or even write about it and that can often come with the experience of age.

For me the writing of poems is a bad habit I've slipped into as a sole means of meaningful communication. Oh yes, I cringe at my early stuff. I think a good defintion of a poem given by an abctaler on a thread ages ago was "a poem is some writing written to look like a poem" love it jude

Well, Well Well, sing me a rainbow,to be edited by the Washington post my flabber has never been so ghasted. A little of the feeling may have been lost in the editing process and it now reads like a seventies disco track and looks like a teenager's first valentine card. " [ooh baby] get a bit for me, to feel what I feel, do so the others pant most in even tone"

Jude yes I'll go along with that as the poetry of today does sound like that, I have only ever written two poems and because in those days every line of poetry was suppose to rhyme which made it stand out and was different from say writing a story but today that has all changed and maybe because of my age to me poems don't sound so interesting also wonder when and why the change came about, would love to know. I think Justyn maybe is the man for this one and would be greatful if reading this he could share is wisdom with me as after reading Judes post all sorts of things are going on in my head so its back and thanks to Jude for keeping the old grey matter ticking over...

Jude. That was a bit obscure. Snortles and wonders off.