Can a poem say who you are?
John Stuart Mills said, eloquence is heard, poetry is overheard, and wordsworth said. Poetry takes its origin from emotion, recollected in tranquility. These quotes, and so many others from poets, imply that poetry is a deeply solitary activity. And it's true that most poems are written in solitude, even if that solitude is happening in a coffee shop or on an airplane flight, which is often the case for me internally inside my head and inside my body
Nidhin George 🔷
@geo_rhymes · 4:01
And I thought about this long and hard because I imagined all the poetry that I've ever written. And when I examined the conditions, the environment of the situations in which they were written, a great majority of them were written at a time when I was feeling low, possibly after a heartbreak, at the loss of someone I loved. And a majority of my poetry do happen to be on the sadder side of life
Glenn Mann
@GlennPriceMann · 1:47
Your hopes, your fears, your concerns, your aspirations, your dreams, all of those things. So I think the poem can reveal a lot, and I believe it can say who you are, even if it's not necessarily directly understandable, if that's a correct term you would use. But I think it can reveal or translate feelings and emotions that some people will understand and people will connect to, and some will not
It's not something you go off and do in isolation, but you may create the poem in isolation, but basically you share it with the world in a very, very social setting where people can appreciate and do back and forth. And there are Musharra where people kind of respond to each other in poetry as well. So I thought you might find it interesting. Thank you
Calvin Davis
@Crippledthought · 2:44
But poetry has always been my way of, hey, you, come take a walk with me. So if I write you a poem, count yourself special because we're taking a walk together. Every word is a step on a journey that we're taking or have taken before. So when I think of poetry defining me, I would have to say one of the poems that I have written in the past was called Only 17
Becky Butler
@bc75 · 1:58
Hi, Katharine. Becky here. From visions. Expression. I do believe a poem can say who you are because, you know, our impression is visual. We do a scan up and down, make determinations on a superficial level. Then we get introduced, make small talk. Again, a superficial level. But then as you get to know somebody and spend time with them, their poetry starts to be written right before your eyes, and you see them in a totally different light
It seems to me that you may capture one small composed piece of the self in one particular poem in one particular instance. But it really takes a lifetime and hundreds and hundreds of poems to begin to get a larger sense of the way in which that self has developed and changed and accrued its little habits over a very long period of time. And the other thing that I would say is that a poem is composed, and part of the composition of the poem is the composing of the self
Hi, Glenn. I love your idea of the photograph or the snapshot. The poem capturing a very specific moment in time. And I spoke to Nidhin about the idea of the self as a moving target. And it's perfect to think of the poem as capturing that moving target in a particular moment. And I think you're absolutely right that some people will be able to participate, maybe even quite easily or intuitively in that particular portrayal of that moment, and other people will find it inaccessible
But I love the idea of this specific space for exchange and for back and forth of poetry. I and as I recall or understand it, it's you you can present your own poem and or you can present the poem of someone else, which I think is also a kind of generosity that really means a lot to me. Anyway, thank you for this and I hope that I get a chance to attend one of those gatherings someday
And then the poem and the reader or the listener will part ways at that moment. That's a beautiful, beautiful idea, and it's going to stay with me for a long time. Thank you
Becky, I think that your invocation of the image in the poem is very apt here. And it seems to me that it's through the image and the kinds of complications that the image permits, the way in which it can combine something quite concrete with something very abstract, intellectual, emotional, all, and bring them all together, allows the complex space in which a self can perhaps be apprehended. So thank you for that