Tag: Poetry

Elusive Poetry

Zac's picPoetry seems to be a sort of elusive creature to a lot of people. When people read poetry it seems to slip right past them, the words on the page cluttering together and then becoming a smaller and smaller dot on the page until they are almost nothing, the meaning gone with the readers want to find meaning, and writing it can be very much the same way. You don’t know what you are writing until it is out there on the page and even then, you find yourself wondering “what even is this?” or “am I okay?”

But, in the words of poet Li-Young Lee “a poem is like a score for the human voice.” Poetry may be elusive, and will confound us at times, but it cannot be denied that when truly and thoroughly read poetry is a universal language in which all our souls connect and speak in. Thoroughly written, it becomes a language for us to explore our own selves, and by extent, other people as well. Therefore when posed with the question of what inspires my poetry, I have to say that I think that everything inspires my poetry, even things that I don’t know inspire it.

If you were to ask me two years ago what I thought about poetry, and what inspired me I couldn’t have given you an answer. That is because poetry was still an elusive beast to me, and I had yet to unlock the deep emotional connection with my writing that it takes to write it. I only began to write poetry, and get inspiration for it, when I realized that there was something deep within myself that begged to be explored and heard. A voice that could not be let out in my everyday life. A score that I needed to write, for my voice, and for the voices of people who have lived through similar experiences and don’t have the privilege (and curse) of knowing how to write about it.

I am inspired every day, by the things I feel, and the things I see that make me feel. If an experience is strong enough to make me cry, or laugh, or be angry I know that it is worth writing about. I am inspired by the words of poets like Li-Young Lee whose craft and mastery of words seems otherworldly to me, being able to string together the perfect line that makes even the people who don’t want to read poetry stop and think for even just a moment.

Poetry is an elusive animal, one that I don’t think even the most skilled poets have learned to tame. It is an animal that resides inside every one, a voice that is waiting to be unlocked, a voice spoken through the inspiration of every humans common experiences and connections.

–Zac Carter, Co-Art Editor

Poetry Intended

my bp picLately, all of my poetry has depended on prompts and lessons given in class. I think it’s good for a poet or just a writer to get their poetry from a classroom structure, but I also think too much structure can lead to less creativity. I’m guilty of not often taking time out of my personal day to write anything. But when I do find the time, I go to the bookshelf for inspiration. I only own a few poetry books. The one I go to most often is by Nikki Giovanni: “Black Feeling Black Talk Black Judgment.” What I find inspiring in this collection of poems is the speakers that Giovanni brings to light. They are some of the most unapologetic, emotionally vulnerable speakers I’ve ever seen in poetry. It’s something I think Giovanni has mastered in her poetry and I seek to create in my poetry as well.

I’m in Junior Poetry and we’ve learned about sound and meter and different forms of poetry such as ekphrastic and ars poetica. Understanding these elements of poetry causes me to look at it differently when I read and write. I can find different intents through the form on the surface or the sound beneath, underlying the contents of the poem. This inspires my poetry because it is the foundation for all poetry. I’m no Poe or Longfellow, I’m nowhere near to mastering these foundations, but I think it’s incredible the power that lies in the confines of poetry. It is one of the more compact forms of writing, but in that short time, short if you don’t count epic poetry, an entire story is delivered, narrator, conflict, resolution, or lack thereof, and the reader can make a connection, one I think can be even stronger than a full-length fiction piece.

What inspires me to write poetry most of all are experiences. When I’m lost for an idea, I go back in my mind and find a personal moment I can create a new speaker from. This can become overused as there are only so many prominent experiences one can access, but that’s another thing about being a writer. Experiences can be reshaped, seen through a different lens every time to create the freshest recounting. This also applies to experiences that aren’t personal, something I’ve seen on TV, in the news, or something I’ve watched someone else go through. I think these experiences are just as strong as personal ones and can create the most universality.

–Lindsay Yarn, Creative Nonfiction/ Co-Web Editor

A Prose Poem is a Bowl of Spaghetti That You can Read

ABC SoupIn most conversations about what makes a poem a poem, form is discussed. One of the seemingly defining factors of a poem is its line breaks. Whether it be sprawling free verse, or the strict nature of a sestina, a key identifying factor of poetry is its visual appearance. Line breaks are a key poetic tool to manipulate mood and to segment images—they are, in many ways, one of the few things poetry has no other genre does.

I’ve always considered myself someone who can express themselves better narratively than abstractly. Because of this, I have struggled with the more nebulous nature of poetry, particularly regarding telling a story within the form. Then, I discovered the prose poem.

Prose poems are the Weird Westerns of the writing world. Prose poems dip their French fries in milkshakes, and put Cheetos in their sandwiches. Prose poems pronounce milk “mulk”.

The ability to anchor my images within a prose-like structure in many ways enables me to let the images flower naturally, and my idea tend to follow a more natural progression when they aren’t being stuffed into visual tube tops. Don’t get me wrong—poetry is a majestic form, and line breaks are the stakes keeping the vine growing up. Take the stake away, the vine collapses into a bowl of spaghetti. A prose poem is a bowl of spaghetti that you can read.

For some reason, surrealism blooms in prose poems. But so does honesty, because the imagery and syntax of poetry bring emotion into the space that swells without form to keep it clean.

 

For a long time, I thought prose poems were not in fact poems, largely because of the aforementioned belief that line breaks are the foundation of poetry. Humans naturally reject things they can’t easily categorize, and prose poems trample on category. Some think they should be considered as a genre of their own—my previous self, included—which is fair. But genre, like so many other things, is only a set of rules meant to be broken.

However, the foundation of poetry is music—poems were originally meant to be sung. It is the sound of a poem that makes it a poem, which is why when you remove the line breaks of a poem, you can still tell it is one. It doesn’t matter to me if the prose poem is a poem, or something else entirely. What matters is that they are uniquely dynamic and engaging worms of writing that sometimes kick you in the face and tell you to like it.

 

PROMPT:

Take an experience within your life and explore it through a surreal prose poem. Use aliens, mythological figures, or any other fantastic images/language you can think of. Through the fantasy/sci-fi aspects, explore the emotional consequences of this experience.

-Zarra Marlowe, Managing Editor