Re:Growing into Your Pen - 02/24/2007I have certainly noticed changes in my writing of all forms. With poetry, I have mainly learned a lot more about the rules of poetry and how to best use them. This helped me find a voice beyond the basic end rhyme, four line stanza of my earlier works. I think I continue to develop and master new styles. I like to experiment with variations and have found a lot of rewarding avenues by not limiting myself to any basic style too much. I do seem to tend toward aliteration and really enjoy it.
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quilted72
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Re:Growing into Your Pen - 02/19/2007I can relate. I too, beleive that with time, age ,experience, and knowledge that any true poet will see a progression in their art. Vocabulary alone will change form and texture. Add to this a spiritual and emotional growth and change is inevitable. Sometimes not always for the good. I beleive that life expeirences can leave our work jaded, due to politically correct form. We began to worry about grammer rather than motivation. We tend to neglect the timeless need for a muse, therefore our work can become repetative and cold. As an adolescent my work was neither uniformed or controled, yet those poems are the ones I hold dearest to my heart, for they were filled with the passion that only those years could afford. I feel my work today is more reflection than in the moment. Therefore the marrow of life and the work is weakened.
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Maryjean
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Re:Growing into Your Pen - 10/11/2006 I don't know. I started writing poetry in 1970 (age 16.) I read it frequently. It's like a timeline. The reason behind each one is still vivid in my mind. It's too difficult for me to view them objectively. One day I would like to submit them in random order and see if anyone else can put them in chronological order.mjz
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antryg
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Re:Growing into Your Pen - 07/28/2006I first started writing stories when I was in 5th grade. There has always been something of the storyteller in me and hopefully I have matured from my first story which dealt with talking tables, chairs and salt shakers in the school cafeteria complaining about how they were treated by the students.
The longer we write then the more confident and mature our writing becomes. First, the confidence that "I can do this". As we mature then we take the time to work at it rather than dashing words on the page and hoping that something worthwhile appears.
In high school I began to write poetry. Those poems which I still have show that I suffered from BDD (Bob Dylan Disease). Everything had to rhyme no matter how bizarre or forced it made the poem. The tone was bombastic and overblown in a bad opera manner. In other words it was filled with hormones and the surety of youth.
Now my poems are mostly free style, though I still enjoy writing haikus. I feel that as I have become more confident and comfortable with myself and my skill that my voice has improved and the quality of my poems has improved.
To distill the advice, I would say keep at it. It oftentimes feels like work but the results of the work of creation far outweigh the pains. In other words (to quote a president), it's fun.
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Tamsen
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Re:Growing into Your Pen - 07/18/2006Oh FalconDance, I know just what you mean about the whole teen angst thing. I stumbled upon something I wrote in HS and it basically said I would cackle as my fellow classmates settled into their mediocre lives, or something to that effect. I didn't manage to make it rhyme, but it was still an attempt at poetry. Lesson learned? I could't compose poetry then, and I can't now.
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helene
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Re:Growing into Your Pen - 07/17/2006can't say that I wrote a lot of poetry...
but back in the high school days, I stuck to form poetry - rhyming and all that other stuff. But if I do choose to write a poem in more recent years, I find myself favoring freeform.
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FalconDance
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Growing into Your Pen - 07/10/2006While this certainly is a topic for all areas of a writer's work, the question was raised after I found an old notebook with poetry dating back to 1980. (ahhh, the high school, teen-angst days!)
The texture of my prose has definitely matured, grown richer. While this seems to an obvious stage of growth, I became a bit curious.
Have you noticed the same with your own work? Looking back, what were the shifts within your style and themes?
*** What would be your tips to the 'beginners', be they young in years or simply new to the pen? (Feel free to turn this into an article topic for submission <angelic look> )
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I don't know. I started writing poetry in 1970 (age 16.) I read it frequently. It's like a timeline. The reason behind each one is still vivid in my mind. It's too difficult for me to view them objectively. One day I would like to submit them in random order and see if anyone else can put them in chronological order.mjz
<angelic look> )