Ask me anything

i do the intakes at a counseling center and give the spanish-speaking clients English lessons

If you don't mind me posting a piece I've written recently, and given some pointers on where to improve? Otherwise I'd love to hear about: what main drivers of inspiration you take from (from the world and from other poets), what helps you keep your train of thought when first transcribing a piece, and what tips you've got to help develop a quick ear for stressed and unstressed syllables?

I'm mostly interested in the last question because I personally struggle with holding my meter throughout the piece. I feel like I'm keeping it as I'm transcribing, but once the product is at least mostly on page, and I've read it as a whole, I realize I fall in and out of the meter and rhythm. And by this time, the word choice is so keen that reworking the meter would rewrite nearly the entire piece.

>Ben Lerner

i tend to write long poems. long lyric forms interest me a lot more than single, shorter poems.

i guess the poems I write are sprawling and fragmented. their world is the world of the modern, computer-run city and the solitude you find therein, but they also contain a lot meditations or observations about nature and how it exists in today's human-overrun earth. other themes i keep going back to are love, death, beauty, the usual big ones poets and artists are always addressing.

advice to new poets? read a lot of poetry. read, read, read, and read outside of the american white canon! the Arab and the spanish poets have a lot to teach. write of course, as much as you can, notice things, flee from cliche as if it were a puss-filled syphilis-infected vagina. but don't write expecting that you'll be published. publication is secondary, and should come only after you have written something worthy of existing on its own in the world. the goal of a good poet is not publication, it's writing good poems. if you write something truly good, it will find a publisher. you just need to be persistent.

If you haven't read Rilke's Letter to a Young Poet, do so ASAP. Nietzsche also has a lot of great advice and critiques for writers and poets.

LOL

OP here.
What are your thoughts on the guy?
Are you, by chance, Ben Lerner?

sure, post a piece. I'll give you what pointers I can, if it's not too long.

as far as drivers of inspiration:

for me the world, as it is and as humans have made it, is endlessly fascinating. our species is so strange, so insane, so brutal and stupid sometimes and yet capable of great and beautiful things. poetry (great poetry) for me has always been the most intimate form of art, the best company to have around in one's solitude. the best poetry acknowledges the horror and the beauty of life without sugar-coating it, and transforms it into an experience that's nourishing and that simultaneously toughens you and sensitizes you to the world.

I want to create something that can still have this effect on individuals, despite and because of the insanity of the world today. This desire is I think what primarily drives me. Other poets did this for me, and I want to do it for others. Also, when writing, you enter into a heightened state of attention and being. It is trance-like, I feel immensely alive when I'm doing it. It is its own reason for practicing the art.

> what helps you keep your train of thought when first transcribing a piece

Well, I'm not sure what you mean by transcribing. I don't really think of the poem whole in my head before writing it down, so maybe we just have different methods of working? I tend to begin with an observation, or an image: a first line. And from that point I follow my train of thought, but I do it while writing. The thought develops as I put the words down on the page. In order to hold your train of thought together while you write, you have to maintain focus somehow. I know that's not much of an answer, but I don't think there is one method for doing this. I have a feeling the only true prescription is practice, practice, practice.

For some people, drugs help, but I know it's probably not a good long-term solution. A combination of weed and Aderall does work great though, and if you are ok with drugs and haven't tried that, I would recommend doing it at least once, but definitely don't become dependent on it. Practice. Good old humble practice is the only real advice I can give you.

>what tips you've got to help develop a quick ear for stressed and unstressed syllables?

listen to a lot of great, metered poems, and read a lot of great metered poems aloud. I don't write metered verse anymore (or not traditionally/consciously metered verse anyway), and meter is really not one of my main interests, so you may be asking the wrong person. i think i developed my ear just by listening to good poems, paying attention to what sounds good. the sound part of my writing is not something I consciously think about anymore. it has become intuitive, but it's probably from reading and listening a lot.

Post your diary fgt

don't keep one

>white canon

ugh

whats your opinion on feminine farts?

Awesome, that was incredibly helpful. And by transcribing, I did mean gathering said image or idea or first line in your head and creating the work from their. I suppose that may not be literal transcription.
But see, I'm the same way. I don't so much prefer tightly metered poems (sonnets I do) as I more like beautifully described scenes and ideas with rhythmic and musically flowing language. That may even be because I haven't a developed ear for for meter though. Only recently have I really started grabbing hold of it better. I'll definitely consider all your advice.

As for the piece, it's not very long, maybe slightly longer than your average poem. I'd really appreciate any advice based off of what you read. I don't have a title, though 'Wanderlust' has crossed my mind a few times:

It was an out-of-season snowfall:
A flurry of seeds, whisked by the air,
Sink and bob, as sunfish eggs
Rafting down a spring-thaw rill.

Sub-lime sunlight streams about the seeds,
And channels their sinuous meanderings.
Like the humble land’s supple bough^
To the sky’s sighs and the sea’s pleas.

The easterly ebb of slowly zephyrs
Tickles stems and trickle pad rapids.
As a prowling kingfisher ever yearns
For (up)drafts to rest his rowing wings.

Cumulonimbus plumes drift on the-
Breeze atop the westerly horizon;
Frothing on eddying cirrus wisps,
And stead’ly dousing the rising sun.

To avoid the lightening and thundering rain^
I hurriedly march to my nearby car.
I drive straight home and straight inside
Where I pace along my everyday.

Two days passed ‘til I return to wander.
Walking the water-felled woods, I wonder
Why I wore nice shoes,
And fear their sheen a thing to lose.
Quick to spring the waterlogged trees,
Brainstorming of my weathered boots,
I fail to see, sailing aeronautically,
skimming over hundreds of emerging dandelions.

^lightening/lightning
^bough/bow

do you write your poems or are your poems written through you?

Haha. I write them. What "I" am, exactly, though, is up for grabs and constantly shifting.

I think the poem is too archaic in its language. Why write with the same language people wrote with 300 years ago, when the language we have today is equally rich multi-branched? I would avoid overly used, poem-y words like "whisked" and "meanderings" and "zephyrs". There's better ways and more interesting words to describe what you're describing. And what's up with "stead'ly". Update your language man. Poems can me more immediate than this.

Condense more, worry less about meter and more about clarity of image.

Basic stuff, cut clunky and unnecessary adjectives, e.g.

"Sunlight streams about the seeds"
is better than "Sub-lime sunlight" etc.

Don't anthropomorphize too much, do it rarely and only when it is absolutely the most fitting and necessary move in the poem, and if you must do it, be more original about it, with your image and with your language. More often than not, anthropomorphizing comes off as cheesy, e.g. that "kingfisher yearning" line.

Your similes are strained and wordy. E.g.:

Sink and bob, as sunfish eggs
Rafting down a spring-thaw rill.

Be more concise. The image itself is not bad actually, but the lines are very clunky and wordy. Makes the image feel strained instead of fluid and natural.

I can agree that my language is a weak point where I'm confident imagery is my strong point. Granted I know I used some cliches, but being the whole things follows this flowing water theme, which itself is probably the most cliche aspect of the whole piece. But, there are so many words you can use when describing images with a water theme. For instance, I used whisked because it fit the exact image of dandelion seeds blowing in the wind. I wished to use editing, but it fit much better in conjunction with the image of cirrus clouds. I disdain the fact I used zephyr when I wrote this, so I understand your message. As for stead'ly, it shortens steadily from 3 syllables into 2, which helped the line flow better.

As for areas that feel clunky,
>rafting down a spring-thaw rill
>tickles stems and trickles pad rapids
>frothing on editing cirrus wisps
>brainstorming of my weathered boots
We're all intentionally done so. I guess I have this fetish for lines sometimes embodying the image they create with little regard to the piece as a whole. I chose 'sub-lime sunlight flows' as opposed to 'sunlight flows' because I wanted one, the image of sunlight to be tinted green as it is coming through the trees above, and two because i believed it created a stutter step in the line before flowing into the rest in what I now see was a weak attempt at sustaining a rhythm.

I'm said to hear the kingfisher boy was cheesy, I actually thought it was clever and fitting to the message. That's a shame. But that's why I posted this, it's a throwaway I thought was good, so I needed it torn to shreds. Because overall I thought what I had best was flow, and I thought what I lacked most was recognizable structure. But o suppose now I can see that I was weak in both areas. But for one of the four poems I've ever written, and the fact that I've only started studying and reading poetry in the last couple months, I'm still happy with my progress. I'm glad for the advice as well, and the fact you weren't gentle. It just makes me want to get it better that much more.