Whispers

[dks]

I agree with Saturn. Your poems are such a sensory treat every time they're read! Seriously, you should look for a publisher. I don't know any big time publishing people but I know, without a doubt, I could get you published in at least 3 local magazines here in Virginia. Have you tried publishing locally?

...yeah, I don't know...I mean, you have to send your lambs to the slaughter, you know? And the poor things didn't ask to be born and led to such murderous dissection! Seriously, there's always someone out there who won't like your work--always. To be honest, it seems the trend these days is more abstract imagery--apparently the sought after pieces all contain only embedded slivers of uniquely idiosyncratic language and word play--what's more, they all seem to be about thematic material that the average person has to literally experience to fully sense it--like war or extreme poverty and hardship...interestingly, the poems that have won big prizes this past year deal with the empathic projection of the poet--and the speaker is some old war vet or some maritime sea dog whose values are long antiquated and almost forgotten or something along those lines...I don't know--at least that's what it seems to me...I have come to the conclusion that I would love for people to read my poetry--no matter why they read it--even if they want to cut it to ribbons--at least or perhaps one of my images or phrases will burrow into their heads and affect them in some miniscule way--even if it attacks their intellect in annoying, weasle-like fashion! That would be a great enough feat, I suppose...to be heard in any capacity...

[AsphodelElysium]

I still don't think you're giving yourself enough credit. It'll be fine but you should really think about publishing .

[dks]

I still don't think you're giving yourself enough credit. It'll be fine but you should really think about publishing .

I would very much like to...I think part of the problem is that I am unaware of all the journals that are out there to which to submit...there are eleventy-billion it seems...

Thanks so much for the confidence boosting suggestions!! You guys sure can make one feel like singing...

[AsphodelElysium]

Check this out:

http://www.amazon.com/Poets-Market-Edit ... 172&sr=8-1

Its time consuming to go through, but it gives you all the information you need to get started publishing. Cheers!

[dks]

Thanks, AE.

Man, I haven't looked through the Poet's Market since I was in undergrad!

[BrokenLyre]

I like the way your poem moves from a physical, descriptive sense to ending with a sensual, intimate touch. At least that's what strikes me - the movement. Remarkable.

If I ever get past my analytical self I may find a poet somewhere. Your poems (and others I have read on this site) are collectively pushing me to consider writing something. Thanks dks.

[Wynn]

If I ever get past my analytical self I may find a poet somewhere. Your poems (and others I have read on this site) are collectively pushing me to consider writing something. Thanks dks.

You can use "analyticalness" to your advantage! A poem is not an impromptu outpouring like a love letter––if that is the case, it would turn to over-sentimentality or melodrama––a poem must be disciplined so that it makes the reader genuinely feel the emotion it conveys. The greatest poets in the world don't usually write without analyzation and revision.

[Saturn]

I would strongly disagree with that...

A poem of course should adhere to basic principles but it doesn't have to be geometric, it doesn't have to be logical, it can be weightless, airy, incandescent and free form.

Mathematics can kill poetry, confine it in a rigid cage of measures and feet, and metre. The natural result of such strict over adherence to supposed poetic principles was the Augustan period of elegant but stale, practised poetry in the 18th century that the later romantics strove so hard to break free from.

There's a difference between analytical examination of a poem and over-egging the pudding.

What's wrong with a little sentimentality anyway?

I would argue that a love letter or poem written in the heat of the moment will invariably convey to the reader a far more visceral and genuine emotion than some cool, calculated, carefully selected verse.

Many may disagree of course, my own poetry I know well enough is very rough and unrevised, mostly spontaneous and overly sentimental but that's my own method [or lack thereof].

Rant over

[Wynn]

Immediately, "revision" becomes "over-egging."

Do you think Keats advocated writing free from discipline? Keats wrote to Shelly that Shelly's poetry was undisciplined, even though Shelly wrote in measures, feet, and metre! I was absolutely not speaking of metre.

Of course poetry can be in free form.

Since when was Poetry the only art-form where one need not learn, practice, study, work, and perfect one's craft? With that argument, any piece of writing could be called a poem, which is false.

Who said anything about math?!

Also, me being a sentimental person, I can safely say that there is a BIG difference between sentimental and over-sentimental.

[BrokenLyre]

It always amazes me how tough it is to communicate by posts. I enjoyed reading the comments on the phrase "analytical self" which seemed to cause some stir and analysis!

What I was referring to as my "analytical self" was my years of entrenched thought in scientific circles whereby my descriptions of things tend toward using the concrete language of scientific discourse. It's just hard for scientists to think "poetically" thus, when Shakespeare writes in Hamlet:

"But look! The morn in russet mantle clad
walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill"

he is describing a sunrise in perfect iambic pentameter. The lines are disciplined, structured, and wonderfully descriptive. The morning is dressed in a russet mantle and is walking over the dew on a hill in the east. Such use of metaphor, common in poetry is what I love and yet what I find hard to do because my thinking tends toward the scientific (analytical self) rather than metaphoric language. Most every scientist and engineer I know suffers from the same condition .

That's all I meant - not that poetry isn't analytical or can't use scientific terms or have great structure or discpline. Remember Keats's comment - that Newton destroyed the beauty of the rainbow.... My training is simply different than those trained to use words in more creative ways. And that's what I have to work against. "Shadows walking" (Shakespeare - MacBeth), "Seasons conspiring with the sun", (Keats' To Autumn), Naiad's with fingers pressed to lips (Keats's Hyperion) etc... is great stuff but the language doesn't comes easily to me when Shadows are 2 dimensional projections, Seasons don't conspire with anything but are merely conventional ways of expressing times in the calendrical solar year; and there are no such things as Naiad's! It is a big jump for me to think poetically and I so appreciate people like dks and others on this site who do it so well.

[AsphodelElysium]

If I may...perhaps poetry is just good balance or a taming of sorts. Its walking a line between the heart that feels and the mind that thinks. Wisdom takes the same path. Wordsworth said it best, though, poetry is "...the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings recollected in moments of tranquility." I don't believe it is your analytical mind getting in the way. Hope to read some of your poetry soon, BrokenLyre.

[dks]

I like the way your poem moves from a physical, descriptive sense to ending with a sensual, intimate touch. At least that's what strikes me - the movement. Remarkable.

If I ever get past my analytical self I may find a poet somewhere. Your poems (and others I have read on this site) are collectively pushing me to consider writing something. Thanks dks.

Thank you, infinitely, BL. I am grateful you took the time to read my lines at all!

All of the magnificently erudite comments on the dynamics of poetics--it sounds like a professors' break room in here! If I may noisy up the till with my meager two cents, let me say that part of the beauty of poetry is that it cannot be defined utterly--it is enigmatic and mysterious, yet resonant. Whether it is metered and rhymed or free and blank, it always touches still water and archs and ripples for stretches of moments thereafter--there lies its significance. You know, I always say that poets are thieves and craftsmen--they take from any and all sensations and experiences and fashion them into something entirely their own--whatever the impetus or form may be--and, as for the scientific mind, BrokenLyre, remember Keats was a student of medicine and his training pervaded his verse--like the fascination he had with the human hand (think This Living Hand, or the anatomical detail of Saturn's aged, unsceptered hand in The Fall of Hyperion) and what about William Carlos Williams? He was a working physician!...and his plums are still as cold and sweet as when I first encountered them in his unknown, yet familiar icebox.

[zebluepenguin]

WOW! You seriously should publish your poems, dks! Then the world will be like "Aaah...lovely poetry..." I then we will be like "hear, hear, we know who that exactly is!"

[dks]

WOW! You seriously should publish your poems, dks! Then the world will be like "Aaah...lovely poetry..." I then we will be like "hear, hear, we know who that exactly is!"

Thanks so much, Z. You are kind enough even to take time to read it...I thank you heartily!

[Wynn]

let me say that part of the beauty of poetry is that it cannot be defined utterly--it is enigmatic and mysterious, yet resonant.

Sorry to revive an unwanted beast,——it may be that I'm just an incorrigible old choleric that wants to draw all to my will——but what is wrong with Aristotle's definition of Poetry? "Poetry is the art of metaphor, the purpose of which is to evoke pleasure."