Three minute poet
March 29th 2008 01:13
I had a discussion with my flatmate the other day about being a poet. He told me he wrote poetry because he was a writer but couldn't face sitting down and write a novel. He said what he liked best about poetry was that he would be done with it in three minutes.
I don't know much about writing poetry, but one thing I do know: Writing a good poem takes longer than three minutes. In my old writer's group, we had a few people writing poetry. When their work was up for discussion, we would spent up to an hour talking about one poem, and they were short pieces. After that, the poets went back and edited their work. That's why I think writing a good poem is just as hard work as writing a good story. If anything, writing poetry is even harder than writing a novel - there is no room for even one misplaced word in a poem, whereas you will get away with a few glitches in a longer text.
My flatmate was having none of it - he insisted that he was a real writer, while I maintained that there is no such thing as a three minute poet. I'm still waiting for him to show me some of his work, but I suspect he is giving it a good old three minute edit.
I don't know much about writing poetry, but one thing I do know: Writing a good poem takes longer than three minutes. In my old writer's group, we had a few people writing poetry. When their work was up for discussion, we would spent up to an hour talking about one poem, and they were short pieces. After that, the poets went back and edited their work. That's why I think writing a good poem is just as hard work as writing a good story. If anything, writing poetry is even harder than writing a novel - there is no room for even one misplaced word in a poem, whereas you will get away with a few glitches in a longer text.
My flatmate was having none of it - he insisted that he was a real writer, while I maintained that there is no such thing as a three minute poet. I'm still waiting for him to show me some of his work, but I suspect he is giving it a good old three minute edit.
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