What do you find most difficult about writing poetry?
Agreeing with myself that a piece is finished can be difficult. Also, it can be difficult to justify the process to yourself sometimes when you’ve been staring at something all morning and all you’ve done is moved a comma.
That being said, I find most elements of writing poetry to be joyful. It’s incredibly liberating to just sit down in front of the computer and write down whatever comes into your head. To be as weird as you want without concerning yourself with narrative arcs and/or logic. And then, to have someone read that and enjoy it, or take something from it that you never intended, that’s glorious.
No, on the whole I don’t find writing poetry to be difficult. I find the ‘explaining’ that goes hand in hand with a medium that uses language as its primary mode of communication (as opposed to music or the visual arts) to be more difficult. There can be a perception that everything in a poem has to have a specific and pre-ordained meaning, to the point where people feel affronted when you’re not willing to assign one. It can come across as if you’re simply being awkward. I believe that it is possible to just accept that some things are beautiful and some things upset you and some things annoy you, and that you can’t always explain why. In fact, if you can’t explain why then that’s a job for you rather than the person who made the original art.
That’s another reason poetry is so valuable. It allows us to have that moment where the signs don’t go with the signified, and actually that’s just fine.
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