Poetry is like a crossword puzzle without the clues.
In a poem, every word must fit on a line and pull its own weight. One wrong word and the completed puzzle will be wrong.
Poetry is more challenging than a crossword puzzle, because you're using sound and trying to give words new meaning (sometimes anyway).
5 comments:
This is terrible of me I know, but I had the urge to say: And your point is?
My point is that poetry is challenging. The more I do it the more challenging it becomes (because I keep trying to challenge myself with different forms, etc).
I find that my writing is like a puzzle because I have to piece it together one line at a time.
Writing was so much easier when I was a beginner (because I didn't know any better).
I remember in high school, some students said poems were over-analyzed, that the writer couldn't put so much meaning in one line intentionally. Therefore we were over-thinking the poet's intent.
I know better know.
But sometimes as we gain more experience as poets, we do tend to overthink the poems, and then that's what becomes problematic, at least for me.
Perhaps we need to retain our poetry innocence as long as we can?
I can totally relate with what you're saying, K.A. Puzzling poetry, indeed. To me it's like a jigsaw puzzle that has missing pieces, and I know they're missing before I start putting it together, but I do it anyhow.
Tracy,
There is a fine line between over-thinking and not thinking enough (for me anyway). The poetic innocence I once had is embarrassing. My first drafts of the very first poems I wrote are deserving of a fire pit.
Brenda,
The nice thing about poetry is you can reshape the pieces you have to get around the pieces you are missing. It might not be the picture you were originally looking for, but it is a picture none the less (for me anyway).
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