A View on Poetic Style

A View on Poetic Style:  “I was told once, perhaps many times, but this one time in particular: I was told I had a nice style, different style of poetry.  I guess I never think of style for the most part, when I write what I considered freedom of poetry. Let me explain: I’ve felt perhaps from the first day I wrote my first poem, in 1959 at the age twelve “Who,” poetry must reclaim substance and sense, social, psychological, and cultural realities, religion, in place of unreal ones, eccentric and abstract ones, which do not save the soul, give insight, produce a story, nor can be understood by the mind. I understand there is a borderline between prose and poetry, which comes pretty close to poetic prose, but between that there is even a finer line, it is an old line, reclaimed.

       “What this really boils down to, is: poets must represent the world of nature and men as they see them, full of color, mystery and emotion; this takes a reassertion, it is a right of the poet, and one need discard all the romance and passion for more mundane themes, if indeed this is his style approach.

Multi Meaning Poetry

Using multi meaning words in poetry seems to be, or has been a universal trait for the majority of poets…this in itself can be a hindrance, it eliminates a wide social-economical section of the population, to include several age groups, young and old alike; it produces obscure images for the reader, ones only the poet or the well developed eye of the reader can decipher. Thus, the poet has to decide, who he wants to write for or to, if it is the wider population, he needs to take into account his readers. I would not read Robert Browning’s poetry to anyone under eighteen with less than a high school education, and would prefer they had at lest two years college, and a course in literature, preferable poetry. Yet I would say anyone could read Emily Dickenson, who is considered the lesser poet, according to our Higher Educated instructions. 

       So, my objective is to affect the majority of people reading my poem (s) within the audience, if I can, then I feel I’ve done a service.  Although perhaps less praise from the well established Poet’s Journal, Cota, in the United States and England, it’s a magazine I used to read, years ago, and study their poetry styles, then figured out ninety-five percent of it was not usable for me. No discredit to them, it was not my cup of tea.  Whenever you confine yourself to a formula, you limit yourself in a one way or another. It is like taking medicine, it might be good for you, but they all have side effects.  In poetry you need to find your own voice.

#912 (5-5-2012)