Monday, August 10, 2015

Why I Write and Love Poetry

Today's giveaway is a poetry collection and The 2015 Poet's Market, flipped through to check but bought new!

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Ploughshares recently asked on Twitter:  What do you think is the role of poetry in the world?
Someone answered, "To connect us".
Another answered that "Art is its own reason".

I can't argue any responses that were given, though I think the question should have been:  Why turn to poetry when you can write an essay, memoir, or novel?
After all, any writing can connect people.  Other forms of writing are art, too.  Themes, emotions, ways of seeing the world... ALL can be expressed without poetry as easily as through it.

My response to the question?
@pshares I'm simple, I guess. Poetry exists to alter size. An entire war, a haiku's breath... a bird, 30 pages. It repacks, reshapes...

Poetry can alter anything it wants to in any way it wants to.  It can exist merely for linguistic beauty, without making one bit of coherent sense, and no other type of writing can get away with it.  A person can write three gorgeous lines about a train ride and it be a poem unto itself.
It is the least formulaic of writing types, unless you want it to be so, then it is one of the most strict ones out there.
It tackles any subject, no matter the size.  Try submitting an essay or even microfiction about just a clothespin!

Beauty and excess versatility... practicality and surprise... reshapes and responds.
Poetry is the transformer of the writing world and it never has to turn into the same thing twice unless the writer wishes.
Who wouldn't love that much freedom?

Why do you write the type of writing you do?  What writing is the most difficult or your least favorite?





3 comments:

  1. Fiction writing is my favorite. I do a TON of nonfiction writing and when I get to work on one of my books, it feels like a luxury!

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  2. I haven't actually written any poetry in quite some time but I've always felt I had the opposite reasons for writing poetry and fiction. With fiction, it's more like an escape and I can write about anything and anyone. But my poetry has always been personal, or at least written in my own voice--even if it was about something as simple as fingernails or eating an apple (yup, I have poems about both of those things!) .

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  3. To me, any type of writing is for the purpose of expressing ourselves in ways that we don't normally do in daily life. Highly technical writing can be a big bore to me unless I understand the concepts well and there's a lot of things I don't understand.

    Lee
    Tossing It Out

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