A dark place.

[the_leander]

Its not so much that I don't think of myself as being much of a poet, its simply that I find it extremely difficult to write the stuff, as often as not, whenever I've considered poetry as a form it's gotten two or three lines in, and been ditched, with things like Legacy, I have a whole lot more material to consider, the effort of putting it down is much the same, but because I already have so much behind me, it gives much more of a pause for thought before hitting the delete key out of hand.

Its also not an artform I particularly enjoy either, perhaps because a lot of what I've read simply has no connection to me or possibly because the educational establishment's desire to feed my mind with "culture" killed off any interest I might once have had.

I don't tend to fish for compliments because I'm mentally incapable of accepting them - I think my work is crap and no one, not even you will convince me otherwise.

As to your full response regarding how I assembled the poem, I have to be honest in saying I didn't understand much of it - the stuff about stanzas etc went straight over my head.

This is what you get when you teach yourself from scratch because the schools can't be bothered supplying teachers for your lessons.

Time for a google lesson me thinks!

[Catherine Edmunds]

"Stanza" is just a posh word for verse, Alan. The word 'verse' is used more for songs; stanzas for poetry.

I'm like you in finding long pieces of prose one hell of a lot easier to write than poetry. And I am also an entirely self-taught writer. I've never been to a creative writing lesson in my life. All my so-called 'expertise' has been picked up in the last few years. I had one mentor online; a wonderful writer from Hawaii who taught me all I know, pretty much. He died eighteen months ago, and I sorely miss his input. My first novel was dedicated to him, as without his help I would never have written anything more than a few slightly iffy poems. He gave me confidence and self belief, as well as a new way of looking at words - and a passion for writing.

I'm not exactly 'going it alone' at the moment, because there are still a few helpful people out there who are still teaching me stuff, and making me realise how far I still have to go. Regularly reading poems and stories by writers who are streets ahead of me keeps me enthusiastic; keeps me wanting to improve and hone my skills.

Good for you for not fishing for compliments. I'm not going to give you any. I'm just going to say that you should keep writing poetry every so often, even if you think it's crap. Your prose shows that you have a way with words, particularly with story telling. Perhaps you should consider moving more in that direction with your poetry. It's a thought. Keep writing it, anyway, and we'll keep reading.

[the_leander]

"Stanza" is just a posh word for verse, Alan. The word 'verse' is used more for songs; stanzas for poetry.

Hmm!

I'm like you in finding long pieces of prose one hell of a lot easier to write than poetry. And I am also an entirely self-taught writer. I've never been to a creative writing lesson in my life. All my so-called 'expertise' has been picked up in the last few years. I had one mentor online; a wonderful writer from Hawaii who taught me all I know, pretty much. He died eighteen months ago, and I sorely miss his input. My first novel was dedicated to him, as without his help I would never have written anything more than a few slightly iffy poems. He gave me confidence and self belief, as well as a new way of looking at words - and a passion for writing.

For me the technical side of writing is pretty much an unknown, this poem is actually a good example of my MO - it looked about right when I went through it again ten minutes later.

The same is true of Legacy, which is why your comments about typos and huge amounts of errors in grammar didn't surprise me one bit. The problem is however, I'm simply not capable of dealing with most of the gramatical errors.

I'm not exactly 'going it alone' at the moment, because there are still a few helpful people out there who are still teaching me stuff, and making me realise how far I still have to go. Regularly reading poems and stories by writers who are streets ahead of me keeps me enthusiastic; keeps me wanting to improve and hone my skills.

I can definately relate to reading to stay enthusiastic, though it has to be said, I recently read "Accelerando" by Charles Stross, and it was so filled with techno babble that even I, the geek that I am winced more then a few times at it.

Good for you for not fishing for compliments. I'm not going to give you any. I'm just going to say that you should keep writing poetry every so often, even if you think it's crap. Your prose shows that you have a way with words, particularly with story telling. Perhaps you should consider moving more in that direction with your poetry. It's a thought. Keep writing it, anyway, and we'll keep reading.

Interesting...

BTW, I did like what you did with a dark place, it is a far superior poem for your having put it to the scalpel. As for the typo, I didn't actually write the thing in a word processor, but rather, this systems generic text editor - something designed not for writing, but for coding web pages and computer code, it that there are no other show stoppers is surprising to me. I did like your way of looking at it though... Playing with words... Hmmm

[Catherine Edmunds]

Alan, regarding Legacy, I'm always available to edit the grammar. That's emphatically NOT editing content; it's just getting it into 'proper' sentences. I actually enjoy doing that sort of thing...

I tend to write in notepad so that I'm not distracted by the wiggly green and red lines that Word insists upon using. I've no idea what a systems wotsit text editor is, but probably you use it for much the same reason. Word or any other word processing program wouldn't have picked up on peak/peek anyway. Both are correct spellings; both grammatical.

[the_leander]

Alan, regarding Legacy, I'm always available to edit the grammar. That's emphatically NOT editing content; it's just getting it into 'proper' sentences. I actually enjoy doing that sort of thing...

I tend to write in notepad so that I'm not distracted by the wiggly green and red lines that Word insists upon using. I've no idea what a systems wotsit text editor is, but probably you use it for much the same reason. Word or any other word processing program wouldn't have picked up on peak/peek anyway. Both are correct spellings; both grammatical.

Think Notepad, but with a few addons to do for website code what a spell checker and grammar checker do for English in Word.

Its simple, lightwieght, and good for jotting down notes quickly, but also (at a stretch) able to do basic coding for website creation.