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Why people don’t like poetry?

by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, Read, write, lead!, Write, create, innovate!

shelley

This essay is inspired by some of the recent comments in this post. And it made me think: why  people really don’t like poetry? What is it that keeps them away from maybe not writing, but from reading some really exquisite pieces by poets from all around the world?

The usual answer is something like “Poetry is boring”, “I don’t understand it”, “It’s a waste of time”. So I wanted to explore this topic a bit further.

If we look more deeply around us, we can notice that people have very little time to appreciate art in general. This fast paced, consumer oriented society has trained us to want everything now and here. An instant satisfaction, an instant thrill, an instant experience: not allowing our biological system to perceive with all its senses; truly absorb our emotions and simply feel.

Life usually demands of us high level of practicality, logical and factual thinking in order for us to be functional and productive on a day to day basis. It’s very noticeable in how we are doing business and science. But where are the boundaries? Have we lost our human touch? In our lives when everything is so exact and explicit we have erased some of the basic human traits: ability to feel and empathize. We cannot treat our most intimate relationships, families and ourselves like we are on a business meeting and signing a business contract.

And there is this soft spot where poetry likes to ‘poke’ you. It demands something different from you. It demands your whole being to respond: if you try logically to analyze a poem, it will take you nowhere; if you search for shortcuts, you will be lost; if you need answers, probably you will be disappointed.

A poem is a journey that allows you to escape from typical factual thinking and forces you to question everything: instead of searching for answers on the outside, you need to look deep inside of you.

There lies the true value of poetry – especially for business leaders, as it can be seen as an antidote to typical business interpretations:

  • poem is associative rather than factual thinking;
  • poem enforces abstract thinking in comparison to deductive thinking.

Like Clare Morgan implies in “What poetry brings to business”:

reading poetry generates conceptual spaces that maybe different from the spaces usually approached in business and life in general.

As poetry is letting yourself to get familiar with the unknown – it shouldn’t instill fear of ambiguity and uncertainty, but rather to be seen as a vehicle, attractive mystical longing that can transcend us across those conceptual spaces and offer different modes of interpretation: a sure way to enrich our creativity in all aspects of our lives.

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Billy Collins

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Want to improve your writing? Practice receptivity and allowing

by Maja Todorovic, posted in Write, create, innovate: exercises, Writer's creative bites

holzer

Being receptive and allowing creative flow are somehow two basic modalities that we have to work with in order to engage in creative process. Today’s post is intentionally dedicated to this topic since if we manage to divert these two modalities  to “work for us” – it’s a sure way to combat any type of creative blockage. It might be more suitable for writers beginners, but I think that we all need from time to time to remind ourselves of some basic approaches.

What does it mean being receptive? You probably have noticed that in my writing I often use term ‘tune in with your inner self, inner being’. And that what it exactly means being receptive. You can consciously prepare yourself for receptivity by having faith and trust in that moment, that very second that your mind already knows everything that it needs to know to be fully creative, open and expressive. To sink in to your deep creative core you can practice meditative, rhythmic breathing that is connecting your awareness to what is flowing to you in each moment. Engage your senses, don’t shut down that feelings, let them freely find their space and meaning in your blank page – in that very moment. In order to keep that initial spark, in the quietness of your mind you can ask yourself: what is it that I need/want to say? What did I want to write about?

Ideas will come and start to accumulate and your task is only to write, without hesitation or any type of editing on the go. Something that was bugging you about your creative project, piece your were working on months ago might resolve and just what you needed can appear. Never waste your writing because that just might be the missing puzzle in your future work.

The second part of the process is something I call allowing. Allow yourself, give permission to yourself to write, create – no matter how many disapprovals, rejections, judgments you might received in the past. That negative voice in the back of our mind can block us from engaging in creative work and that’t the last thing you want to do.

You create and write for your own sake, for your own being to feel alive, attuned with creative force around us. You are in charge of your motivation, actions and willingness. And next time, when negative voice speak from nowhere all of a sudden, write everything the opposite.

That negative voice can say something like:

“Nobody is interested in anything I have to say.”

And you can write your affirmation:

‘I’m interested in what I have to say. I want to say. I need to say. I write because I want to say!’

‘There is no money in writing. It’s a wasted time.’

and your affirmation:

‘If I write more I will get better in this craft; being better means more opportunities to be published; being published opens possibilities to get a new source of income.’

or

‘I write because I love to write. I don’t need money from writing.’

This is one way to respond to that negative self-talk. Allow yourself just to be creative and you’ll be amazed how your writing improves.

Poetry to us is given
As stars beautify the heaven,
Or, as the sunbeams when they gleam,
Sparkling so bright upon the stream ;
And the poetry of motion
Is ship sailing o’er the ocean
Or, when the bird doth graceful fly,
Seeming to float upon the sky;
For poetry is the pure cream
And essence of the common theme.

Poetic thoughts the mind doth fill,
When on broad plain to view a hill ;
On barren heath how it doth cheer
To see in distance herd of deer.
And poetry breathes in each flower
Nourished by the gentle shower,
In song of birds upon the trees
And humming of busy bees.
‘Tis solace for the ills of life,
A soothing of the jars and strife;
For poets feel it a duty
To sing of both worth and beauty.

James McIntyre

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It’s deeply rooted

by Maja Todorovic, posted in My personal rhyme - from time to time

small, bluish sinews branch into

letter M.

One side of the trunk is darker

due to Sun exposure, with amorph

golden-yellow spots.

As it breathes blood, exhales warmth

to feed small hill above its flesh.

 

It’s like a map, containing my life line

trimmed at several places.

It used to go all the way around the hill.

Bark is depleted, almost erased.

I cannot count to see how many rings of heart

have left me?

Humming bird’s song

echoes my soul

in the upcoming dawn.

Maja S. Todorovic