There are a lot of people out there who think poetry is fluffy. That anyone can write a poem. That writing prose is a much bigger accomplishment. Do you agree? If you had the choice between publishing a book of poems and publishing a novel, of which would you be more proud? Explain why.

-- Anonymous, April 18, 2000

Answers

Fluffy poetry IS fluffy, but then, there is fluffy prose out there too. Anyone ever read Danielle Steele? or a Harlequin romance?
If I write something good, if I have managed to say what I wanted to say and I said it well, with style, with grace, then I am proud of it, prose or poetry. One is not better than the other, they are different beasts created for different reasons.
An English professor I had once said, "A poem is a cry frozen in time." It's one crystallized image, emotion. It touches. If that is what I am trying to do then a poem is what I write.
A good poem is hard to write. Good prose doesn't come easy. If a writer can take pride in a good piece of writing, what matter if it is poetry or prose?

-- Anonymous, April 18, 2000

two more or less straight answers in one day......i must be sick...oh, wait a minute, i am......my pomes are fluff.....on the other hand, my poems are not, but i don't really consider them poetry....i think of them as rythmic prose.....if you notice, my serious (at least as serious as i ever get) stuff almost never rhymes....i wrote a eulogy for a web persona i retired on my webpage some time back.....someone read it and complimented me on my poem....i wrote it purely as prose...in any case, writing anything that anyone else wants to read is an accomlishment, regardless of form or structure.....

-- Anonymous, April 19, 2000

I do agree that anyone can write a poem--some kind of poem.

Can anyone write a poem like Whitman's "Song of Myself" or T.S. Eliot's "Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock" or Ginsberg's "Howl" or Sapphire's "Wild Thing" or Paul Beatty's "At Ease" or the best of Smokey or Dylan or Hendrix or Public Enemy or--the list is endless--No because even those people couldn't top their best efforts.

I would say the writing of a novel is harder, because you're doing, like 40,000 words on up, or 4,000 lines, so you have to put in time, and maintain a pace, especially if you are revising.

Of course, where does this leave us when we consider book length poems like "The Iliad" or "John Brown's Body" or "Omeros"?

Writing prose, especially of a novel, is a triumph of endurance and concentration and perseverence, but if you wrote a famous poem the accomplishment would be just as great, since the idea is to render something that will register and remain on peoples hearts and in their minds.

I would be just as proud of a book of poems as a novel--I love all my children the same.

-- Anonymous, May 26, 2000

explain you say-------- well I have a small idea I love poetry , but I perfer to write Discritive Proses... What ever comes into this head of mine.I just sit here and come up with some amazing stuff. It tends to be a little bit fluffy but also grabs the reader, and makes them think. There for as my eight grade teacher said " The reader brings more the print then the print brings to the reader." Which ever one you accomplish is a big accomplishment. If I had the choice I would reluctanley choice to have a book of poems to be published, because I have still to master the are of writting stuff in qoutes........as for the time being

-- Anonymous, August 03, 2000