Reinventing the Life of a Poet in the Modern World

Moment of Craft Fridays: Your Relationship to Language

SpyvspyMy father tells this joke often: there are two types of people–the type of people who put everyone else into types of people and the type of people who don't.

Reading Real Sofistikashun by Tony Hoagland, I'm often hitting the question of what type of writer I might be. These questions are good to think about.

I see it this way: there are two types of poets–the type who feels well served by their language and the limits of words and the type who feels the language fails them profoundly. Do you write about how words fail you or do you write about how they succeed to describe your living experience?

Some writers aim to share and connect through their poems. Others are dealing with disconnection and alienation.

How accessible should you choose to be might be related to your relationship with language itself and your feelings about your abstract reader.

There's no right answer. It's a temperament, your unique temperament.

And further, are you trying to express your one essential self or do you want to explore your many selves. Hoagland talks about the differences. He quotes Cszelaw Milosz from "Ars Poetica?"

The purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person.

Later he considers Guillaume Apollinaire and says,

"The purpose of poetry," Apollinaire might have said, in response to Milosz, "is to remind us how unnecessary it is to remain just one person."

Which one of these statements do you feel more confortable with?

1 Comment

  1. dissertation help service

    I totally agree! If you are a poet you should consider the different types of people. Every writer should explore their different sides and never limit themselves to one or few characters. Every reader is different that is why writers need to make different temperament as many as possible.

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