When I was a teenager, in my late teens, I was writing already some poetry.
I tried to rhyme and as you go along with this habit, you tend to become a bit better at it.
But somehow along the way, the poetry bug did not last into my thirties.
At the time I had started to write poems, I thought whatever I wrote was sounding so much like nursery rhymes rather than high elevated level poetry. I was shy about and never published what I wrote then. They were written in Flemish (Dutch), my mother tongue.
At that time, it was fashionable for poetry to be like a soup of words, nice words, around a theme, but very hard to understand or even guess what was meant by it all. I have read so many award winning poems and all too often the message got really lost in the style and even though there was some sensual pleasure in reading the words, there was no clear understood message, no spiritual pleasure in reading the poetry.
When I read the essay of RW Emerson, titled the poet, I gained some insight that not all poetry had to be a hard to understand soup of words. He wrote: "The sign and credentials of the poet are that he announces that which no man foretold. He is the true and only doctor; he knows and tells; he is the only teller of news, for he was present and privy to the appearance which he describes. He is a beholder of ideas and an utterer of the necessary and causal. For we do not speak now of men of poetical talents, or of industry and skill in metre, but of the true poet." and "For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes a poem,—a thought so passionate and alive that like the spirit of a plant or an animal, it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing. The thought and the form are equal in the order of time, but in the order of genesis the thought is prior to the form. 12 The poet has a new thought; he has a whole new experience to unfold; he will tell us how it was with him, and all men will be the richer in his fortune. For the experience of each new age requires a new confession, and the world seems always waiting for its poet."
When in 2010 I fractured a vertebra and was bed-bound for 3 months, I was listening to audio-books and one of them quoted a poem of William Blake. I remember I was in my garden when I found the website that allowed anyone to post poems. I thought back about my teenage years and for the first time, I tried to write a poem in English, Little Purple Flower.
I still was quite unsure and used a poet name or pen name, Aufie Zophy.
The response to this poem on PoemHunter has been quite encouraging.
As I was more and more into poetry and read so many poems, I became more
confident.
Now I know my small pieces of writing, my small verses are worth to be called poems.
Every time I put out a poem, I want it to be read.
I want to share some experiences, some insights, some little ideas in my poems and always hope that it will reach a large audience. Today I am very grateful for my capability of writing and for the readers who have read some of my work.
I have selected my most cherished poems and put them on a blog, while still all or almost all my poems are listed on PoemHunter .
This is like a long invitation for you to visit my blog with poems and if you want, leave here and there a comment. I will be grateful for it and I hope you get something out of it: a bit of joy, a grain of inspiration, or just a tiny bead of love...
I tried to rhyme and as you go along with this habit, you tend to become a bit better at it.
But somehow along the way, the poetry bug did not last into my thirties.
At the time I had started to write poems, I thought whatever I wrote was sounding so much like nursery rhymes rather than high elevated level poetry. I was shy about and never published what I wrote then. They were written in Flemish (Dutch), my mother tongue.
At that time, it was fashionable for poetry to be like a soup of words, nice words, around a theme, but very hard to understand or even guess what was meant by it all. I have read so many award winning poems and all too often the message got really lost in the style and even though there was some sensual pleasure in reading the words, there was no clear understood message, no spiritual pleasure in reading the poetry.
When I read the essay of RW Emerson, titled the poet, I gained some insight that not all poetry had to be a hard to understand soup of words. He wrote: "The sign and credentials of the poet are that he announces that which no man foretold. He is the true and only doctor; he knows and tells; he is the only teller of news, for he was present and privy to the appearance which he describes. He is a beholder of ideas and an utterer of the necessary and causal. For we do not speak now of men of poetical talents, or of industry and skill in metre, but of the true poet." and "For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes a poem,—a thought so passionate and alive that like the spirit of a plant or an animal, it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing. The thought and the form are equal in the order of time, but in the order of genesis the thought is prior to the form. 12 The poet has a new thought; he has a whole new experience to unfold; he will tell us how it was with him, and all men will be the richer in his fortune. For the experience of each new age requires a new confession, and the world seems always waiting for its poet."
When in 2010 I fractured a vertebra and was bed-bound for 3 months, I was listening to audio-books and one of them quoted a poem of William Blake. I remember I was in my garden when I found the website that allowed anyone to post poems. I thought back about my teenage years and for the first time, I tried to write a poem in English, Little Purple Flower.
I still was quite unsure and used a poet name or pen name, Aufie Zophy.
The response to this poem on PoemHunter has been quite encouraging.
As I was more and more into poetry and read so many poems, I became more
confident.
Now I know my small pieces of writing, my small verses are worth to be called poems.
Every time I put out a poem, I want it to be read.
I want to share some experiences, some insights, some little ideas in my poems and always hope that it will reach a large audience. Today I am very grateful for my capability of writing and for the readers who have read some of my work.
I have selected my most cherished poems and put them on a blog, while still all or almost all my poems are listed on PoemHunter .
This is like a long invitation for you to visit my blog with poems and if you want, leave here and there a comment. I will be grateful for it and I hope you get something out of it: a bit of joy, a grain of inspiration, or just a tiny bead of love...
I feel very grateful that I read this. It is very helpful and very informative and I really learned a lot from it.
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