Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Poetic Style
Even though we learned in class that beginning poets usually follow a similar style as their favourite poets, I thought that it was possible that I might not- seeing as what I had written so far had sounded like any of the other poets. I wasn't good at using the old language, and hated rhyming, and hated iambic and it seemed the only thing I could get concretely was visuals, shock value, and personification. Then I started my Project for class on poets that influenced our work, and I realized more then ever how all poets are similarly derived from other poets. And that their styles are only recognized as different because they vary a slight amount. I chose Bukowski and Plath, whom I couldn't think would have anything in common. However their shocking language and personal poems made it more clear than ever to me that poets all seem to sort of "copy" each other in style. And that made me wonder who the first poets were to start different styles before we got all these variations? What do you think?
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I agree that poets influence poets, and they all sort of copy each other. With the two poets I chose for the presentation, although one lived from 1807-1882, and the other from 1925-1965, i found many similarities between their work. They both used a great deal of repetition, enjambments, similies, rhyming, both wrote about nature and used fluctuated line sentences. Their work influenced me in writing my own poetry, so I guess it really doesn't matter what century you're from, everyone sort of copies each other and puts their own twist on things.
ReplyDeleteWhile researching for my poetry presentation in the past week, I too have found that many poets seem to gain influence from one another. Pertaining to your question about the first poets, and how they came up with various ways of writing poetry, I believe that the first poets didn't really have any idea of what they were getting themselves into. I mean, i'm pretty sure the first poets weren't sitting around talking about iambic pentameter and end-stopped lines. I think that these poets just wrote poetry the way they felt most comfortable, and after years of studying these poems, today we put a label on their methods.
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