Apr
Writing poetry is good for all your writing
I’ve always felt that writing poetry is good for the rest of my writing. I don’t aspire to being a successful poet, but I do believe the effort engages a different part of my brain, stretches the creative muscles, and comes back around into my other writing in a positive way.
I was reading an article in Time magazine the other day about Martin Scorsese and the documentaries he’s made. Specifically, it was talking about a new one he’s made about The Rolling Stones. In the article, the author, Richard Corliss, poses this question: “Why should big-time directors make “small” docs?”
This, to me, is the same as asking why a fiction writer should write non-fiction or poetry. His answer? “Because the discipline has aerobic artistic benefits–it’s a workout for different muscles. To simplify a bit: directors of fiction films make things happen; directors of documentaries find things happening and shape them into a story. In a fiction film, the essential tool is the camera; in documentaries, it’s the editing table. That is where the snippets of real life, even if staged as a concert, are analyzed and alchemized into a movie that, if the stars are aligned, entertains the audience as much as any Harry Potter blockbuster.”
You could easily swap out “directors of fiction films” with “writers of fiction novels” and “directors of documentaries” with “writers of poetry.” Not that both novels and poems don’t get edited, they do. But I think it is in poetry that those “snippets of real life . . . are analyzed and alchemized . . .”
Join us this month as we try our hands at poetry–at alchemizing our words into gold–with the help of guest blogger Adrian S. Potter. Hop on over to our page of Poetic Scribblings. There, you’ll find more information about the workshop and about Adrian. You’ll also find some fearless first drafts of poems prodded to life by the prompts at Writers’ Digest Poetic Asides. All in honor of National Poetry Month.
Dive in. The water’s fine.
