What Should I write ?

[Glenny Palmer]

You'll get better when you move up from those kiddies school journals Bob.

[warooa]

Poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music.

Ezra Pound

[alongtimegone]

Do you have an example of a good one? Thanks Neil ... so here's one of mine. Not as impassioned or as literary as David's 'Razor Wire', but best I could do.
Unrhymingly ... Wazza

I loved once, long ago,
for the first time.
A young boy’s love,
kept secret,
even from her.
It was enough then
to see her each day.
And by night,
to lie down, imagining
in those moments
before sleep,
that her thoughts too,
were of me.
There was a day,
I walked a few short paces
behind.
It could have been a mile
for all that it fashioned.
No thoughts of mine had strength
enough to reach out to her;
no words the confidence to speak.
But as we walked
she turned her head
and smiled; a knowing smile?
An invitation?
Embarrassed
that she might know my thoughts
I turned away.
She left that summer.
I never saw her again .
In truth,
I forgot.
But her place in my mind,
the existence of which
I had no conscious knowledge,
must have rested
in some recess deep.
For one sleepless night,
without warning,
she returned, emerging like a butterfly
from a chrysalis, unfolding
memories and emotions
so strong they took my breath away.
Were I an artist
I could have placed her youthful image
within these lines
exactly as she looked then,
so vivid was it.
And now, again,
I see her.
And at night,
I reach out, lovingly.
And I am filled with guilt.

[Gary Harding]

Yeah warooa, that's so true...

.. and it is an interesting subject, for sure. Cool...

If I understood Free verse, then I could offer an opinion or argument. (Remembering that things that are free are free for a reason. i.e. they are not worth much.)

But as I don't grasp free verse at all ... it is simply beyond my poor intellect... well, I won't discuss it!! so there ya go

However I did pick up a book by Ern Malley the other day.... a great acclaimed modernist poet .. what a terrific writer! Google him.

It just seems to me that the rhythm and rhyme of a poem is its core !

Listen to the late Leonard Teale powerfully recite. It is the essence. The Fire At Ross's Farm. Oh man! Mind bending.

If anyone enjoys free verse, well.. good for them. It is totally beyond my small comprehension, and I happily concede that. Each to his own though.

Some popular music now has an electronic rhythm machine going with guys reciting words in a monotone. They do not even take a breath! Like playing a US didgeredoo I guess .. but it is packaged and sold as music.... music. Similarly... who am I to argue that it isn't music when I do not even comprehend it.

I am here only because I have a love of Traditional Australian Balladry. No other reason.

Without skilled rhyme and rhythm, one may as well read a book. It is the magic of the rhyming words... and skill.. and talent..

It is not dum de dum. It is sheer beauty... the elegance of Australian Bush Poetry. The powerhouse behind the words. The music. The Man From Snowy River.
Engross yourself in C.J. Dennis' "Jim Of The Hills". Try and prevent a tear.

THAT is beautiful poetry... Rhythm and rhyme give it impact. Without that it is just.. packaged nice words.

I hope my feet are firmly grounded in reality .... not in esoteric nonsense.

Isn't that what the ABPA is ALL about? setting aside the social side.

Immortalising the sort of things that Bill Williams talks about. Isn't it??

We are the Australian Bush Poets Association. Balladists. Not the Free Verse Appreciation Society.. I think???????
Don't we love our Paterson Lawson Dennis O'Brien Harrington Grahame Gordon Boake Tierney Kendall Crist Hervey and even Clark of Clunes. Wordsmiths.

One could do far worse than follow their example, even if one is unable to actually tread in their tracks.

For what it's worth...

[keats]

I don't 'LOVE' them. They are ok but just in our little Bush Poetry world. And it is only little in the overall context of human civilisation but I am here to be proven wrong.

Keats

[Heather]

Neville, clearly you associate with the wrong sort of women!

Gary

(Remembering that things that are free are free for a reason. i.e. they are not worth much.)

Kindness is free. Love is free. Generosity of spirit is free. A smile is free. They are worth something in my world.

Does writing rhymed and metred poetry limit us to discussing that and that alone? Can't we have intelligent conversations about other sorts of writing?

There is good and bad poetry of all descriptions. I've read plenty of free verse where I have no idea what it is about, but when you get a good one - it is delicious . I've also read plenty of mind numbing bush poems.

Bob I think you are missing my point. I didn't say I didn't understand a bush poem, only that I have got to the end of some - bumped along merrily with the metre, only to get to the end and not remembered a thing - I've read the words but not absorbed them.

You don't want to know what Neil wears - well, you might, but it will cost you an awful lot to find out! (Is ok Neil, your secret is safe with me)



For now......

[Neville Briggs]

In answer to the question that Bob posed at the beginning of this thread. Remember ?
What should I write ? * I think that Heather has stated the answer, right on the money.
Good poetry.

We get sidetracked into arguing that good poetry has something to do with styles, or modernism v traditional, rhyme v non-rhyme. And we end up bogged down in a useless, absolutely fruitless exchange where people think that the only way to discuss what is good is to boo and hiss the " other side " and cheer "our side".
If we are going to call ourselves poets, we need to display much more depth of thought than just the Orwellian sheep chant, rhyming good.. no rhyme bad.

So what is good poetry. The poetry authors John Willams and Matthew Sweeney pronounce bad poetry as " waffle, stale language, clichés, vagueness, abstractions and generalizations, obvious spelling out rather than suggesting, pomposity, archaisms, derivitive/imitative writing, syntactical clumsiness, obscurity, rhythmical bumpiness and clanging rhyme" . I venture to say that the corollary of this is that the overcoming of these faults is good poetry and that this analysis applies to all styles of poetry from Shakespeare to C.J. Dennis to Ginsberg.
It all sounds complicated you say. Of course it is, writing good poetry is hard work.

What should Bob write, what should we all write. GOOD POETRY. In the words of the old cliché, 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

* my wife reckoned I choked on being required to admit a woman was right. Nah.

[Heather]

You heard it here first folks - I'm right!

I must say Neville, I do like the thought or Orwellian sheep chanting!

[David Campbell]

Good on you, Warren! That's a fine, sensitive piece of writing, and the message is as clear as a bell.

Beautifully put, Heather. And you're "right on the money" too, Neville. We need a lot more cheering for both 'sides', as each has something to learn from the other. For example, I ran the words "day after day" together several times in Razor Wire. It was an attempt to give a visual emphasis to the relentless monotony of the misery faced by the refugees. I reckon it heightens the effect, although others may disagree. What if I adapted some of the words to stanza format?

Here, deep inside, the razor wire coils,
and we can do naught but obey
the steel-mesh voices of stone-faced guards
dayafterdayafterday.

Does it work? Would it be accepted as bush verse? If not, why not? There are other visual cues used in free verse that may well be transferred to bush verse if there was a willingness to accept them. Worth thinking about, anyway.

Cheers
David

[Heather]

David I loved what you did with dayafterdayafterday - it absolutely highlighted what you were saying and I thought it was very clever..

Heather