"21
I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul,
The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me,
The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I translate into a new tongue.”
In the spirit of Walt Whitman, this is my anti-manifesto with the not to do’s when writing poetry. It is called poeTRY for a reason you have to TRY new things. Write what you want to. If everyone thought they could not write based upon the opinions of others we would not have the following:
- J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series
- Any books by John Grisham
- No STEPHEN KING
- Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight Saga Series
- Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita
- No NICHOLAS SPARKS
- Kathryn Stockett’s The Help
- Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind
And many more. The point is to write what you write not for the approval of others. Your poetry should come from within and not be a byproduct of others. Poets like Emily Dickinson were corrected copious amounts of times, but she stuck with her style which you must do. Be inspired by others but, do not copy and paste your words onto their canvas. Your poetry should be written at the moment of the highest amount of emotion. You should not hide and push down a part of yourself from your art— you should be a bare soul meeting a blank canvas. You should be open and honest with your poems. Every line should invoke a feeling within you, if it does not how can it be a true representation of yourself. If you are writing for someone else than you cannot be truly showing yourself, but trying to impress another person with your craft.
It should not be formatted into iambic pentameter or like “Roses are red, Violets are blue” unless that's who you are deep down inside. You should look at the box that poetry is put in and not jump in but spray paint on the outside of it. Let them question your art. Let them wonder if it is poetry, prose, a story or just words on a page. Let them question, because they unable to understand.Do not take too much of their advice. Some advice is a piece of rope that ties your poem together. Others are poison in the stream, they poison your poetry.
These poems should be the writing that brings you inner peace when there is no outer peace. Creating beauty in the most dark demonic places and showing that beauty is in the details, not the bigger picture. Not what people want to hear, but rather what they need to hear. No one needs to hear the sun is shining, but they need to hear about the hardship if they understand nought. Vice versa, if all they know is hardship point out to them that the sun is shining. But you should always be bare, and when someone reads your poems they see a piece of you on the page. It should be the you that you are afraid to tell another living soul just like “I never told anyone but…” Turn those feelings into pleasure and get rid of every suppressed emotion. These poems should be the you that is the corner of your room, naked, banging your head on the wall with no one to talk to. If you do this, then you will be writing the poetry that you should be writing. The poetry that is simply you.
