#PoetryMonth Are there any happy poets? Or does great poetry require great personal suffering?
Or are there examples of poets, you know, who have lived a very happy and balanced life and yet managed to create great poetry, would love some examples either way? So either help me make my point by giving stories of poets who have been through great personal suffering and the poetry they have done, or give me examples which are basically counterexamples of very happy, well adjusted poets and the poetry they have written. Thank you
Creative Reader
@MoonPoet · 3:27
Hello. This is Stephen, and I wanted to reply to this one. This is an excellent question. It's a subject that I think about constantly. I've heard people debate it back and forth. I would assume most people lean towards it that, you know, poets write from their suffering or from pain. I assume there's a lot more examples of that
Laura L (she/her)
@Loloflow · 5:00
So whereas a person that's not highly sensitive wouldn't experience what would seem like extremes, highly sensitive people experience the depth of sadness as well as great heights of joy and beauty. But I just want to emphasize that none of this is consistent. Now, that doesn't mean we can't fall into depressions
Anisah Khan
@Anisah_Writes · 4:57
But he gets angry and he wants to leave, and he wants to see the real stars. And that shows a lot of enlightenment, right? And it shows the character just wanting to know the real thing. Let's see. And then, I guess another poem that I like when I first read it was My Papa's Waltz by Theodore Rosky. It's spelled Roethke. And I like to read this one because this one, it has a mix of, I think, hope and hurt
Anisah Khan
@Anisah_Writes · 2:22
And that's something I learned being a poet for about, gosh, I think, seven years, because I remember I used to write happy poetry in the beginning, and now I'm just writing whatever comes to mind and not faltering myself
And so I think that sometimes that can be like a very present feeling amongst poetry and poets and just the medium in general, because you tend to take a deeper look at yourself or maybe your place in the universe. But I certainly have come across poetry that I would consider happy. I think everybody in their life deals with sadness at one point, right? So it's kind of hard to divorce yourself from that, especially if you're an artist
Moe Johnson
@NeophyteSavant · 5:00
Hi. That is a really, really, really good question and I thank you so much for bringing it to the Swell community. I do believe that they are happy poets a lot more than we realize. In fact, I was listening to poem earlier today by someone who's part of the Swell community and named Quinn. It's at Quinn. That's capital two. Quinne and it's Good morning. Series number eleven turtles Grazing
It's like it really gets people down to the meat of the matter when we are responding to it or opening discussion to talk about it. So I think that when you think about happy poets or whatever, or just think about poets in general, poets usually write about their lives. And if we want to be honest, our lives are not always rainbows and sunshines
Laura L (she/her)
@Loloflow · 2:15
Yeah. Laquita, I'm glad you brought up authenticity. If we are only writing about moments that are happy or quote unquote, happy feelings, then we're not being truthful. And if you look at all of our greatest poets, the ones we revere, and all of our greatest artists, it wasn't a one note. They were brave enough to dive in to everything they were experiencing
Erica Jean
@HeyItsErica · 2:58
Hey, this is Erica. Souljourney one k. Very good question. It does seem like the best poems or the ones that really strike at someone is when it's motivated by sadness and pain. It reminds me of the Movie Five Heartbeats where the writer duck, you know, he was told that he's going to be a great writer someday when he faces pain, and he did face pain in that movie
Sumran Jot Singh
@Sumranjs · 3:15
Hi. I think this question is very direct and simple. But if you are a poet or a writer listening to this question, you are bound to be provoked. So let me attempt my point of view. Happiness is a bliss, and the expression are generally manifested in that joy of being in that ecstatic state. So, for example, if you are in love, like romantic love, you can write poetry about your lover, about her beauty, and then compare it with nature
Renee Slay
@Renee_Slay · 4:06
So I know for me, a lot of my poetry is what you say it's sad or it's angry or it's the negative emotions. Not all of it, but a lot of it. And I think that's because I generally only write about the feelings that I feel most strongly, right?
So my book, his Poetry, her Story, is filled with poems. Some are talking about health challenges, some are talking about loss of life. Some are talking about prayer and the struggles that we have within ourselves and our relationships with others. But ultimately, they all lead us to a positive outcome and that is that God will get the glory for every situation and circumstance that we face. So I do believe that poetry can be joyful. I do believe that poetry is happy
inderjit …
@inder · 5:00
Go to Emerson, go to Wordsworth, read those gentlemen and you will find such joyful celebration, such expansive poetry that it cannot be contained. Yes, it all starts with personal pain and experience of the world. And when that sharp pain, the pang that rises, is experienced and inder, really filled up sack of poetry inside is pierced and it starts to glow. I think that's when the honeygorm is broken and the honey starts dripping
I don't know exactly why, but the people that live on the fringe of society, that have deep psychological issues, mental issues stemming from childhood, those are the people that write the best stuff. And this is not just me saying that, I guess I'm a well adjusted person, I guess, but I'm not at the same time, I basically can do enough to basically just get to working back, for the most part, because my brain just goes up and down a lot
Laura L (she/her)
@Loloflow · 4:06
You're. Hi everyone. I'm enjoying this conversation. I been thinking about it quite a bit and I just want to offer something. I think the conversation needs a bit of a tweaking. I'm hearing that what people would like is to feel a blissful or trans ascendant state when they are reading poetry. And that's amazing. That is one of the many gifts that we can receive from art
Glenn Mann
@GlennPriceMann · 3:47
You're. Hey, this is Glenn and this is a really great question and I think there's a lot of dimension to it. Someone who I really respect and admire is not directly related to poetry is Richard Rohr. He's a Franciscan priest, a spiritual leader, founder of the center for Action and Contemplation and he often talks about out that when it comes to the heart of matter like our real purpose and our real identity most people only live at the circumference. They never get to the center
Cheyonia Wade
@Chey · 4:46
It's something that you do in private, it's something that you need time to cultivate. And because of that, I think that's where you get the more depressed poems, the sad poems. You get them from connecting to those painful places or those memories or those broken things that have hurt you. And it's not something that I would say is a bad thing because that's how we get some of the best music. That's how we get some very meaningful poetry
I think a good poet expresses the entire range of human emotion and experience that includes the sad stuff, includes the ticked off stuff, and it also includes the happy stuff. One of my favorite poems is translated from Issa by Jane Hirschfield. On a branch floating down river a cricket singing