teilo
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Post by teilo on Sept 6, 2009 17:04:34 GMT -5
Love/Relationships have got to be the subject most commonly written about and read when it comes to poetry (think Shakespeare's sonnets, John Donne, William Wordsworth, all those Hallmark poems we've talked about in "The Manifesto"). Personally, after having read so many and tried my hand at writing a few, I'm inclined to avoid almost all of them. It seems as though all but a few simply repeat old themes and forms (courtly love is still alive and well today, Jane Austin is read as much as ever). Of course, the problem with my view is that if so many people read these poems, and write them, isn't love/relationship poetry the type of poetry that speaks to people the most eloquently?
I'm not trying to say that Shakespeare's sonnets are an inferior form of poetry because they're about love (or Hallmark poems for that matter, they're bad for a very different reason). I am trying to say that love poetry becomes boring at a certain point and I simply don't want to read it after awhile.
Do you agree with this? Is this something that ought to be added to The Writer's Block's selection process? Am I a complete idiot without a romantic bone in my body? How would you go about sifting through the astounding amount of love/relationship poetry out there? (Or would you . . .)
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Post by ben on Sept 7, 2009 13:13:59 GMT -5
My immediate response is that love/relationship poetry is often extremely intimate and personal to the poet; often the poet will be writing to or about a lover, and the words in the poem will hold definite, valuable meaning for both of them in the relationship. The problem for me is that outside of the writer and receiver of the love poem, the words will usually seem quite cliche, overdone, and boring. The value of most of these sorts of poems, I would say, is in a private, communicative context - as opposed to a public forum of impact-oriented writing like The Writer's Block. That's not to say they're any less important or worthwhile as poetry, but that their 'purpose' so to speak should be to, in most cases, remain as a private gesture of love.
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Post by ben on Sept 7, 2009 13:21:58 GMT -5
Just curious: in the context of this discussion, what do people make of "Hair Shirt" by Lisa Fiorindi in Issue #2 of the Writer's Block? Is it an example of a love/relationship poem that has meaning outside the two people involved? Is it too esoteric and hard to understand? Should we not have published it? Or is it the kind of love/relationship poem that we should publish?
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tams
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Post by tams on Sept 13, 2009 23:41:47 GMT -5
When it comes to love/relationship poetry, I feel that it is what people normally write about because its easier for them. I am not a huge writer, but when I do write my thoughts down or when i write a poem, it is 90% of the time about someone I am into. I think that people write more about love/relationships because they find it easier to write on paper then to say it verbally to the person it is about.
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Post by julian on Sept 14, 2009 18:08:56 GMT -5
Having had love poetry written for me and then read to me, I can only say that for the most part - it was not all that interesting, since I did find it Cliched, even though it was related to me and the relationship - but that dosn't mean it was well written, original or interesting.
But i enjoyed the sentiment none the less...
In terms of publishing "love Poems" I would look at them on an poem to poem basis. If a love poem is submitted, that meets the criteria of the editors - then it should be allowed. simply to deny the entire the entirety genera of poems wont allow anything new to grow in that genera.
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Post by amberlee on Sept 19, 2009 20:21:43 GMT -5
Ben, I think you had a great point about how personal and private love poetry is. Even looking at the well written love/relationship poetry is and arguably has to be riddled with private and initmate references. Obviously the well written pieces have enough that everyone can empathize with or else it wouldn't produce the viseral reaction that is so intrinsic to reading and experiencing a good piece of writing.
I think Hair Shirt was an interesting piece because it was almost lyrical in its pace, but was to esoteric to actually understand. The rhythem of the peice and in particular the beginning presents an intimacy that is easily identifiable to me having been in a long term relationship and spending those hours in bed chatting, but the rest of the peice then falls into the trap of overwhelming the reader with those private thoughts and confessionals that love poetry fulfills. Hair Shirt doesn't seem to be just about love either talking about issues such as body image and some religious reference that I don't understand but seems to be something about burdens and family ties.
Yes the sentiments behind love poetry are always shall I say nice, and can arguably be beautiful but I feel the question is, how do we break the cliche that is now love poetry? Is there actually anything new we can say or write about that would mean something beyond the lover we are writing for?
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Post by jpazdziora on Sept 28, 2009 14:27:32 GMT -5
The discussion so far inevitably reminds me of the quote attributed to Chesterton: 'A man prefers to wipe his own nose, and to write his own love poems.' I.e., there is a personal poignancy of intimacy that we simply refuse to share. It's the Cyrano situation, isn't it? Ideally, we're not hiring professional poets to ghostwrite out letters to our significant others. And Cyrano's verses could only be effective because he loved the gal himself, as I recall. I disagree, however, with the thought that love poetry has been overtaxed. If it has, well, good-bye to the human race, and all we have left is exhausted, passionless sex. Preserving the species has never felt more of a chore. 'Poor Aphrodite! We have sandpapered all the mirth from her face.' Call me a Romantic if you will--I freely admit I tend that direction--but I think the love poem as such remains one of the most enduring art forms. (Simple historical fact, as long as there's been written language, there's been love poems--from red roses to treading on dreams.) And think for a moment how much of great world literature of any pretension somehow involves the emotion of the love poem. Love has kept us writers in the trade for -- well, ever. I think amberlee nailed it in asking, what is the new love poetry? Where are the fresh words and images? Jane Austen might do well for a lot of people, but, while I admit Emma would have been cool to hang out with before Knightley cut it, we impoverish ourselves when we're not writing love poetry of our own. That goes for words and phrases, not just works of art. The cliches might well make for a lot of perfect evenings, but they make for lousy poems. How's this for a suggestion? The best love poetry reflects most truthfully the emotions and experiences of the individual poet. It doesn't have to be written for a specific person per se--there's of course hot debate whether Shakespeare wrote for himself or a character--but it does have to be by a specific person. It has to reflect the reality of that individual's love, rejection, excitement, depression, and so on. By becoming as narrow as an individual, it grows as wide as the world. But, teilo, I don't think this means even the best love poems always have to be spot on for everybody. It's a rare poem that always speaks with the same power every time it's read. I think that's because we're not always in the same place to receive it. After I've been reading about the Holocaust, I don't want to reach for Browning or Keats. It's hard to know what to reach for, frankly, but love poetry isn't it. Another day, though, it might be. And that, I think, is reason to hope. |
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Post by amberlee on Oct 30, 2009 13:05:10 GMT -5
Wow what a great reply. I think you hit it on the nose when you talked about hope and truth. Truly love poetry cannot provoke any sense of emotion without exposing the inner truth of one's feelings. I suppose that's why its so intimate and so hard to do currently when we have exhausted the cliches that once spoke so prolifically.
This last post also brought to mind that most love poetry, at least that I have read has to reflect some sense of hope. Hope that the paramour may return the feeling, hope that the lover will stay, hope that this "feeling" won't end. I suppose when you get comfortable with these things and the infatuation wears off, people forget those feelings of hope and yearning. Maybe we've just all gotten to comfortable. Maybe because of all the other sources we now have to express that initial stage of love/infatuation, we've forgotten how to express the rest.
I know I've certainly read my fair share of Women's novels, a genre that dedicates itself to being able to express infatuation to happily and comfortably ever-after. Maybe we should take some pointers back from this medium. No don't look at the Harlequins, but the title to Carol Sheilds novel The Republic of Love always struck me as interesting. Her characters literally moved into the Republic of Love upon meeting each other. Carol had a point in saying we go somewhere different when love is involved.
So how and where do we harness that again? I'll certainly post something if I find it/possibly even write it. What do others think? I may just be letting my Women's novels get the best of me here.
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Post by jpazdziora on Oct 30, 2009 18:01:21 GMT -5
Thanks for your thoughts, amberlee. I do think that poetry in general--and love poetry in particular--is about hope and truth. Perhaps we could say it's a hope for truth, or the truth of hope. Certainly love poetry embodies desire for hope to become truth. And that forward impetus can, I think, give power to our grasp as writers. As Browning said, 'A man's reach must exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?'
I think you're absolutely right when you say that we're going somewhere different when love is involved. We get to comfort looking at it from the distance, maybe, and don't realize that we're called to venture into this new place, through the 'shadowy borders'. Perhaps the image shouldn't be 'harnessing' that as much as 'pursuing' it. Certainly, it is like Tolkien's Faerie, in that it is a perilous place, with 'pitfalls for the unwary and dungeons for the overbold'. But I think that our aim is to explore all these things, to cut new trails and find new words.
As to how--I guess just how we do any other writing. Write until we think we're finally written our best, and then try to write something better.
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Post by amberlee on Nov 7, 2009 18:59:36 GMT -5
Thanks for writing back. I really enjoyed the quotes you used in the previous posts because I think they sum up the vulnerability of relationships/love well. There is something so naked in the written expression of love, something I think, that feels so inherently truthful and "real" that I wonder if most are simply at a loss for words when trying to talk about it (truth). Mainstream lyrics are probably the most prominent example of expressing emotions now, but as we've mentioned in this stream and others, generally lyrics work in a reductive sense, expressing the bare minimum with basic cliches to produce emotional connections.
Truth, when it comes to love has and continues to be frightening and a risk. Maybe because culture has moved away from this deeper vulnerability it has become a greater challenge to identify and from there articulate love, especially in writing. I'm not sure, but personally I have found that some of those intense moments are so profound and powerful they seem unutterable. Have we become to private? Or does the intensity of the feeling warrant reflection simply to vulnerable and frightening to a population washed of enriching and challenging perceptions and prose to articulate?
Transitioning back to the use of lyrics, I have found an interesting exception to the rule, Musicals. Talking to a friend several weeks ago, he mentioned that he thought musicals have become so successful because they are confessionals set to music. Musicals are this interesting hybrid of prose and lyrics conveying the story of an individual's life and their surrounding relationships. I'm generalizing here I realize, but looking at examples like Wicked, Hairspray, Fiddler on the Roof, West Side Story, all were made in different eras but all relate stories concerning relationships (best friends, loving yourself, relationship to God and faith, star crossed lovers, respectively). Musicals are meant to portray love stories for the audience identify personally. As this is mostly done through song, the lyrics have to encapsulate deeper prose to emphasize the meaning, characterization, and emotion of the character and their story.
Now feel free to debate this obviously. This just seemed to be an interesting medium that is growing in popularity again and obviously resonating with a large audience looking for and using the songs and lyrics to articulate love (example, does anyone remember all the singing after Moulin Rouge, in particular the Elephant Love Medley and Come What May?). I realize most of my audience here is men, but since Moulin Rouge there has been a slew of musicals either remade or original that only seem to be gaining popularity, mostly about love.
So I'm wondering if this is an untapped (and often disparaged) resource that we, as writer's should consider in looking at writing about love. What are your thoughts?
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Post by jpazdziora on Nov 18, 2009 12:27:11 GMT -5
Thanks for this comment, amberlee. I've given some thought to the whole 'love poetry' issue, and I appreciate that you have, too.
As a disclaimer--yes, I'm a bloke, and I've not seen Moulin Rouge. Sorry! But musicals are in high circulation in my wife's family, so I'm not oblivious to the genre. I'm not quite a musical geek, but on my way.
I think you're spot on about musicals. Some of the best lyrics out there are in musicals--Steve Sondheim or Ira Gershwin, for my money. And they tend to have much more poetic and creative lyric than almost anything in pop music. Also, they operate on multiple levels--children and grown-ups can alike enjoy the music and the stories and the songs. They grow richer with the telling, you can't absorb them all at once.
Also, I'm intrigued by the increasing correlations between love and truth. On one level, love poetry brings the two together when we're 'authentic' about our 'feelings'. In a deeper sense, I do believe that 'true love' and 'true truth' (if you will) may well be the same thing.
I don't mean love as a 'self-authenticating act of the will'--I choose to love this person and my choice makes it true because I will it. That degenerates far too quickly into selfishness and egotism. I mean that perhaps, when we understand love, we'll find that we've understood truth. And perhaps, when we've found truth, we'll find that it was love. That perhaps the most truly human identity is that of 'Beloved'.
Does this make any sense, or am I taking crazy pills here?
I don't think we've become too 'private'. I think we've become too isolated. There's a lot of fear in poetry these days, in society--much of if justifiable. Fear of betrayal, of pain, of waking up one day and finding out that none of it was worth it. Safety has come to equal keeping people at a distance, talking in cliches.
Combine this with a consumer/producer mindset that cautiously refuses to venture without assurance of success. We will not risk finding our own words to speak love, because we do not want to be hurt, and we do not want to risk being misunderstood and 'failing' in the market.
Call it misplaced priorities, I guess. It's like you said, 'the intensity of feeling' is 'vulnerable and frightening' when deeper meaning and thoughtful understanding have been stripped and glazed and gutted--when we are fed image and immediacy and sixty-second resolutions to all problems.
In one sense, the last century has shattered the world so much, I think we use these things (I used to, at any rate) to drown out its weeping. Fear of love, fear of being loved, fear of pain--coupled with our own sense of not being good enough. Not being worth loving. Which of course flies in the face of 'true love'.
I don't know how many people get to experience that--that may be another reason the love poem dissolves into ribald sentiment.
This may be why musicals are so popular. We want to be reassured of a happy ending, of some sort. We want, at least, to see--maybe just glimpse--what true love could look like. In 'Fiddler', it's interesting--the lyricist for Golde and Tevye's duet--'Do you love me?'--could never listen to that song without crying. He realized later that it was precisely because that conversation--'After twenty-five years, it's nice to know.'--is what he, as a boy, was always wishing his parents would have.
It may be that the musical's contemplation of relationship, of happy endings, of difficulties, does indeed allow people to hope--to see that glimmer of people catching their breath even in the terrors of a pogrom or a gang war to say, 'Yeah, I love you.' And to mean it.
Well, I think I've nattered on long enough for one post. You touched on a hobby horse of mine! And, like I said, I've been thinking about this a lot--even contemplating submitting a love poem to Writer's Block and seeing how it fares. Please let me know your thoughts, questions, etc.
---
jpazdziora
mrpond47.wordpress.com
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Post by jpazdziora on Nov 18, 2009 12:28:57 GMT -5
Ok, wow, that was longer than I thought...sorry for the soapbox! Guess I got carried away. Hopefully it'll be interesting enough to keep you reading. I'll be more concise in future.
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Post by amberlee on Nov 18, 2009 13:01:15 GMT -5
No that was great! Bravo! Thanks for taking up the discussions on musicals. Give me a day or two to digest and we'll keep this awesome conversation going. I think you've definitely touched on many of the core issues and shall I dare say, truth in this genre. I'm excited to have some time to think over your comments and respond in kind.
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Post by amberlee on Nov 21, 2009 20:37:23 GMT -5
I remember once hearing a quote on a radio station that said something along the lines of "when you're truly in love with your partner, you don't need validation from each other." It struck me as an interesting quote and your comments about love not being a 'self-authenticating act of the will' reminded me of it.
Coming from a background in social work, one of the most frequently used therapies, either used in a formal session or practicing self-reflection and for lack of better description, self-soothing, is to rationalize and intellectualize experiences. I know I've mentioned something like this earlier in one of my other posts, but your comment struck me in the realization that often because love is such a vulnerable emotion and place to be, we like to think we can choose how and when its going to/does happen.
I liked what you said about if you're trying to will love to happen, for what I can only imagine is to gain a personal sense of control over emotions and vulnerability, perhaps, it does degenerate into selfishness and egoism.
This brings another question to the table. How much of love is a choice? Can we really choose who we love?
I ask this because I know many people who have claimed that they continued relationships specifically because they chose to "stick with it" even when they have also said they don't feel love for the person. Sadly once again I have to generalize here, and I may be overstepping my circle of knowledge because, one having not been married yet, and two, not having been in a relationship that has lasted an incredibly long time in the scheme of my life, I don't know what it would be like to have years of memories, committment and feelings behind me and my partner to consider and "choose" to stick with and find love again.
In saying this, what I mean to question is if, one can assume, love does not start as a choice, and when it blooms into its best doesn't need to be dependent on validating choices, does there come a point where love has to be a choice to continue in between the beginning and the, as Golde and Tevye state "it's nice to know" stage?
Hopefully that made sense.
Bringing this to writing, I've found with most relationship poetry and with musicals, it seems that the best writing surrounds the "falling in love" stage where everything is exciting and guaranteed to be happily ever after and the possible end stage. The anxious and painful stage the "choice to continue".
Luckily, for most musicals, something works out and happily ever-after happens and the demons of vulnerability in love can be faced hand in hand. Poetry, and I'm sorry I have to be general because my source readings are MIA, has and can dig deeper. Writing can rip open the rawness and indecision that comes with baring truth and having to face choice. Maybe this is truly where the risk is.
Falling in love is an amazingly exciting experience, but maybe its only when we've settled into love that choices begin, maybe therein lies the risk and truth. Maybe this truth is so often a vulnerable reflection of ourselves, our choices, and our needs, that this truly is the vulnerable and scary part. Do we love ourselves enough to feel someone else love us fully without hurt and fear?
As you said, in our isolation we're isolating our inner truths from ourselves. So where do we, as writers have a responsibility to look at ourselves and break down this isolation? I admit, I'm still an amateur as far as my knowledge of The Canon and don't know many past and seminal author's personal motives, but what differentiated their writing from ours so significantly? What were they talking about and facing to be able to communicate love poetry profoundly? Is it because we take everything is sixty-second bites that musicals have become the best conveyor for love and trial in their flashiness and tidy endings?
Musicals tell a whole story, take you through beginning to end. We've talked so much about possibilities to how we've lost love, but truly, how long ago did this really happen? I think its well worth taking back, but where do we start looking for answers in our history of writing to either branch off completely, or pick up where they left off? Do we make love another social commentary? How private are we actually compared to other generations in expressing feelings?
Maybe past generations wrote down their feelings because they could not and did not have any other venue to express in. This happened while we're inundated with expression, however cheap and fast it is.
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Post by amberlee on Nov 21, 2009 20:38:01 GMT -5
Whoa, that was longer then I expected. Hopefully it keeps things going.  |
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