(Part 2) Top products from r/OCPoetry

It's very impressive that you're teaching yourself, you definitely have a pretty good ear! I think there's a tradition in Spanish poetry for writing in that manner vs being too punctilious about meter and precise syllable count (after all, Spain has a lot of Romances in its poetic tradition and the very lyrical octosyllable is in our collective poetic blood! Even the greats like Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer strayed from strictures often); in that vein, I think you shouldn't agonize too much about formalisms and traditions, but rather use it as a tool to see if they can help bring out something from your work (e.g. if a piece of yours ends up looking like for example a romance, and you feel like conforming a bit more to the form would help its voice be even truer, then you could go for it).

Thanks for explaining your train of thought! I definitely got a sense of that when reading the piece, how things that were once so vivid and intense can fade into mere memories--even people; made me think of people I talked to all the time and now I realized it's been years, I appreciate you exploring this theme!

Hah, not that knowledgeable, just a big ol' nerd and an amateur too! Your work makes me think you've already read some hispanic poets, which is a great start to see what has been done in our language and what's survived the test of time and/or evolved; growing up I read "de todo un poco", like Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Ruben Darío (<3 "Azul...", Darío is for me the most stylistically accomplished latino poet I've read, every single poem in Azul blows my mind), El cantar del mío cid, Federico García Lorca, Mario Benedetti, Jorge Luis Borges, translations of Baudelaire and a few others I forget; not a lot but enough to sit in my subconscious and wake up almost a decade later making me try my hand at writing poetry these days. For a more structured approach though, another user in here recommended me a few resources that I've been already reading through and learning a lot from:

• Introduction to Spanish Poetry, a small sampler of poetry from Spain through the ages.
  
• Spanish Poetry, a dual language anthology.
  
• The Cambridge Introduction to Spanish Poetry.
  
  In the end I think it's pretty much just continuing to train your ear with a wide array of poetry so you pick up things that are effective and that you can execute well, I'm not sure if there's any actual books on prosody like there are for English (e.g. Stephen Fry's "The Ode Less Travelled"), but this little website is actually a treasure of prosodic matters: http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/L/A-Robert.R.Lauer-1/METRIFICATION.html . Again, more as a sample of what could be some more tools you can use instead of something you should be constrained by!

To situate or locate the "self" is a primary concern and it often feels that the self is the ultimate unknowable other. However, there is always the possibility that this process can lapse into solipsism and one must sublimate many neurotic tendencies to avoid raising our small place within reality to a place of supreme importance. There is a simple joy in realizing and coming to terms with our general insignificance. Having said as much, the content of the poem - an existential cry - is a worthy subject. In terms of form and word selection there are a few things that, if addressed, could tighten up the poem to give it greater clarity and concision of expression. This is usually the case with a first draft dashed off in the heat of emotion. Revising, editing, is crucial. As an object dislodged from ones entrails a poem carries the expectation of vibrational contact with the mind and nervous system of a reader. Even the letter C, alone on a page, can be evocative, tilting and swaying with ramifications.
First, the title: Are you happy book-ending the poem with this question? In line 6 you alter the order and use "who I am" - which, to my ears, is an over usage of the same words in one small poem. I have a feeling that - for the title - if you switched from the question, "who am I?" to the declaration, "I am," the title would bleed seamlessly into the first line, which would clarify the intention of the poem and the self-scrutiny that follows.
The first line has a spark of subtle ambiguity in that "place" denotes a fixed location -i.e, the confines of the self in relation to the wide world and the endless heterogeneity of human interaction. It is a solid opening line. "Cant" needs an apostrophe and the line itself needs a period.
Line two is somewhat troublesome because of the heavy repetition of the word "back." Unless, like a note in a song that fits and propels the melody, you are happy with this repetitive usage, I would consider revising this line. Are there synonyms or other possibilities for "fall back" that you can consider? Perhaps "plummet" or "plunge." Give it some thought and see if you can trim the fat of repetition to make this line as precise as the opener. It also should end with a period. "One step back and there I fall back into the past that I’am trying to run away from." - It also helps to give some context or a concrete example, something the readers can relate to, when alluding to the past. Are you emotionally able to divulge some episode from the past you are mentally fleeing, to put meat on the bones of this common situation?
Third line: The punctuation needs cleaning up. No need for a comma after "but." And add a period after "change." You can confidently drop the word "then" as the meaning is clear without it. This line is also a tad troublesome as the common phrase "things change, nothing is ever the same," is a redundant expression. Perhaps you can dig deeper, stir up you internal muck, take the risk and specifically state how you were in the past and what has changed.
Fourth line: This is something, I'm certain, most people can relate to; however, it causes pause for concern in that these idle concepts of right and wrong - unless you subscribe to the fixity of moral realism (http://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_moral_realism.html) - are often the internalization or sublimation of societal pressures. This line can be tightened up with a few choice alterations and deletions to give it a shiny precision.
Fifth line: we can all presume and understand that you meant "this" chaos, not "these" chaos. The comma needs to be switched to a period. Again, is there some other way of expressing "chaos" whereby you don't use the same word twice in this contained thought?
Sixth line: Hmmn. The quandary. Exist in a vacuum of an amusing isolation that gradually becomes tedious or hope to find the "self" in relation to others... Again, the punctuation needs tidying; and this line could use a haircut to give the thought a heightened clarity of form.
Seventh line: yes, the world is teeming with masses who seem to effortlessly coagulate into groups that function for the betterment of all involved. How does one come to terms with alienation, the feeling there is something different that prevents us from finding "our" people, our group. It's tough. The river cuts the trough that it flows through. Maybe the old Russian was right: to be overly conscious is a disease of the mind.
Eighth line: I feel this is vague and that's alright as intermingling with humanity is frequently impersonal and disappointing but is there a way to focus on an actual interaction that left you feeling nonplussed? Try to give it an experiential quality that has content the reader can relate with.

In terms of form - line-breaks, stanzas and overall shape - it helps to be conscious of the way sentences lay on the page and to locate natural breaks to determine how the poem will occupy the frame in which it is situated.

Here is my suggestion (with minor editing) for a more aesthetically pleasing layout:

-----------

I Am

Trying to find myself
In a place where I can’t move backwards.
One step back
And there I fall back
Into the past that I am trying to run away from.

I was never like this before
But things change.
Nothing is ever the same.

One wrong that you do
Will always overshadow
All the rights you have ever done in your life.

Trying to find myself in all this chaos surrounding me,
The more I try to find myself, the more I fall into this chaos.

The alone time I enjoy, helps me to find who I am.
But in reality I hate being alone.
In a world filled with people,
I find myself completely different, trying hard to mingle with people.
But the more people I meet, the more disappointed I am.

I am still searching for the answers to my one question “Who am I?”

-------------

In conclusion, I think this poem (as a poem and not just as a cathartic existential cry when no other outlet seems possible) has potential. Rilke said, in his Letters to a Young Poet, something like: you do not need to seek external justifications for internal promptings. That's good advice for poets. Express yourself, certainly, if you are moved to do so. In terms of craftsmanship there is plenty to be done to give a poem the finest form and clearest expression it can achieve and, consequently, to reach a potential reader or writer and aid and amuse them on their own path. It may take time to be able to go back and face your initial expression (the first draft) to see if it contains something valuable, to you and a reader, and to do the work to shape it to its highest degree. The content of this particular poem by Terry Matthew is the common ground some of us traverse when facing our mortal lot and the contemplation of our identity within society and the wider realm of nature, geography and Space. The answers may never arrive; but the guesses will pile-up. A useful approach to these complexities is to diminish the severity of our contemplation - which, of course, isn't always easy - and minimize the lacerating effects of our insatiable desire to know by reveling in the constancy of conjecture.

Here is an advanced book that may aid you in the discovery of your self:

https://www.amazon.ca/Psychic-Life-Power-Theories-Subjection/dp/0804728127/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1495462205&sr=8-2&keywords=butler+psychic

Good luck Terry. I hope you work on that poem and post a revised version.

On the subject of writers block -

I thinks it's reading that cures it. I go through periods of writing loads; on the bus, on the train, at work, just after sex, on the toilet, in bed, in the kitchen, everywhere, all the time. I'll hit a point and my output will slow to a drizzle, then I read.
I've just started buying new books and getting into different poets that i've not read before, and it's great. I'll read a bunch of stuff, a lot of it will be interesting, but without impact - then, i'll found something that'll click and make me think 'I want to do something like that!', and the writing period will start again.
I guess this also crosses over into inspiration.

the other thing that's really spurred this all on, is that i've started running an open mic poetry night. Each time i'll read a couple of my own, as well as a couple of poems that I've enjoyed recently. 'Her anxiety' by W.B.Yeats, 'The applicant' by Sylvia Plath & 'Meditation on the A30' by John Betjeman are all poems that i've really enjoyed reading recently. It's that I have to come up with new content every month, to keep it fresh, that helps me to keep my mind active. I try and remember as many as I can off the top of my head, but my head is usally filled with all sorts of other things than I need to remember, like what the point of all this rambling was ...

AH YES! Read more poetry, read shit, read things you've never read before and all that kinda stuff. Read 'Crow' by Ted hughes, you can find some not-too-expensive paperbacks on that shit-heap, Amazon. 'Crow' is portrayed as some kind of trickster death god, that's been influencing the world from the beginning - well worded violence and insanity, as to be expected from Ted, with good humour thrown in their too.

Plus, I read a great one from Toby Martinez de las rivas the other day. It was all about meeting eyes with your lover, whilst they're having a pee.

Well, a lot of classical poetry is based in rhyme and meter - it makes the piece easier to remember and chant (e.g. The Aeneid written in dactylic hexameter, Shakespeare writing in unrhymed iambic pentameter, Seuss writing in rhyming anapestic tetrameter, etc).

If you write in rhyme or follow a classical form, e.g. sonnet, then the writing should be consistent or true to that form, yes.

Much of 'modern' poetry is in free verse, which doesn't focus on rhyme or meter or form but instead on word choice and enjambment and metaphor.

In terms of learning new abilities, I'd recommend both http://www.amazon.com/Prosody-Handbook-Guide-Poetic-Literature/dp/048644967X/ and http://www.amazon.com/Teachers-Writers-Handbook-Poetic-Forms/dp/0915924609/ for theory.

In terms of poets, I'd recommend pretty much any of the Norton anthologies to start, and checking into poets that you like from there. A lot of people point to Bukowski as a modern master, but I find his work insufferable at best (that's just my opinion, though, as I tend towards the classical forms and writing in rhyme).

I'd also recommend using the search function on /r/poetry for recommendations. The question comes up fairly frequently.

Welcome to OCPoetry (as commenter)! That didn't come off as ranty at all. I think we need longer (considered, earnest) comments on the internet.

Anyway, I'm not an expert by any means, just a friendly loner/devotee with a spending problem and a massive library. I've read a lot of poetry and writing about poetry -- I think that's probably the key to understanding the stuff on a deeper level as both a reader and a writer.

I'm going to be brief with this comment cause I'm at work, BUT with the addition of read, read, read, my advice to /u/grandmasterlane above stands: Spend more time with your poems. Find ways to make the poem you're working on the only thing you think about.

Additionally, buy a copy of Roget's and a good dictionary and spend lots of time in those places and on etymonline.com exploring the meaning and origin of words. I think loving words is super important. Every time you choose one word over another it has to be an act of determination, calculation, holistic consideration. Every word collides with every other word in a poem. It's a weird thing to see a masterful poet make that work. I'll try and think of a particular great example and get back to you. (Immediately I think of Wallace Stevens' "Not Ideas About the Thing but the Thing Itself" a poem in which the poet uses EVERY. SINGLE. WORD. to alchemically evoke the image/experience of a sun actively rising in the reader's mind. That short poem appears in my mind because I've spent hours with it. Reading. Rereading. Defining every word that I thought I knew. Memorizing. Reciting.)

OK. That's it for now.

If you believe your words are gospel, then just accept the feedback and move on with your life. If you want to start down the road of legitimately writing poetry that someone who actually reads poetry can appreciate, it's time to get to fucking work.

Of course, you think your "words" are special, but they aren't. This is the same thing every beginner churns out. It's cliché abstraction and it's not worth sharing with anyone. You can call it "poetry" and say it's your "art" and that poetry can't be "defined" -- whatever.

But anyone who actually reads poetry will recognize your "words" immediately for what they are and turn the page.

Read some poetry, man. Read some books about writing poetry and the tools poets use to craft their poems. If you need recommendations, I can give you some, but you'll have to do some fucking work. You might have missed the memo, but writing poetry is hard work.

***

Edit: Here some recommendations to get you started.

• A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver
  
• The Poetry Home Repair Manual by Ted Kooser
  
• In the Palm of Your Hand by Steve Kowit
  
• The Poet's Companion by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux
  
  And if you insist on trying to use end rhymes:
  
  
• Rules for the Dance by Mary Oliver
  
  And please, please pick up a good book of poems from multiple authors so you can get some exposure, such as the Norton Anthology of Poetry or the compilation Good Poems by Garrison Keillor. One of my favorites is A Book of Luminous Things by Czeslaw Milosz.

I am looking for others to help create and to participate in a collaborative poem.

Please check out

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_poetry

and/or

http://www.amazon.com/Crossing-State-Lines-American-Renga/dp/0374532745

and/or

http://tapestrypoetry.webs.com/


PM me or reply here if you're interested.

Thanks!

I just bought this crossword book and I thought you. If you need some new inspiration. :)

I would start with Ovid, he writes about Roman myth which is practically the same. Also read some Homer. I can recommend more books when I get home.

Edit: I would start off with Mythology by Edith Hamilton. This will give you a good run down of who is who and she gives you the Greek and the Roman names. I would then move on to read the three classic epics by Homer and Virgil. Finally I would move to Ovid and read Metamorphoses. From there I would read what ever you can get your hands on.

Sorry, but i'm not sold on this. It works a bit as a digital sculpture (like this) or a performance piece maybe, but as poetry this falls flat, simply because I don't feel like reading more than a few lines. There is an emotional response, but it feels like a cheap Maya Lin memorial or a cheaper Oswald's Memorial. But there is still a response and i think that prompts further prodding into the form.

This is p cool. Have you heard of ulillillia? He wrote this book: its prose has a very similar quality to it, but doesn't come off as threatening.

I think the repetition works up until a point, that point changing depending on whether you read it out loud or not. It also had a strange quality of oscillating between chilling and downright silly. Especially since I am so bad with dates that i thought the day might've passed and then it almost spooked my.

I think this is partly successful in
>scrubbing clean of any lyricism

but then the excess became a new form of lyricism, less traditional, but still lyrical. I dunno if your striving for that, but its kinda there if you rein it in.

I think Asian poetry should be your go to for this.
Chinese:
[Hanshan] (https://www.amazon.com/Collected-Mountain-Mandarin-Chinese-English/dp/1556591403/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1481519439&sr=8-1&keywords=hanshan)
[Libai and Dufu] (https://www.amazon.com/Li-Po-Tu-Translated-Introduction/dp/0140442723/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1481519506&sr=8-3&keywords=li+po)
[Tao Yuanming] (https://www.amazon.com/Selected-Poems-Tao-Chien/dp/1556590563/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1481519544&sr=8-1&keywords=Tao+qian)
and Japanese:
[Saigyo] (https://www.amazon.com/Saigyo/dp/023107493X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1481519595&sr=8-1&keywords=Saigyo)
[Basho] (https://www.amazon.com/Narrow-Road-Interior-Writings-Shambhala/dp/1570627169/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1481519621&sr=8-3&keywords=Basho)
[Ryokan] (https://www.amazon.com/Dewdrops-Lotus-Leaf-Poems-Ryokan/dp/1590301080/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1481519642&sr=8-4&keywords=Ryokan)

My Poetry Book - “You Are My Home”