Personal vs. Public

[redlightfeeling]

SO

 

when writing poetry, does it matter who you're writing to?

 

should you write whatever you feel, with what ever words you feel work well? Should you take pride in wording out your emotions so that you feel you have done it exactly how it is in your head? Basically, when writing a poem, is it ok if the meaning is hidden and only you can truly understand it?

 

or..

 

should you take your emotions, understand them to a degree, compare them with the universal language of emotion, and write them down so that (if well educated) people can understand exactly what you are feeling? Should you write poetry so that its an extroverted expression? Should the meaning of them poem, and the emotion of the poem be so well written that it can be universally understood if worded exactly?

 

basically, is it ok for poetry to be understood mainly by the author or is the true value based on how well an author takes his emotion and conveys it so that it can be universally understood?

 

 

I've thought about this and I have my answer.

I think when poetry is an artform it should be able to be universally understood. When I say universally, I mean that even if someone has never had a certain emotion, they can still catch a wiff of what the author intends. To me: poetry is art. Art is expression. If poetry is not able to be understood (when I say understood, I mean able to convey an emotion/idea clearly) then it has lost some value.

 

Here is an example of an image that I feel can be universally understood: http://www.wisdomportal.com/Christmas/Figure5InGold.html

It is so specific that I don' think too many people would disagree with what kind of an image you get from it. Its short yes, but it builds a larger image than what is written down. i'm not sure if this is what I mean. Its too hard for me to explain, if you get it awesome, if not, nevermind. http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/william1.html a lot of his poems are like that.

 

Even with confessional poetry, which has a strong emphasis on writing for self apeasement, has a sort of universal appeal. This poem http://www.internal.org/view_poem.phtml?poemID=356 'Daddy' by Sylvia Plath is probably the most famous confessional poem, but it still can be understood by the reader (if the person can analyze poetry correctly). The emotion and intention can be 'felt' through out the poem even though it was never addressed.

[Xiao_Chun]

basically, is it ok for poetry to be understood mainly by the author or is the true value based on how well an author takes his emotion and conveys it so that it can be universally understood?

It depends on what do we mean by

[Camy]

walking away, don't want to be banned.

[Naiilo]

Truthfully, I think that one should, as a poet, express their feelings as honestly as possibly within their poetry to convey whichever meaning or emotion they want. Poetry is an expressive form of language used by poets. Not all of us who write poetry can be deemed a poet, just as not all of us that build tree-houses can be deemed carpenters. It is referred to as a craft because it must be polished like a gemstone. I prefer Pope's definition of poetry: "What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed."

 

BUT! - - - If one decides to publish, or--as I have heard--liberate, thier poetry, then that poet must take into account his or her audience, as all writers must do, if s/he wants others to a) understand the emotion / message being conveyed within the piece, not consider the writer to be a hack, and c) give acknowledgement of the writer's artistry.

 

 

***On another note:

I disagree with Birdsofafeather's painting analogy. To compare schools of artistry is to compare times in history. Realism is just as much art as anything Abstract. When it comes to art, you cannot truely define it, you can only appreciate it. (Read some Ruskin!) From appreciation comes the designation. It might be interesting to examine two paintings, a Realistic woman and an abstract woman, side-by-side. By comparing the pieces you will find that the Realistic painting's message is not in the superficial image, but the skill of artistry behind how, for instance, the woman's curled, red, hair floats in the water in precise synchronization with her soft, white gown, how the flowers in the pond sit just on the surface, and what that image says about the period in which the painting was brought to existence. In the abstract painting you might focus more on the image's shapes; how the woman in this painting has a face made up of hard edges and soft edges, how one eye is larger than the other and how her lips seem less inviting than the beak of a squid. Each painting, like each poem, is different, and is art when its artfulness is agreed upon.

 

----More:

One thing is clear about art: Art is not universally understood. It is subjective and cannot be universally understood. There are widely accepted symbols, images, themes, etc... within art, but you cannot make art universal unless you could streamine and completely globalize one culture without interference or existance of other cultures.

 

 

/rant

 

 

See you...

Edited October 13, 2006 by Naiilo

[Luc]

I didn't vote because I don't have a clearly defined answer in my mind.

 

To ME, there are two reasons to write a poem:

 

1. You are feeling things that you need to put into words in order to get them out of your head.

 

2. You are feeling things that you find so consuming that you want to share them with others, to try to make them (or enable them) to feel what you are feeling or to see what you are seeing in your head and heart.

 

Depending upon which reason you focus on, you could be writing the words for yourself or for others.

 

But in general, I think a poem should be written so that the person reading it can find some meaning in it--whether that meaning is exactly what the poet intended or a meaning that the reader finds in himself. To ME, that is often the beauty of poetry. It doesn't matter to me if people understand what I was feeling when I wrote a poem--if they find something in my words that touches something inside of them.

 

That being said, I alwalys hated it in school when we had to analyze a poem and explain what the poet meant. Reading a poem isn't--or shouldn't be--like taking a test. You shouldn't be able to "get it wrong" when you read it. You should just be able to feel it--or not; because poems are like paintings in that they either strike you or they don't. And if they don't, then "analyzing" them becomes a bit like measuring the geometric shapes in a painting--more like an exercise in math than appreciation of the art.

 

...so still without an answer for your poll. And it took me ALL THAT just to say "I don't know."

[redlightfeeling]

ha, ok, so my opinion really didn't change that much but I don't think I did a very good job of explaining my idea in the first place?

 

I still think that a great poet really knows how to take his idea/emotion and make other people understand/feel it. If no one understands/feels the poem then I don't think the poet really accomplished anything. Even abstract poetry (words that when put together usually have no sentence structure.. blah blah blah) will make you feel something. And, where I think I was most misunderstood, is that the more efficient the poet is in making the reading feel HIS emotion rather than something they derive from it (ofcourse they'll still derive their own emotion but I mean in addition to this) the better the poet is.

 

I think in most cases poetry that isn't able to be understood/felt correctly is just journaling. Though I think that is an interesting and important way to gain insight into someones life, I don't think its neccessarily poetry.

 

lol, I hate writing and explaining myself in paragraphs. Thats why I'm definitely more of a poet than I am a author.

 

P.S. I still kind of agree with you all, and I got a lot of understaning out of some of the things you said, but I'm keeping to my understanding of it even if I can't convey it properly

 

I'm sure our ideas overlap a lot more than I can express. And ofcourse there is no right answer because people have been debating this forever (by people I mean literature nerds). hehe

[Bondwriter]

Poetry, song lyrics, fiction: in my opinion, one should always be his/ her first reader. I tend to like poets who speak of their own experience, however trite it may be, and seem to reach out to a more universal crowd.

 

From my experience, it's nice to have an audience in mind, and with fiction I tend to do that (even though readers usually quicly become a reader, the guy who sent you this positive feedback...)

 

But with poetry I know I must like it and be able to reread it weeks later and still get this first emotion I had when I wrote.

[AFriendlyFace]

I didn't vote because I don't have a clearly defined answer in my mind.

 

To ME, there are two reasons to write a poem:

 

1. You are feeling things that you need to put into words in order to get them out of your head.

 

2. You are feeling things that you find so consuming that you want to share them with others, to try to make them (or enable them) to feel what you are feeling or to see what you are seeing in your head and heart.

 

Depending upon which reason you focus on, you could be writing the words for yourself or for others.

 

But in general, I think a poem should be written so that the person reading it can find some meaning in it--whether that meaning is exactly what the poet intended or a meaning that the reader finds in himself. To ME, that is often the beauty of poetry. It doesn't matter to me if people understand what I was feeling when I wrote a poem--if they find something in my words that touches something inside of them.

 

That being said, I alwalys hated it in school when we had to analyze a poem and explain what the poet meant. Reading a poem isn't--or shouldn't be--like taking a test. You shouldn't be able to "get it wrong" when you read it. You should just be able to feel it--or not; because poems are like paintings in that they either strike you or they don't. And if they don't, then "analyzing" them becomes a bit like measuring the geometric shapes in a painting--more like an exercise in math than appreciation of the art.

 

...so still without an answer for your poll. And it took me ALL THAT just to say "I don't know."

I am most in agreement with Luc.

 

 

I think really it all comes down to what the poet's intent is.