Where poetry comes from.

I was very good at creating from misery.  The loneliness of life in an empty house I was about to lose to foreclosure will do that, I suppose.  I always knew/believed that I would be better at creating while I was happy.

Indeed that assertion seems the case, but I find it hard to write those haunting poems I did before.  "The tortured soul always bleeds better on paper," as the saying should go.  Now all my poems are too mushy really share.  Even the erotic ones kind of lose their bite because the way they come off as all nice and stuff.




In the end, I know it doesn’t matter, I mean poetry comes from the soul, it sprouts and flies where it will.  I’m starting to be even more happy that I am writing the Ballad of the Emerald Bard stories, because Deeya herself is still tortured, so I can probably use that and continue with adding to her already huge catalog of poetry, especially as a good portion of those poems are based in a copyrighted world....

I remember, what seems to be a very long time ago, I never thought I’d be good at poems.  I hate rhyming, or writing in some construct of a format.  It seems so limiting.  I like the free flow of words on the open page, even if there is a structure, as far as sentences and paragraphs go, but those are more natural than stanzas and flow....

I do know there is freeform poetry, I do write that every now and then, I honestly almost consider blogs to be a type of freeform poetry.  Its definitely an interesting thought, though I still feel blogs fit more into the essay category.

Luckily there is a tool or two I found that has helped me immensely in writing poetry.  First off is the rhyming websites.  For some reason, I prefer Rhymer.com.  It just seems simple to use when I use it, and its almost always open when I’m writing anything.  Though word of advice, if you are doing a past tense word like “United” that ends with an ‘ed’ I suggest writing the present tense, because it fits better than rhyming it with “mud” which is a suggestion the website makes.

All in all, I do not want to stop writing poetry, its fun, exciting, and challenging.  You never know exactly what’s going to happen after you start.  I’ve had a few go a completely different direction.  Its just so hard not to start a new one with the word ‘dream’ somewhere in the first two lines....  Fatal flaw of being a dreamer, I suppose....

Do you like reading/writing poetry?  Do you have a first line or two that you always default to that you have to make yourself not use?  Do you have any tools to help you, websites and such to recommend for my readers?  Better yet, who is your favorite poet?  I always love the idea of Lord Byron, and call him my favorite, but I can never remember a single poem I have heard, or can relate to....  Strange....  Be sure to check my Poetry Page if you want to check out my poetry, and comment!