Do You Write Poetry?

[Sandra Craft]

^^^
I'm so glad to hear that I'm not the only one.
Can I sit next to you, right now? I'm sure Nam is going to post another one, soon, and I don't want to be the only one doing this while he reads it:

Be my guest.  I plan to gaze seriously into the distance while listening to music in my head as he rattles on.

[Siz]

I don't write poetry. 
Most of the time I have a hard time understanding what the poet is trying to say. I try, and I try, but I just can't seem to connect the words and say, "Oh! I see!"
--I don't see. 

This is what I see when I read a poem:


It's so frustrating.

Don't let them make you think that you're to blame for not getting it, Mags. If they can't connect the failure is all theirs... if it even makes any sense at all to the author.

Here's one I didn't even have to make up myself:

Quite vaporous above the flowers
I enjoy hot spells beyond the trees
Intense! The Knight never ends
All heavy among the dream
I find splintering rabbits below the land
Whoa! The Fool was hard
Strange and red over the bullshit
I dream of wanting eggs among the mist
Beware! The stink has vanished
penniless tired
at a crossroads
all his wounds in front
How many times
such a man
seek the road back
while the snow fell

http://www.languageisavirus.com/automatic_poetry_generator.html

[xSilverPhinx]

Quite vaporous above the flowers
I enjoy hot spells beyond the trees
Intense! The Knight never ends
All heavy among the dream
I find splintering rabbits below the land
Whoa! The Fool was hard
Strange and red over the bullshit
I dream of wanting eggs among the mist
Beware! The stink has vanished
penniless tired
at a crossroads
all his wounds in front
How many times
such a man
seek the road back
while the snow fell

"I dream of wanting eggs among the mist" 

I don't "get" much poetry either, Mags. I do like William Blake, though.

[xSilverPhinx]

http://www.languageisavirus.com/automatic_poetry_generator.html

I gave it a try:

All florescent beside the light

Very poisonous against the fog
I converse with cold leeches under the gods 
Can you dig it? The Queen is hard
Quite desirous before the trees 
You bend dazzling weirdness over the clouds
Intense! The thought has come
All florescent beside the light
You feel comely teeth before the wind
Take cover! The Knight will come 
trusting unsafe
never meeting
something missing
With what memories
my father
leave his home
when the world was new

[Sandra Craft]

You bend dazzling weirdness over the clouds

That's the best description of my relatives I've ever read.

[Siz]

http://www.languageisavirus.com/automatic_poetry_generator.html

I gave it a try:

All florescent beside the light

Very poisonous against the fog
I converse with cold leeches under the gods 
Can you dig it? The Queen is hard
Quite desirous before the trees 
You bend dazzling weirdness over the clouds
Intense! The thought has come
All florescent beside the light
You feel comely teeth before the wind
Take cover! The Knight will come 
trusting unsafe
never meeting
something missing
With what memories
my father
leave his home
when the world was new

Truly beautiful, a window to your soul.

What starts out as triumph soon becomes finessed into a carnival of temptation, leaving only a sense of chaos and the inevitability of a new order.

(Review courtesy of Arty Bollocks Generator)

[Magdalena]

Don't let them make you think that you're to blame for not getting it, Mags. If they can't connect the failure is all theirs... if it even makes any sense at all to the author.

OK.

[Magdalena]

Go ahead, Nam, do your thing, man. 

[Siz]

Go ahead, Nam, do your thing, man. 

P'haps we could get our long-awaited angry rant included on the same bill...?!

[Ecurb Noselrub]

Having similar discussions on another board.  There are some poems where the particular combination of words sends a chill up my spine, while others leave me flat. Same with music, which is probably a more common experience with most people.  It depends on how your brain is wired.  If a poem draws you in at the beginning, even though the individual words aren't that astounding, the flow, rhythm and combination of phrases can excite emotion.  Different for different people - either it grabs you or it doesn't.  So don't be frustrated - it's the poem's, song's, book's job to touch you.  Let it do the work.  If nothing happens, it just wasn't for you.  Nothing more to it.

[Nam]

I don't write poetry. 
Most of the time I have a hard time understanding what the poet is trying to say. I try, and I try, but I just can't seem to connect the words and say, "Oh! I see!"
--I don't see. 

This is what I see when I read a poem:


It's so frustrating.

Heh.  I have the exact same problem most of the time.  Late in high school I discovered Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost and thought things had changed for me because I could understand what they were going on about, but they turned out to be a pair of flukes.  Forty plus years later, they're still the only poets I can understand.

You understood them because they're literalists.

-Nam

[Crow]

Hahaha, Oooohhh Books you just got dissed.

[Bad Penny II]

The Cows on Killing Day
By Les Murray
All me are standing on feed. The sky is shining.

All me have just been milked. Teats all tingling still   
from that dry toothless sucking by the chilly mouths   
that gasp loudly in in in, and never breathe out.

All me standing on feed, move the feed inside me.
One me smells of needing the bull, that heavy urgent me,   
the back-climber, who leaves me humped, straining, but light   
and peaceful again, with crystalline moving inside me.

Standing on wet rock, being milked, assuages the calf-sorrow in me.
Now the me who needs mounts on me, hopping, to signal the bull.

The tractor comes trotting in its grumble; the heifer human   
bounces on top of it, and cud comes with the tractor,   
big rolls of tight dry feed: lucerne, clovers, buttercup, grass,   
that's been bitten but never swallowed, yet is cud.
She walks up over the tractor and down it comes, roll on roll   
and all me following, eating it, and dropping the good pats.

The heifer human smells of needing the bull human   
and is angry. All me look nervously at her
as she chases the dog me dream of horning dead: our enemy   
of the light loose tongue. Me'd jam him in his squeals.

Me, facing every way, spreading out over feed.

One me is still in the yard, the place skinned of feed.   
Me, old and sore-boned, little milk in that me now,   
licks at the wood. The oldest bull human is coming.

Me in the peed yard. A stick goes out from the human   
and cracks, like the whip. Me shivers and falls down
with the terrible, the blood of me, coming out behind an ear.   
Me, that other me, down and dreaming in the bare yard.

All me come running. It's like the Hot Part of the sky   
that's hard to look at, this that now happens behind wood   
in the raw yard. A shining leaf, like off the bitter gum tree   
is with the human. It works in the neck of me
and the terrible floods out, swamped and frothy. All me make the Roar,
some leaping stiff-kneed, trying to horn that worst horror.
The wolf-at-the-calves is the bull human. Horn the bull human!

But the dog and the heifer human drive away all me.

Looking back, the glistening leaf is still moving.
All of dry old me is crumpled, like the hills of feed,   
and a slick me like a huge calf is coming out of me.

The carrion-stinking dog, who is calf of human and wolf,   
is chasing and eating little blood things the humans scatter,   
and all me run away, over smells, toward the sky.

[Nam]

Hahaha, Oooohhh Books you just got dissed.

I wasn't trying to diss them but okay.

-Nam

[Sandra Craft]

Hahaha, Oooohhh Books you just got dissed.

I wasn't trying to diss them but okay.

-Nam

Crow's in his own world.