Swearing Off

I'm close to swearing off the whole genre.

The more I look at poetry, short stories, and short dramas, the more I think: What was I thinking? Maybe I wasn't thinking. Creative non-fiction makes sense. So does non-fiction anything--any length. And Journalism. But poetry, non-epic? That's just strupid
Let me explain what I am getting at:

Poetry is EASY to write...when compared to novels. You can spit out a poem or a song, or a rap in the amount of time it takes to read it. Then you can revise it heavily. Then you can find publishing for it and someone reads it. Then, if you have the pleasure of watching someone read it, you realize that the interpretation that they bring to the table is not what you intended.
Some of the best poetry in the history of mankind is cleaver. --Snooty, so-called 'intelligent' people acclaim poetry because of how few words such deep complex concepts can be conveyed. But just as Good ol' Robert Frost once said: "Sometimes a Cigar is just a Cigar."
I think my entire life in the english world (since the moment I fell in love with English) I think I've been fooled into believing that poetry is good and artful. As I learn more and more about "great" poets, I realize though that there is less magic in it than I thought--just as when I learned more about movie magic I realized how simple it is and how "unmagic" it is. The difference though is that I'm less impressed with poetry and more impressed with film.

What I have come to learn is that poetry brings out emotions and truths from inside of the reader. You almost have to add your own lines in order to make sense of some poetry. When you listen to a country song you put yourself in the singer's shoes and you feel sorry for yourself. When you listen to the blues you imagine all the horrible pain and misery the singer went through to compose that song.--When you deal with poetry, the reader brings more to the table than the writer does.
"but what about how loaded a poem is?" you ask. --Sure, you can use EVERY trick in the book to prove your point--and you SHOULD--but if your reader doesn't know how to recognize those things then what good does it? If your poem only touches 10 people who will go on to force thousands of English students to understand and value your work, then what's the point? I'm all for things that the common people understand. Sure, poetry has it's place, but I say that that place is in spy newspapers, love letters, and hidden in daily conversation. I say we leave poetry to artists (visual and dramatic), as well as songwriters. Poetry on its own is utterly useless, much like painted titles are in silent films.
Movie magic still surprises me because of how simple it is to convince MOST people. It's much different than poetry.

You can't TEACH anyone anything in a poem because they have to have it inside of them already--you're merely digging it up and reminding them of it. Everyone knows that it's inhumane to be cruel to slaves because it's inhumane to be cruel to anyone--does it take a poet to teach them that or does it take a parent or God, the ultimate parent? Poetry doesn't bring up the new, it digs up the past. And any truth that the author brings to the world through their poetry is so riddled that it's not truth, it's riddles.

Essays are good. But even they have their limits. They can teach a lot and yet still be boring. And when you can't keep people excited, how will they learn?

Fiction...long form fiction. You know, with the 50,000 words or whatever. That type of fiction is not easy to write. Once you get a first draft you have to revise it, and without seeing it all one one or two pages before you it can be REALLY challenging to ensure that all the write stuff is in there. Making sure that the logic flows. Making sure that it's emotionally appealing. Ensuring that your narrator or your characters have the proper ethos to convince you for or against something. I think fiction can really change your life--better than essays or poetry.

What is drama?
Drama is the combination of novel stories--long form fiction--and poetry. I have a lot of respect for drama because it's meant to be the simplest form of a story while still retaining EVERYTHING the story contains. It's meant for brevity. 90 minutes to tell a story that would be written out into a 1,000 page novel, and then making it marketable to a mass audience (well...blockbuster films anyway). It would take me a few days to read a novel on my spare time. It would take me 90 minutes to watch a movie and gain the same information.--possibly more, because drama can't be vague. It HAS to be specific otherwise it's riddled and ends up more like poetry.


I'm thinking of swearing off poetry for a while--what am I saying, I never swore in poetry, I just wrote poetry on my spare time because it was easy and gave me something to spit out my mind, spit out my emotions, and let go of them. Let someone else interpret them--but remember, reading poetry comes more from inside of you than it does me...even if you think you've figured out what one of my poems means you can't be too sure that you aren't mixing a little bit of yourself and your own humanity (the experiences in your life that help you understand others and yourself). This is how we communicate after all, and I think poets are taking the cop-out method of sharing what they see as truth by allowing others to realize they had the truth all along.

Don't be clever, be upfront and speak in plain terms so we can all understand. Then, when everoyne understands, we can have a real discussion--real argument-- and we can come to real truth rather than individual truth.