Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris O'Carroll
My involvement with poetry has taught me that it's almost never a good idea to boast that people find my work life changing. Some of what you've posted here feels an awful lot like a grievance in search of a literary theory.
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Definitely not my intent to boast or grieve, but I can see how it was read that way. I'll chalk it up to inexperience with this forum.
I hoped to give others space to post in this thread, but that doesn't seem to be happening so I'll add another post.
IMO, poetry is a unique genre in that it's pure literary expression, and a bit difficult by default. In other art forms like painting and music there isn't much demanded of the consumer, and when there is it tends to be a turn off.
But in poetry almost
everything is difficult and demands that the reader show up and pay attention. This isn't something that we're particularly good at, because by and large most of us have more important things to do.
For myself as a reader of poetry, I'm more of an anthropologist than poet. I'm fascinated by how people express themselves in the form, what they say, the themes that repeat, and so on. And as a writer of poetry I've found a great deal of freedom to express myself in ways that I couldn't have done in any other form.
To me that's what makes poetry such a beautiful art form, there is a touch of divinity in it. But I think many of us have a tough time seeing the written word from that perspective. To many, any type of book is just a bunch of stale words on a page. On a good day we're usually just hoping that what we read validates our preexisting worldview, including in poetry.
I'm not
angsty about that by any means, but the best experiences I've had as a poet were absolutely when I was engaging with other poets. These were usually people who had a natural appreciation of the form. Granted, I know others
are out there, but admittedly I haven't looked for them very hard.
This is one of the reasons I've shown up at this forum. I'm raising a family and don't have the time to become active in my community, so this place is one of the few outlets I've found to even talk about poetry. Most of my immediate contacts just aren't that interested.
To put this in terms of the thread topic (in a more neutral way), this is all to say that, IMO, poetry is a specialist field, and maybe even something like a club.