Intro Post: Making a Practice of Poetry

[jjhunter]

"Before we can be poets, we must practice"

—Mary Oliver, 'A Poetry Handbook'

J.J. here, returning to host this week on poetry as craft, one that can be cultivated and refined through practice. A little about myself, for those who don't know me from the previous times I've hosted: I'm a pupal neuroscientist and poet, neither fully accredited* (yet) or just starting out in either field. As such, I'm drawn to experimentation when it comes to poetry, and to metacognition — thinking about how I think — about writing poetry.

So. What makes a person a poet? Or perhaps I should say — what makes a person a memorable poet in a good way? (lnhammer might argue writing very bad poetry is both memorable and skilled, but those depths are not ones most of us aspire to!) Going by most dictionaries, anyone who creates poems is a poet. Would you agree? Myself, I go one step further: I think anyone who makes a practice of creating poems is a poet. To make a practice of poetry is, as I see it, to regularly realize what would otherwise be theoretical ('I'd like to write poetry more' etc.), and also to practice poetry: to exercise one's ear for the rhythm and sound of language, to sharpen the precision of one's diction, to experiment with form and syntax and the turning of lines, and most of all to integrate time & occasion to read, write, discuss, ferment poetry and poetic play into one's everyday life.

This week, I'll share with you some ways I've tried engineering "time & occasion" for poetry into my own life, and offer a sampling of resulting poems. In the meantime, I open the floor to you: do you make a practice of poetry yourself? Why or why not? Are there exercises along the lines of melannen's Some Exercises in the Craft of Writing that you think would be especially appropriate to writing poetry?


* The question of whether one needs or even ought to seek degree accreditation as a poet is one I'll leave for another time, but I think it's worth noting quantity & quality of poetry publication credits (or lack thereof) are often used informally to distinguish between 'professional' and 'amateur' poets.

Comments

[cirque]

As someone who has done a formal degree in creative writing (with equal distribution between prose and poetry), I can honestly say it was a terrible waste of time. (And money, but I like to forget about that).

I know formal poetry classes really work for some people, but IMO there's no substitute for actually writing to your own rhythm, learning to love poetry as both an art and a science, sifting through inspiration and finding your own way. In my experience that's where some of my better poetry comes from. While I was studying poetry, my poems were forced and static and geared towards what my tutor wanted, not what came naturally - which meant that my grades were good but I have never before or since been so unhappy about things I've written.

[okrablossom]

Funny that I had a similar reaction—that in my creative writing degree I had to write to expectations from my workshops which were unlike my own expectations for poetry—but that I felt it wasn't a waste of time because it taught me that I needed to write the way I write irregardless of what 12 people said each semester.

Writing with music (anaphora, refrain, alliteration) makes me happy and I learned it wasn't worth writing without them just to please workshop and other people critiquing my work. That is my voice, even if no one else delights in it.