Pace yourself next time
that you read War and Peace, please
It is a big book
Anyone can write poetry and make it meaningful. Real writing talent lies in writing consistently, purposefully, and for a VERY long time. Take War and Peace for example. One of the masterpieces of all time. The writing throughout is consistent, it serves the purpose of providing the Russian point of view on the war of 1812, and it is most definitely long.
Someone could say the same thing in 100 words or less, written with stanzas and rhyme and pterodactyls--okay, maybe not pterodactyls, but something equally cleaver--but it just wouldn't compare to War and Peace. No one would remember it the way that they remember the characters in the book. No one would care as much about the war of 1812 if they read the poem compared to the epic novel. Most of all, and I dare someone to make me put my foot in my mouth on this one, no one will think the person who wrote the poem about the war of 1812 is a better writer than Leo Tolstoy.
Good writing is always consistent writing. You can't write a story and change your writing style midway through. You can't stray from a theme of symbols that you established in the beginning of your story and expect your audience to be happy. For instance, I once told a verbal story about a dog named Longdog. Longdog was a long dog. He walked with us for a long way. He had a long tail. When we drove a long way away from him, Longdog was sad.--I carried this story on for quite a long time (no pun intended, this is serious stuff!) I explained all of the adventures that Longdog, myself, and my friend had. In reality, Longdog and I only knew each other for an hour or two. He was a friendly beagle that took a liking to me. I never once said that Longdog was a beagle while telling this story--that was the point. Nor did I mention that Longdog was fat--because Longdog was supposed to be long, not fat. If I would have, at the end, started saying that Longdog was fat, he rolled with us for a while. He wanted us to carry him because he was lazy--none of that would have worked for the story.
Consistency is important, that's why there are so many rules to writing baecus eff yaa dont fullow rulls and stae consistant ppl have a hard time under ftanding u.
As reader we expect everything we read to have a distinct purpose. It needs to make sense to us, and for us to like it, it needs to have meaning. I've written about this before: in everything we do in life, we need to find closure. Just like computers with a never ending error loop, if we don't find closure in something we have a hard time getting past it. Still today people have a hard time wrapping their head around 9/11 (it's been 10.5 years) because they don't think it make sense. There are comic books and comic book movies that, to this day, I can't seem to understand or get over--why would anyone want to sit through hours of Dragon Ball Z just to watch Goku charge up and blast Vegeta?
The movie Fight Club is a good example of closure. It doesn't make 100% sense that Tyler Durdan is also the main character but because we are led on to believe that in your sleep you can do crazy things and not know it, even talk to yourself, it establishes perfect closure. The closure is so good in that film that it never gets old watching it, because the next time you watch the film you're analyzing why it makes sense, and the next time you're confirming that it does make sense. Closure is magical, it can create purpose where there is no purpose.
So that poem that T.S.Eliot wrote--nope. Doesn't establish closure. [you know which poem I'm talking about!] It doesn't serve a purpose either unless you want to use the cop-out line: "T.S. Eliot was trying to express that nothing makes sense anymore."--I don't buy that, he's correct, nothing makes sense, but when did it ever make sense? And why not simply say that in one line? Or, instead of saying it in one line and never writing it down, why not write a novel about it or a book about it? Just like there are certain things that should never be said outloud, there are also certain things that should never be written down--especially not in a poem!
Length is always an issue. Have you ever paid for a movie that was less than 60 minutes long?--sure, a television episode might be less than that, but episodes purposefully aren't the full story. If what you have to say can be said in 5 minutes, why not stand on your soap box and talk for 5 minutes? I know there are a lot of political activists that write poetry. I think that's stupid. Not even the poetry of the revolutionary war really influenced the war, the thing that influenced the war was the outstanding leaders who were on the ground in America supporting the American cause.
Poetry isn't going to make you famous, it shouldn't make you rich, and it is not going to change the world. It is too short to change the world, because the moment a person is finished with your poem, they're going to forget about it and carry on with their life. They do it with books too, but because there is so much written into a book, little things remind them about the book and they start to develop habits based around those books.
Poetry is utterly useless by itself and should never make anyone rich. There is something wrong with the MacArthur foundation for giving out an award for poetry. Have you ever heard of Kay Ryan? What has Kay Ryan done and why is he ranked with Roland Fryer who is one of the top 8 young economists in the world during a time when we need good young economists to find solutions to economic problems?
Still not convinced that poetry is the easiest thing in the world and shouldn't be considered a respectable art?
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