Roses are red... what horrible passive language.

I don’t know if I have explained my battle with poetry on this blog. Poetry is like this 

My poetry text book says poetry is all about showing rather than telling, so I thought I’d try and work an image into this post.

I’m an explainer. Maybe I should go into academic writing. Or maybe it’s all the academic writing I have had to do all these years that has really caused me a problem.

No, the real problem is that I don’t read poetry. So I have no idea when I am reading good poetry. If I can’t identify good poetry, I can’t pick it apart and find out how it’s done.

I know when I am reading a really good story. The way I learn to write is by imitating the best things I see in good stories that I read. I guess I started by actually imitating the plots and characters that I liked, but that turned into the plot devises and other tools. The closer I looked at my favorite books, the more subtle my imitation becomes. Generally, can any of you tell that I learned to write from (to name just a few) Brian Jaques, Lloyd Alexander, C. S. Lewis, Rosemary Sutcliff and Tolkien? Do I sound like them? In one way, I hope I do, Because they are really good writers, and story tellers. But on the other hand, I hope you can’t tell because I want to have my own voice.

So, poetry is difficult because I haven’t formed enough of my own opinion on it. My teacher says that I have a natural ear for it because of my back ground in music, but I actually don’t usually hear when my own poems sound musical. I can hear when something is not quite right, occasionally. But I never hear when something is good.

            I really want to be good at poetry. I wasn’t really attracted to it… at all. The more I study it, however, and learn… what it is… what it does… the more I want to be able to play with words in that way. Who knew.

            Like many of the things I love to do, I have to get over a feeling of inferiority, or inadequacy. It seems really pretentious to write poetry, or stories, or draw or sing for that matter. These voices in my head tell me I’m trying too hard, or making an image overly cliché or flowery. Meanwhile my teacher tells me I really am a poet, though still a developing one. So here I am, hating the struggle of writing poetry and longing, painfully, to be able to do it well.

            Can you get good at something just by wanting to?