Topic: who do you write for?

[illiterati]

at the end of the day, whether struggling with outside perception or not
everyone here is opening their trench coats (in an alley, nonetheless)

i think we've found the new tin roof alley marketing theme.

[Kay]

I write for pleasure

[illiterati]

Sure,

but why do you post?

I'm seeing how that statement could come off in the wrong way.

Let me rephrase:

If writing a poem is a completely self-fulfilling act, what's the motivation for making the writing public?

I eat for pleasure, but it would be weird to regularly post video of my mealtimes, yes?

[illiterati]

I'm willing to grant the first part - that initial act of writing, for oneself and not an audience, is intrinsically pleasurable.

But to leave it there ignores the entire question of transmission, poetic community, the poem as interpersonal, poems as able to influence and be influenced by the world outside themselves...

[Kay]

I'm not sure I understand the need to analyze but I suppose if I needed to be more specific, I like sharing my poetry with people who read poetry and hopefully it will mean something to them. I also have pieces (not all of them) that I want to hone and submit to various places. Not everything, but some pieces. Yes, I have pleasure from it or I mean, I wouldn't sit here and do something almost daily that was painful. You did say "who" do we write for and so I guess I didn't answer that directly I meant, I don't "write" for anyone in specific. I just put it out there. There's no way I'm going to try to write for the world of the Internet. That would be both insane and quite impossible. At least I think it would.

I also enjoy eating more when I'm with someone, although a few fast food places would probably tend to disagree with that. 

I'm sure there are people who write for a lover, a friend, or someone like that. Maybe that is what you mean. I don't know. I don't write for anyone person. I don't have the energy for that and one reason is that would mean I'd have to please them and after decades of caring and serving others, I've paid my dues there. That isn't to confuse a workshopping poem with pleasing the person who offered critique. That's an entire different animal but then seasoned poets already understand that. Just to write for another, no, I don'[t have anyone like that and I guess if I did I would say "to so and so" but there isn't anyone. sad me.

Sure,

but why do you post?

I'm seeing how that statement could come off in the wrong way.

Let me rephrase:

If writing a poem is a completely self-fulfilling act, what's the motivation for making the writing public?

I eat for pleasure, but it would be weird to regularly post video of my mealtimes, yes?

[illiterati]

I'm not sure I understand the need to analyze

 but analysis is the greatest pleasure of all...

and the capacity developed by analysis stays active all the time

unlike writing poetry, which to my mind is only active in the process of writing the poem: if i stop writing them for a period of time, it's as if it's never been, and i only have these dim reminders (old poems) of what the capacity itself meant...

in response, though - i think i did mean something more like an audience. the question started as something like, "do you care about someone else's reaction to your poem?" to which my answer was an emphatic yes, because i'm deeply interested in understanding how other minds work.

but like you i don't think the enjoyment of the poem itself is or should be in any way dependent on that reaction

people
do not
like to argue.

they learned long ago
that people who do
like to argue

only
ever want
to be right.

but what they never learned
is that people who don't
like to argue

also
only want
to be right.

(they would have
learned this
if they
argued
more):


Dear lonely old argument father,
         
          lovely graybeard Socrates:


if they only knew you
like i do

they'd call my contrariness

     love!

[Kay]

Ok, then I guess I misunderstood the question. I do write for a response, whether general feedback or nits but I don't write "to" any one person. Whew, I'm glad I cleared that up.