08-27-2016, 01:37 PM
(08-27-2016, 08:47 AM)shemthepenman Wrote: ...As has been said: You're your own audience because you read what you are writing.
my hypothetical [which was only a hypothetical] was just to indicate that there is a certain binary system [minimally] to writing poems and that the other part of the binary isn't an abstract thing made objective, but rather an inter-subjectivity. what i actually find more interesting is the question of why there is such a fight against the idea that we write for others?
...
There are always words that get stuck in your head that don't make it to the paper. In a day or a week you'll see some of them.
You need others to see the rest. You think about that as you write.
A week from now you find a flaw, a month from then you change it back, a year from then you ask: why did I put that back?
An audience of future selves you can't help but think about.
Say you're a lesbian, you're writing a love poem, and it's 30 years ago (or now). A woman writing a love poem to another woman...
so you decide to use the genderless second tense, to omit purses, blouses, and labia. You think about your classmates, your school principle,
your mom.
Say you're Pablo Neruda in Chile writing political poetry... you choose to encrypt your words in metaphor until you escape. Then you write freely,
then you return, then you are murdered.
Or you're writing a poem with metric feet and you notice you've used "garage". And remember that in Britain the accent falls on the other syllable.
So you use another word.
Deciding to write a poem about a pedophile in the 1st person.
Whether (or how many times) to use "fuck".
Picking an "interesting" title.
------------------------------
Jane Hirshfield:
" There is also the matter of connection. You can’t write an image, a metaphor, a story, a phrase, without leaning a little further into the shared world,
without recognizing that your supposed solitude is at every point of its perimeter touching some other. You can’t read a poem—a good poem, at least—
by someone else, and not recognize in their experience your own face. This is a continual reminder of amplitude, intimacy, and tenderness. The slightest
dust-mote of the psyche altered is felt... there is magnitude in an altered comma. Art is a field glass for concentrating the knowledge and music of
connection. It allows us to feel more acutely and accurately and more tenderly what is already present. And then it expands that, expands us. "

