05-11-2016, 09:58 PM
I don't know. I sort of get it. It's not the poem that gets better or worse of course, but your perspective or perhaps confidence in it. For me it goes only steadily down hill. Every time.
I write a poem. It's usually pretty terrible. But I put all that work into it. Then it starts whispering "look at me. look at me. look at me." So I post it, and think "how bad could it really be?" The next day I read it and think, "what have I done?!?!?! abort!!! abort!!!! abort!!!" But it's too late. I never like the poem again.
I call this "the curse of the muses." I'm pretty sure they like to put writers under some kind of "Narcissus spell" to force them to put unfinished or sub-par work out into the world to be SEEN. They wait just long enough for it to be entirely too late to take it back, then they wake you up and show you what you've done. It's really mean. I don't think they do it to everyone, but they do it to me all the time. Or maybe everyone has different muses, and I just have really mean ones. At least, this is the scenario I've come up with to explain why it keeps happening ...
Or you could always explain it with a Winnie-the-Pooh quote, because A.A. Milne was a guru. "When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.”
And that's really all there is when you get down to it. It looks different when it has other people looking at it.
Well that's all my philosophizing for one day. The window boxes are waiting to be planted and the kids are still in their pajamas.
--Quix
I write a poem. It's usually pretty terrible. But I put all that work into it. Then it starts whispering "look at me. look at me. look at me." So I post it, and think "how bad could it really be?" The next day I read it and think, "what have I done?!?!?! abort!!! abort!!!! abort!!!" But it's too late. I never like the poem again.
I call this "the curse of the muses." I'm pretty sure they like to put writers under some kind of "Narcissus spell" to force them to put unfinished or sub-par work out into the world to be SEEN. They wait just long enough for it to be entirely too late to take it back, then they wake you up and show you what you've done. It's really mean. I don't think they do it to everyone, but they do it to me all the time. Or maybe everyone has different muses, and I just have really mean ones. At least, this is the scenario I've come up with to explain why it keeps happening ...
Or you could always explain it with a Winnie-the-Pooh quote, because A.A. Milne was a guru. "When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.”
And that's really all there is when you get down to it. It looks different when it has other people looking at it.
Well that's all my philosophizing for one day. The window boxes are waiting to be planted and the kids are still in their pajamas.
--Quix
The Soufflé isn’t the soufflé; the soufflé is the recipe. --Clara