What is most likely to inspire you to write poetry?

Absolutely nothing would get me to write poetry.

I have a more concrete, prose-based, rational view of communication, and serious poetry is (or can be) abstract, idiosyncratic, and unreachable.

About the only poetry I have ever written is off-color doggerel in honor of a birthday or a wedding or something similar.

This is poetry to me.
The whole situation in its surreality.

Doom and gloom.
Bittersweetness.

When I was a teenager and college student, I wrote poetry in the Springtime, when things seemed surreal and otherworldly. The fragrances and long twilight. Full moons, forlorn love interests, and hidden or ambient places and moonlight inspired me. I think academic settings and the presence of books (including coffee shops and college campuses) also inspired me

Or when lovesick, mostly in the Spring and Autumn or the end of Summer.. Girls who were unattainable especially made me feel forlorn, melancholy, and like something better than this reality was there. When I actually was able to get to know, court, and date such girls I was usually disappointed with how ordinary they were compared to how I imagined them to be.

Outside of Springtime I mostly wrote highly reflective, mood / colour prose that was rich in atmosphere and ambiance which might have been considered poetry.

Stressful jobs often ended the inspiration.

In 2011 I was shot in a robbery, Writing or playing an instrument is painful, and economic conditions have made life stressful. So inspiration is far more rare nowadays.

My children when they were young:

Out of the Nursery

By

janbb

Raising children is not like catching fish
Instead of reeling in, you reel them out,
Letting the line get longer and longer
No sudden jerks or it may break.

My marvelous swimmer
are you ready to go
Splashing and flashing
through the high, wild waves?
I stand on the shore with rope burns on my hands,
Wanting to hold tight, hold tight.

And who is this new fish in my basket?

I want somebody to answer “emotions recollected in tranquillity.”

Ars Poetica

 
A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.

*

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind—

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs.

*

A poem should be equal to:
Not true.

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—

A poem should not mean
But be.

 
—Archibald MacLeish

Boys, love, heartbreak. Especially heartbreak.

@janbb that was beautiful….and profound.

Love and loss are always pretty powerful and inspire poetry, even for those without a poets soul. The second verse from bottom is my very favorite.

Annabel Lee
BY EDGAR ALLAN POE
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my Annabel Lee—
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we—
Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea—
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Count me as one of the folks who do not prefer poetry. I like to read and write prose. I like words to be clear and concise. For me, poetry obscures the meaning of the words.

I always liked this one – entitled Auto Wreck – by Karl Shapiro

Auto Wreck

Its quick soft silver bell beating, beating,
And down the dark one ruby flare
Pulsing out red light like an artery,
The ambulance at top speed floating down
Past beacons and illuminated clocks
Wings in a heavy curve, dips down,
And brakes speed, entering the crowd.
The doors leap open, emptying light;
Stretchers are laid out, the mangled lifted
And stowed into the little hospital.
Then the bell, breaking the hush, tolls once.
And the ambulance with its terrible cargo
Rocking, slightly rocking, moves away,
As the doors, an afterthought, are closed.

We are deranged, walking among the cops
Who sweep glass and are large and composed.
One is still making notes under the light.
One with a bucket douches ponds of blood
Into the street and gutter.
One hangs lanterns on the wrecks that cling,
Empty husks of locusts, to iron poles.
Our throats were tight as tourniquets,
Our feet were bound with splints, but now,
Like convalescents intimate and gauche,
We speak through sickly smiles and warn
With the stubborn saw of common sense,
The grim joke and the banal resolution.
The traffic moves around with care,
But we remain, touching a wound
That opens to our richest horror.
Already old, the question Who shall die?
Becomes unspoken Who is innocent?

For death in war is done by hands;
Suicide has cause and stillbirth, logic;
And cancer, simple as a flower, blooms.
But this invites the occult mind,
Cancels our physics with a sneer,
And spatters all we knew of denouement
Across the expedient and wicked stones.

Words, Wide Night

Somewhere on the other side of this wide night
and the distance between us, I am thinking of you.
The room is turning slowly away from the moon.

This is pleasurable. Or shall I cross that out and say
it is sad? In one of the tenses I singing
an impossible song of desire that you cannot hear.

La lala la. See? I close my eyes and imagine the dark hills
I would have to cross
to reach you. For I am in love with you

and this is what it is like or what it is like in words.

by Carol Ann Duffy

@flutherother How lovely! Haven’t seen that one until now.

Having sex on a trampoline…

Bounce oh big bouncy thing
Bounce on my dingalinga ling

An interesting point of view and/or subject matter.

Pain, depression, loss, poverty, unfulfilled expectations….