Day six

Feeling rather uncreative today. So I turn to answering two questions a very good friend asked me earlier in the week.

Where is the line between writing your own experience in a poem and writing an experience that others can relate to? How important is it to create a line or phrase or idea that everyone easily relates to as opposed to one that is true to you and your life?

First off this is a tough question I imagine that every writer asks themselves this questions at least once in their lifetime. To me writing poetry is the act of writing your own experience in a poem. I've always viewed writing poetry as both a selfless and selfish act. I don't purposefully write for a specific audience, or at least I don't consciously. There may be universal themes in poems I write, but those themes aren't forced at the forefront of my writing. I think it's very important to create lines and phrases that are true to you and your own life as opposed to something that everyone easily relates to. Perhaps in songwriting creating lines or phrases that everyone easily relates to would be more acceptable in my eyes. But this does beg the question is there a "spiritus mundi" as Yeats refers to, where universal themes and symbols are shared by all? Is there a collective unconscious that links all humanity as Jung has proposed? It's not our job as poets to directly answer these questions, I do think it is our job as poets to reveal these questions and make the reader contemplate on the infinite possibilities. But, that's not what the question asks. I think there is some importance for a reader to understand the experience that you are writing, but I don't think directly relating to it is as important. Everyone has varying tastes and take different meanings and connotations from poetry, so to even attempt to create some type of universality would be an insurmountable task. You want your poem to be accessible, but you don't want it to be too revealing. I say, if its true to your life- write it! - it gives readers new perspectives on things, and reveals new ways of thinking. Aside from the fact we won't know what everyone will easily relate to, I think being as true to yourself as possible in poems is important. We are too tied to our own individual perspectives that we fail to see and even want to understand why certain people do things. We just shove it off as if it were taboo. "Oh, look Johnny has a tattoo on his wrist" one might judge Johnny to be a trouble maker. And that "one" person doesn't realize Johnny got a tattoo after his sister died after a long battle with pancreatic cancer, in memory of her (I know very sympathetic example). I don't think that last bit had to do with anything, except a side rant. But anyways, I think my head hurts from thinking about this, because I doubt myself even as I write it. All artists want to gain recognition from as many people as possible, to have lasting power. I don't think forcing yourself to cater to individuals is a good idea. Success should come organically and naturally as opposed to forced. Hopefully this is organized enough to make sense.

34:04