How can I blame you for being
all that I called you into being,
everything I predicted you would be?
Expectations form a standard.
Who can fault the flat black
white-striped seed for bursting
into six-foot cords, bent over
with the weight of sunshine,
birdfeed, summer passing?
Everything opens from the start.
Sidebar: Fuck you, person I'm mad at.
I consider this link spammy. In the future if you are interested in sharing quotes on Hubski I recommend actually citing the quote and author in your post instead of directing people to a personal Twitter account which then has the quote you want to share. I don't know if that's your personal Twitter account or not and you actually seem to share and comment on things, not just attempt to drive traffic towards, say, Twitter, so I'm going to mostly forgive you on this one. But I think it's also really important to remember that Hubski is "a place for thoughtful discussion" and you contributed absolutely none of that with your 'comment.' For those not interested in being directed to Twitter in order to read a quote by someone, who isn't even the Twitter account holder, it is as follows: "Anger makes you smaller, while forgiveness forces you to grow beyond what you were." - Cherie Carter-Scott And in addition: I don't think anger makes one 'smaller.' It is an emotion. It's how you use that emotion that dictates whether you become a smaller or larger person. It's not healthy to use anger as the driving force in your life but I don't think using it to drive a poem is going to make me any 'smaller.' As for forgiveness - can't you be angry when the other person has done nothing that requires forgiveness? I may be angry at this person but they haven't really done anything to me except disappoint me because they turned out to be, well, themselves. What's there to forgive about that?
Inspired by your poem, I Googled "the best revenge" and found this. How to Pull Off the Greatest Revenge on the Person That Did You Wrong! and it was an okay, even good post, but what I was wondering, what I was looking for was the notion that poetry is the best revenge. I think it is because you've turned the pain into another, different thing.
I don't think I've ever had occasion to want to seek revenge on anyone, but if I had, I like to think that I wouldn't. Revenge, especially with regard to matters of love, seems so undignified to me. Dignity is derived from within, and it's difficult for anyone but yourself to deprive you of it. It strikes me as the territory of knuckle draggers and trash that would stoop to the types of tactics highlighted in that link. I don't think poetry is a revenge. I think it's an external reflection on internal matters. If _refugee_ didn't tell us this was a poem she wrote in anger, would we even know? Definitely a much more constructive use of one's time than scratching a message into the paint of an ex-lover's car.
_r_'s poem itself both expresses disappointment in someone's hurtful action or inaction and takes responsibility for her part in it: calling it into being, owning that her disappointment and anger arise from her expectations and hopes. I've written quite a few stories out of pain and anger at someone else's behaviour and my own foolishness. Writing a story or poem, takes away some of the sting. Writing and sharing a good story or poem that rings true for others starts the healing process. Over to you _refugee_: what do you think?knuckle draggers and trash that would stoop to the types of tactics highlighted in that link.
I don't know if you got down far enough in the link, but it is an anti-revenge post. It's message, like alpha0's link, is this:As trite as it is going to sound, the best revenge is to forgive, live well and succeed.
I completely agree with you about revenge. Of course _refugee_ didn't mention revenge and may not have been thinking of it at all. I meant to imply that writing a poem out of anger at someone was a way of redirecting all that disappointment into an external object - the poem can hold all the feelings and the individual can begin to recover.
I take back everything I said. Upon further reflection, I have been guilty of revenge in the past; I just didn't think of it as such at the time. I had a girl (a girl with whom I was in love) dump me once, and I was hurt. It's never a good idea to humiliate a narcissist, because we exist that way in the first place out of fear of being humiliated (at least, that's what I've come to believe; never actually done any reading on the subject). Anyway, some months later she wanted to get back together. At first, I resisted, but then relented after a few months on a 'cold streak' (as she was an amazing woman; hard to turn down). We carried on for a time, three four months, maybe, then one day, she referred to herself as my girlfriend. After that, I never picked up her calls again. I have to imagine that it was one of the most hurtful things that anyone has done to her; indifference hurts, because it tells the person they aren't even worth getting angry at. Meaninglessness is the worst state of being. At the time, I didn't do it consciously out of revenge, but in retrospect I was so hurt by being cast aside that I think I wanted her to feel as shitty as I felt. It's self destructive (not that I've ever been one to act any other way than self destructive), defeatist, and it only made me less happy in the long run (because then I had to add guilt to the gamut of negative emotions).
Indifference also hurts because it is not clear; it is confusing. Silence both leaves a door open and, very loudly, says multitudes. Ignoring her calls very loudly said that you didn't want to hear from her/talk to her, yet at the same time left the opportunity: maybe you would pick up the next time she called. Maybe you would call her back. Maybe you were just busy. Silence leaves so many what-ifs open that if you really like someone who just ignores you, sometimes you'll be tempted to carry the torch longer because you haven't been given a hard shut-down. I've learned this and I've also learned that, for me, if someone ignores me or I don't hear back from them, to take it as a cold, hard, clear "no/not interested." But it is especially hard when you kind of like someone. I had a guy in my life I'd been involved with and I recently texted him and told him that I felt things were cooling off and if that was the case just to let me know; then I would stop bothering him. I heard nothing back. And then I deleted his number. It took me a long time to get to that point and maybe I can be quick with that particular trigger, but the fact of the matter also is that if things weren't cooling off, he would have been quick to correct me on that (no?). I'm not a big believer in closure but when you go from being involved to ignoring someone, not only is there no closure but there is no clear indication that it's over. There was a different guy (lil will remember; I called him #shawty) that I went cold on and ignored for a month. Drunkenly one night I finally relented and texted him; all I did was tell him that I thought he had been cute - even used the past tense. Well - due to the fact that I'd only gone silent on him and not given him some big talk about why I'd gone silent on him or the fact that I considered myself done with him - he interpreted my month of silence merely as a "holding pattern" sort of thing, and we've seen each other twice recently, and are talking again. Silence is an interesting weapon/tactic in relationships. It depends on the person of course; if I had been ignored for a month I would have deleted the guy's number, and moved on (*unless* I really liked him!). #Shawty instead intepreted it as me being busy or something. Ultimately we did talk a little bit about why I had stopped talking to him, which I think was good - I had felt he was cold and uncommunicative before and now he's making an effort to communicate better - is that because I'd ignored him for a month or because I finally raised that issue? Not sure. I agree that at any rate it is very powerful and speaks volumes.
And b_b if you're interested: I like to think that success is the best revenge and apathy (towards the person who incited the original emotions) the second-best. If someone makes me angry I like to stop caring about them and I like to care about/take care of myself. I don't think it's unhealthy to use anger as a driving force in creativity, or even to help jump-start that success, as long as eventually you are getting the anger out. It is when you are not only obtaining fuel from that anger, but continuing to feed it and sustain it, that I think you reach problems.
Well, using anger to create can lead to relying on anger for the creative process, much in the way that using any one thing to create can. I don't have any hard evidence, but I have read about how anger and "just getting it out" can create neural pathways that over time result in resorting to anger more quickly than one would otherwise. This can happen for a lot of things, like how some people always react to something by making a joke. This is not to say that bottling up anger is good, just that letting it out without working through the anger might not be the best idea, writing while angry can be ok, as long as the anger is worked through in the process. I've experimented with using different emotions and circumstances to keep the spark alive a bit and it's always lead to being in a rut. I think I mentioned in a previous post about my experiments with the creative process, but one of them was based on something I read about low calorie diets as linked to creativity. Basically, what I read was saying that human creativity, problem solving and intellect are linked to our drive to find food. So, by consuming very little food, the brain is then motivated to find ways to obtain food. Anyway, I began eating only once a day to see how it would help with creativity. For a while, it worked, but then I noticed that all my stories and poems were centered around food, which might be cool if I were a food writer, but I'm not. That and food and sex started to intermingle in the writing in ways that were kind of interesting at the time, but I'm glad I'm not still in that vein.
I tend to write best/most when sparked by an emotion, whatever it is, and I've sometimes worried that that means I can only write when something happens or I feel a certain way. It's very true that when something happens the first thing I want to do is write about it especially if it is anger. I've noticed with liking someone though sometimes I don't want to write about it and I've wondered if that's because I don't like liking people, not any more, and if that's me suppressing it. See my first poem of the three published here if you wanna, that explains it pretty well. But I also force myself to write when I'm not inspired. I try to write every day. Sometimes I'm better about it and sometimes I'm not. Often I'm not happy with what I come up with but I view it like practice: I need to at least flex the muscle. I've also found as I've gotten older I've started writing fictitious poems or poems from other points of view, etc, stuff that isn't directly inspired by anything in my life, and I think that's very good and healthy and it encourages me that my poetry isn't completely narcissistic or only fed off of my own experience. That's an interesting experiment. Now I am going to try writing poetry about food and see what I come up with.
I used to think that I wrote best when I had an emotional impetus, but now I tend to think that I write best when I'm in the practice of writing every day and my imagination is used to instant action. I always found it weird while getting my BFA that professors would stress that the "I" in a poem may not necessarily be the writer, but I think it makes sense that most people assume that the "I" generally is the writer, as poetry writers generally do not explicitly set up protagonists or characters in the same way that fiction writers do, fiction being the literary medium that most people are most familiar with. This is not to say that I don't write poems where I am not the "I" in the poem anymore; I do, but generally the "I" in my poems are a fictionalized me or a character speaking with my voice in the way a lazy dad reads a story to his kid. While I think that the drive to write poetry may begin with narcissism, successful poetry doesn't rely on it. In some ways, that's why I like playing with found poetry as there are so many beautiful fragments of things that focus the attention in ways I wouldn't think to. As for your poems in Corvus, I have a clearer idea of what you mean now. I haven't dated American women for a long time, but when I compare the relationships I've had with Americans against my relationships with women who are not Americans, it makes me wonder if there's some cultural element that makes us less inclined to be intimate with each other. I don't mean less inclined to have sex, which there is some evidence for, but I mean to be open with each other and to recognize love/lust/desire/like as ranges of emotions rather than strictly defined words. This is something I've discussed with some good friends, who in general are in agreement with me, but they're hardly a fair sample as they're of similar disposition, age and attitude in regard to women as myself. If you're writing about food and trying that super-low calorie thing, make sure that when you do eat you get enough vitamins, especially B vitamins and vitamin C, especially if you plan to continue smoking and drinking. I knew a dude that got beriberi because he existed solely off booze and got laid up for two weeks, unable to walk. Granted, his "wife" had just stolen all his savings, his house and his kid and refused to have anything more to do with him, but regardless, vitamins are important.
This post has spawned some great discussion. Yes, people generally assume the "I" is the writer which can make for interesting discussions. And if they see elements of a poem that reflect your life they think the whole thing is true! I have sometimes prefaced my poems by describing that my formula for writing is 25% truth, 50% exaggeration, and 25% 'poetry'. It varies of course but I rarely write anything that's 100% my own life. I suppose this poem might be an exception but it's also extremely broad and so I think it escapes being "autobiographical" in that way. It's a feeling I've had so many times with so many people. I'm just tired of it. See, what I have a tendency to do which is kind of fun (and reflective of the way I think) is I will write poems in which I am a character, not the "I" at all. I'll take, say, a situation in my own life, maybe where I don't like the way I'm acting, and write a poem about it from the perspective of an outsider/the other person in the situation that then critiques on me-the-real-person-in-the-scenario. I wrote a poem called "Old Age," the whole of which I won't post here as I'm trying to get it published and quite like it, but it starts: As for American women, American men, and intimacy: intimacy is hard and dating has taught me to avoid it, or at least seek to avoid it prematurely, which then ends up shooting one in the foot when one meets someone who is actually willing to be intimate - causes one to drive them away at times, if you will. Dating makes one worse at dating and yet better at dating. You learn to separate out the chaff pretty quickly but it remains very difficult to figure out if the wheat you keep is actually the wheat you want. This is getting very metaphorical very quickly. I would say, it is probably not just a problem with American women - though I don't think you're really implying that. I love food so much I think I'd have a LOT of difficulty only eating once a day. Edit: Charming to see that as soon as I begin talking about matters of the heart I distance myself with use of "one" as opposed to, say, "I." Telling, natch?I always found it weird while getting my BFA that professors would stress that the "I" in a poem may not necessarily be the writer, but I think it makes sense that most people assume that the "I" generally is the writer,
This is not to say that I don't write poems where I am not the "I" in the poem anymore; I do, but generally the "I" in my poems are a fictionalized me or a character speaking with my voice in the way a lazy dad reads a story to his kid.
(or something like that; this is from memory) In that poem the "me" that's appearing is the "someone sort of similar, less convicted hair" - then the rest of the poem goes on to talk about how neither two end up happy in the poem - but the focus is definitely on the "you", not me-as-the-author's brief, almost cameo appearance. You never do end up with the girl
you know you're meant
to end up with, so you find someone
sort of similar, less
convicted hair...
Oh, it's not so bad after the first few days. Sometimes I shrink my stomach down by doing this when I don't have a lot of money. The amount of food we eat vs. what we need are startlingly different. I enjoy food immensely, but I also like to exert a certain amount of control over certain things in my life. I know you said that these lines were not exact: I've never thought about writing about myself as a peripheral character. I think part of it is that I don't know how I appear to other people, or at least I haven't thought about it much except in the context of their immediate reactions to me in a social situation. That could be something to explore though. As for your edit, 1=I, no? :)I love food so much I think I'd have a LOT of difficulty only eating once a day
but why break the line, "you know you're meant/"? It seems to me that you could get more play out of: You never do end up with the girl
you know you're meant
to end up with, so you find someone
sort of similar, less
convicted hair...
I don't know, that break just seemed a bit awkward to me, but maybe it works better in the context of the full poem. You never do end up with the girl
you know you're meant to end
up with, so you find someone
sort of similar, less
convicted hair . . .
Re: the edit, mais bien sur, humano. I'll dig up a copy of the poem and send it to you privately, or alternatively, I could send you a link to me reading it on Soundcloud (maybe both). I have problems with line breaks. I am thinking about them. I wish I could find more to read about them. My guru was telling me there's an article out there about the different ways and uses of line breaks but I've been unable to find it. I think it would help me. Half the time when I write about myself as a peripheral character it's because I'm commenting on or critiquing my own actions. I have a tendency to break things out in the 3rd character in conversation, too, which is why I feel like it's just a twerk of my communication style: I'll be talking to a friend, say something, and then throw out what I think their reaction is in the third person. Hard to explain. Example: Friend Brian: blah blah blah Me: I like ducks, they're so dumb looking. [pause] Brian's like "You're so weird, Emily." Brian: [opportunity to either disagree or agree with what I think his reaction is] Really works best in person, don't think it translates well on the page here.
I do that too, especially when someone is on their phone for no reason. That drives me nuts. Yeah, send me stuff. I made a soundcloud recently, but I haven't played with it much. On the list of things to do. I have not seen the article you speak of. I think. I left a bunch of books when I moved last time and of course they were the boring ones on shit like poetics. Line breaks are something that are very important for me, especially because of my own style of writing where I generally don't like leaving just the one meaning, but rather layers of exploded images. Anyway, you're familiar with poetry forms, and in those the line breaks are generally dictated by the form. For free verse, lines are of course, broken in many ways. You can break by breath, to create sub-images or supplementary images, whatever but there are ways of breaking lines that weaken rather than strengthen. This doesn't mean that you have to break lines so that they can all stand alone. Some poems do that, but more often than not it comes across as a bit weird and for me, usually it feels forced and artless. Anyway, my general goal with linebreaks is to create tension and to get the most meaning I can out of the sum of my lines. For this reason, I sometimes write my first draft as a blob and then break it, or else write the first draft, then squish it into a blob and re-break everything. To show you what I mean, I'll use a little poem I shared already. The lines, when unbroken amount to nothing special: A relationship is as simple as locking eyes with someone across a crowded room. That beautiful someone you imagine the rest of your life with for the rest of the day. But, by breaking it, we get different tensions and meanings:I'll be talking to a friend, say something, and then throw out what I think their reaction is in the third person.
Or A relationship is as simple as locking
eyes with someone across a crowded room.
That beautiful someone you imagine
the rest of your life with
for the rest of the day
Both of those are a bit heavy handed and graceless though, in my opinion. In the first one, the tension isn't well managed and therefore is inconsistent feeling. The second one is more consistent, but it feels like being strangled and the first line (among others) end weakly. Instead, I went with: A relationship is
as simple as locking
eyes with someone
across a crowded
room. That beautiful someone
you imagine
the rest of your life
with for the rest of the day
This way, it feels controlled but not controlling. The first line is long enough that I feel like it gives the opportunity to reflect. "*Is* locking eyes with someone 'easy'?" Then, there's the physical space between the idea of locking eyes with someone and the crowded room. Then next line gives more room for thought on one meaning and then the next line modifies it. All that said, playing with line breaks has made me really really picky about them. A relationship is as simple as locking eyes with someone
across a crowded room. That beautiful someone
you imagine the rest of your life with
for the rest of the day.
I know my line breaks are...well, "distinctive." They have been known to bother people. When they work, they really work. But for me the way I break the lines is often the only way TO break the lines. So I try and consider them part of my "style" and in the meantime try to learn more and experiment with them. Edit: I know I have a tendency to write lines that drive up towards a tension and then break before the tension - the subject, perhaps? - resolves. I think that's what people don't like.
That's how I would do - just playing - much more to respond to in your post, of course, but not right now. A relationship
is as simple as locking
eyes with someone across
a crowded room. That beautiful
someone you imagine the rest
of your life with
for the rest of the day.
I would go further and edit (this is just me playing. when i go and edit something it's about me putting it in my personal style, I'm not saying I think it would necessarily be better this way - just wanted to see how I'd warp this to my own voice) to this:
It is NOT the same as what you posted though. A relationship locks
eyes across a crowded room.
Some beautiful someone,
the rest of your lives
imagined for the rest
of the day.
That's interesting. This construction forces "your" to refer to "A relationship" and "Some beautiful someone", eradicating the implicit "I" of the poem. Also, there is no real "who" to whom the eyes in "eyes across a crowded room" belong to, which forces it to also be a verb in the context of the singular line. See? Line breaks are wicked important!
Yes, I read the whole thing. While I think the tone was meant to be constructive, I don't fundamentally agree with the statement that "the best revenge is to forgive, live well and succeed." If you think of it as revenge; that is, if you think to yourself, "I'm doing great and that poor bastard is floundering," then you haven't really forgiven or moved on. But of course, even that line of thinking is far better than actually physically harming another person or their property.
Sounds like an askhubski question: "what is the best revenge?" #philosphy or maybe #thehumancondition
In response to that article, lil, though, I got to here: (emphasis mine) and I'm already like, "Woah, woah, woah." Author, slow down. Quit your sexual biases. Does anyone ever really 'deserve' revenge?I'm not going to get into the argument on whether men are just usually doing the wrong and deserving the revenge or women are just more emotional and can't control themselves
He's not claiming that anyone deserves revenge or women are emotional - he's throwing that out there as something he's not going to discuss. However, I did not read the article that carefully so it might well be full of controversial biased comments. I probably shouldn't post things that I skim -- however: I think poetry or creative works of any sort ARE a good way of expressing feelings without directly involving the object of the anger. I once wrote a long poem about the swordfish guy whose apartment I had fled. It felt really good to write and I eventually mailed it to him, weeks later. He called saying, "That poem doesn't make me look very good." It was almost an apology. If you get at least one decent poem about a crappy encounter, that's pretty good and way better than zero. Why? Because each poem moves us along to the next awareness.
It just seems biased, like "That's a given that I'm just not going to talk about," you know? I didn't mind the article, I read the whole thing. I agree. Better constructive than destructive, right? Sometimes it takes a different angle for people to see things more correctly, like your poem instead of a one-on-one conversation, I guess.