Creative Outlet Do you agree with my thoughts?

IsabellaAzuria posted on Jun 17, 2008 at 01:24AM
Poetry is not about grammar
A good poet writes with the heart

Creative Outlet 4 replies

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over a year ago Cinders said…
This is true-- In fact, plenty of well-established poets like e e cummings (among MANY others) have thrown grammar to the wind. To play with grammar is a choice that poets make. But they have to stick with it.

Poetry is an art, though. A poet, like an artist, never feels like his poem is done. It only becomes "presentable." Just as visual art is the mastery of colors, verbal art (fiction, essays, plays, and poetry) is the mastery of language. A poet uses all the nuances of his native tongue to convey the color of truth to his reader.

I'm not sure I understand where this affirmation of yours stems from. If you're simply stating that grammar and punctuation are not absolutes in poetry, then I agree. If you are saying they are irrelevant, I disagree. Because they are part of the language, and clever punctuation/syntax in a poem can add new levels of meaning.
last edited over a year ago
over a year ago IsabellaAzuria said…
i say they are not absolutes;)
over a year ago fanpire101 said…
totatlly agree, i never write in strict poetry forms, i just write freeform based on wat i feel, sometimes others will critic my poems about grammer and i just ignore them because thats not wat i want, poetry is about ignoring the laws of writing for awhile and just expressing watever u want to express
over a year ago Cinders said…
I disagree. Like I said, it's not about ignoring the laws, it's about mastering them and twisting them in your own creative ways.

If, for example, you write the sentence "He robbed her of her innocence, a golden songbird trapped in a steal cage." The use of the spelling "steal" (to rob) versus "steel" (the metal) is obviously related to the tones of the piece. If you are simply neglecting grammar because you don't care about it, then you are missing out on a lot of fun tricks you can pull with your writing style. Grammar, playing with grammar, and the choice to create new grammatical rules are essential to writing poetry.
last edited over a year ago