The way I write

I now tend to write as I read. In the past I would reflect on things I had read. Now I read first in order to find better ways to write.

As an example, formerly I may have read sonnets, and then written a sonnet with the idea ‘sonnet’ in my mind. Now I hold off writing something until I’ve read the Ballard or Boethius (for instance) that I need to write the ideas better.

Because the best way to write an epic is to read epics. The idea you can produce one, off the bat, without knowing them is amusing. Interestingly, you are just as likely to hobble yourself when you realise how hard epics are and how soft you are, but the attempt is worthwhile.

Dante improved on Virgil, but who did Pound improve on?

I also write with the maxim (that someone once said) that poetry should cast an image on the mind, create a sound for the ear, and illustrate the play of thought. Not necessarily all at once, but certainly, there are many strings to the poetic lyre.

Poetry is feeling lonely and I want to be a good friend. When music stole rhyme from poetry, and the Dylans, Cohens, Caves and Eminems showed they mattered so much more than the modernists and post modernists they contemporised, poetry should have woken up.

When cinema added orchestra to photo, and touched on epic topics, poetry went comatose.

Perhaps it’s terminal.

In any case, I pretend nothing’s going on, and keep visiting in the hope it will sputter back to life one day.

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