Arrrrggggg...

[Discovery]

Hi, this is going to be boring for everybody, sorry. I have been trying to write something quite good for what seems like an age now and all that comes is not good at all! Therefore, it is with a sense of frustation and with the knowledge that this kind of thing is deeply boring and uninteresting to anyone but the author, that I post this thing.

My pathetic attempts at poetry distress me
To a degree that cannot be
Quite healthy.
To align this list of symbols in such a way
As to make people
Believe I have a fine soul
Is no noble goal
But a selfish direction of wasted thought.
Isn’t it quite perverse
to pursue my faults and failures
In yet more verse?

Right I'm done, and feel a little better. Perhaps one day i'll resign myself to the fact that i'll never write like Keats...one day!

[greymouse]

Oh man, Discovery, we've all been there on a regular basis. I don't find it boring at all to humorously point out what all good writers have agonized over. Being honest and humble about the difficulty in the poetic process is a healthy pill to swallow for the aspiring writer, so you are definitely ahead of the pack.

I found when I needed to increase confidence and believe in myself again (basically break writer's block), I tried to master short technical forms such as haiku, sonnets, villanelles, sestinas, etc. The mechanical pitfalls involved distracted me from my other concerns, and it became paradoxically more liberating! Of course, I still suck at poetry, but that's a totally separate issue ... Keats was fortunate to live in an age where this approach was taken for granted. You'll do great, but you may find you don't want to write like Keats, you want to write like Discovery.

[dks]

Well put, greymouse.

Discovery, I, for one, rather like your poem. I like anyone's verse that tangibly conveys tone or a voice. That is never easy to achieve. When I feel that urge to write, it comes in the form of an image in my head, I then try to make a carbon copy of that image in the form of words on the page...poetry, for me, is almost like a dictation of sorts...a mirror image of the mind's picture. After communicating that image, I then sort of color the picture in with feeling and voice...that kind of feeling that comes up from the inside out--an ache, if you will, to impart a certain something in only that way...

...sounds like utter nonsense, I know, but that's the best way for me to describe it.

[Saturn]

You'll do great, but you may find you don't want to write like Keats, you want to write like Discovery.

Exactly.

I started off writing just like you Discovery, trying to emulate my favourite poets and most writers, and even the greatest poets have done this.
It takes a long time and much thought and perserverance to create your own unique voice, your own style.

I'm not sure that even now, seven years after beginning to write, I even have my own style yet, but it's what I aim for.

Don't be discouraged - as Keats himself said:

“…Poesy alone can tell her dreams,
With the fine spell of words alone can save
Imagination from the sable charm
And dumb enchantment. Who alive can say
‘Thou art no Poet; may’st not tell thy dreams?’
Since every man whose soul is not a clod
Hath visions, and would speak, if he had lov’d
And been well nurtured in his mother tongue.”
‘The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream’ Canto I, 8-15.

[Discovery]

Thanks very much everyone I was too scared to check the replies for a while, but they are all supportive and helpful- so thank you! On a trawl though the internet the other day I found a book by Stephen Fry called 'The Ode Less Travelled', which is a sort of poetry primer. Does anyone know what it is like? Is it worth looking into?