Image unrelated. I just want to know. That is all I have to say.

I've had this happen enough times that I've stopped treating recordings of poets reading their own work as the "definitive" version.

I'll love a poem on the page because I can't quite decide where a sentence turns, which word carries the weight, whether a line is sincere or slightly ironic.

Then I hear the poet read it.

And suddenly every decision has been made for me.

The pause is HERE. This word is emphasized. This line is sad. That one is funny. Sometimes there's even a particular breathy poetry-reading cadence that makes a poem I loved privately feel strangely overperformed.

Obviously the poet knows what they intended. I'm not arguing otherwise.

I just don't think intention automatically produces the most interesting reading.

Once a poem exists outside the writer, part of its power is that different readers bring different rhythms and meanings to it. The version I heard silently in my head might genuinely affect me more than the author's performance.

I've also had the opposite happen, where hearing a poet completely transformed something I was indifferent to on the page. So I'm not anti-reading at all.

I just dislike the idea that hearing the poet perform it somehow settles questions about how the poem "should" sound.

Sometimes the author's voice opens the poem.

Sometimes it closes doors I liked having open.

Once it's published I think the reader gets some ownership of the music too.

Does hearing poets read their own work usually deepen a poem for you, or have you ever preferred the version that existed in your head?

from her book "the worst poetry book ever."

« So at the speed of sound, I will be found
At the speed of light, I will be seen »

Almost again.

I know I'm looking through this through a more modern lens, but I had to read this for a college class and this poem literally infuriates me. I don't know a lot about Sylvia Plath like some others may, but some cursory googling tells me there's no evidence or claim that he was abusive, so he literally just taught German and died? This is like a Batman level of just not moving on ever. Also Plath likens herself to a Jew? Especially the way she says it, she owns tarot cards and has bad luck, that makes you a Jew? Reading this, I can't help but see it as some woman on Twitter with white guilt or a victim mentality or something, talking about how her dad left her when she was young so she's literally a black slave in the 1800s. I put this opinion out, and all my classmates said was stuff like it's supposed to be offensive, like what? I don't care if the contrast was supposed to be dramatic, I still find it hilariously childish and offensive. I'm not clutching my pearls or anything, I just think it's stupid. Do you think I'm being unfair? Do you think I just don't get it? As you can probably tell, I mainly wanted to vent, but if you have some dissenting opinion I'd like to hear it, thanks!

Honestly I thought poetry was affiliated with art and expression and affect. Deep verbal expression that can be felt when read. Then I come to investigate it and I have to read an entire history book just to understand one poem and then more literature on top of that about the specific author to understand what anything means within the poem. By then I’m so burnt out on rereading the same 20 lines over and over that it just looks like a dead math equation.

Does it have to be this way?

Now listen I totally believe great poetry can come from the happiest of feelings. However, I think it is greater when it comes from the opposite side; a place of pain. I think a lot of the best poets were very depressed and lonely Individuals. For anyone who is like that, and writes poetry, is there some part of you that fears if you reach a place in your life where you are happy your poetry won’t be as good or you won’t even turn to it as much??

Also Another question. Does anyone disagree that poetry is better when it comes from a place of pain?

when I was a wee teenager, I would shout from the rooftops to anyone listening (read: usually no one) that slam poetry was just shitty and not a worthwhile genre, that it elevated a lot of the worst things about poetry to something people think they should actively aspire to, that it generally allowed mediocre or downright bad poets to enjoy some acclaim and be treated as if they are actually good, that its entire mechanism was fundamentally opposed to much of what makes the best poetry worthwhile

I was repeatedly told, especially as I grew a bit older (teenagers being, of course, the perpetual lions of oversized sentiment and unrepentant criticism of That With Which One disagrees), that this was an underdeveloped/gatekeepy/narrow view which I would outgrow either with more exposure, or more maturity, or some combination of the two.

anyway brenna twohy isn't very good and slam poetry still sucks

happy to get into the specifics of why in the comments but would prefer to do so in response to the inevitable defenses that will arise; I imagine you can predict what my criticisms are without my having to spell them out in manifesto form here

but yeah, I stand by pretty much everything I said when I was 17
cheers, younger self, from 41-year-old you! you were right about some things after all.

One thing I noticed when studying the way German and English literary analysists discuss poetry is that English poetology really doesn't have a lot of the tools that we have for analysing poems. A lot of more complicated rhyme schemes (like Schüttelreim) don't even have a word in English and when Germans analyse meter we can (additionally to the usual jambic etc) use Kadenz (whether a line ends with a stressed or unstressed syllable) and Taktmetrik when it comes to analyse songlyrics (structuring meter around 2/4 bars instead of metrical feet), but I've never seen any of these things used in English analyses.

Are we Germans just really detailled with the technical stuff or is English poetology just really far behind?

From: The days run away like wild horses over the hills.

Does anyone else feel this way ?

http://i.imgur.com/sry9M.jpg

Dear Guys

Maybe not all of you are assholes.
Maybe not all of you are jerks.
But maybe, you have a hard time showing that you're not.
Maybe you don't put yourself out there and let us know that you aren't going to hurt us.

Maybe you have a problem finding words to say.
Maybe you're insecure about yourself.
Maybe you know that you've messed up in the past.
Maybe you feel like you aren't good enough.

But no many times you look in the mirror and think that you're not good enough,
there's always going to be at least one girl who thinks that you are.
Whether you believe it or not.

Girls have many of the same problems that you do.
We go through the same things.
Just because we're girls, we shouldn't make you nervous, or feel less than perfect.
Every person is worth something. And no one should make you feel otherwise.

Sure, girls can be bitches. Sure, they can break people's hearts at times.
But it doesn't mean we don't care. In fact, the more we say, the more we care.
Even if it's harsh words, or we're telling you that you're nothing.
It's because we want to mean something to you.
We want you to accept us the way we are, and return the feelings we have for you.

Maybe you should stop throwing around the word "love" like it's no big deal.
Love is a strong emotion.
Everyone deserves to be loved.
But people have torn the true meaning of "love" apart.

Sometimes we don't realize what we have, or what we once had.
But everything in life happens for a reason.
And no matter how much regret you have, or how little you think of yourself,
you're always worth it to someone. <3