I’ve been thinking about how much our writing is shaped by the people we read, especially the poets we encounter right here in this community. Who are some writers from this site who have influenced your poetic style, challenged the way you approach a poem, or inspired you to try something new?
@LadySpark has taught me how important it is to cut poetry down to the bone!! she's always so concise and clear with her images and her reviews have challenged me to do the same. I adore her style and have tried to emulate it a couple times. @/cocteau, otherwise known as chi, was also a great influence. he taught me so many things about poetry that i can't list them all, but chief among them was the art of tone and how the same words in a different order can feel completely different. I take a lot of inspiration still from his work. @Avian has shown me how important it is to be honest with yourself in poetry!! to be authentic and raw and real (with a little embellishment, of course).
Just to name a few: @alliyah, because I'm such a sucker for her ancestry poems. @herb, the most innovative poet I've read. @cherie, who writes such beautiful poetry for worship. @/chi, probably the most prolific poet I've met. @romanticchemist because I mean, have you read her love poetry?
ohmygosh :') Gals! I am so honored to be even a small speck of influence for your beautiful poetic voices that I also very genuinely admire. <3 Thank you for the shoutout - and right back at you!
I would say my number one poetic influence is @tgirly (my sister) - she weaves metaphor and family and observation and faith in ways that are subtle and heart-catching. I can remember our first poem that we wrote together where each line was a genuine struggle for me to write anything and how she would effortlessly take my disjointed line and weave them into something that somehow became elegant and vivid. She is very much my writing idol. Spoiler
Her greatest influence to my poetry and YWS experience is introducing me to the concept of "asset-based reviews" - a style of reviewing where you aren't searching for things to critique, but look for things that create meaning, and you comment / explore the assets of a poem, rather than looking for the deficits. An aspect of this is "assuming meaning" - where when reviewing something you find in a poem, you assume it must have been placed with author intention (like capitalization, repetition, etc). Now I don't always review this way (not even close) but I do always read poetry this way, and it greatly improves my enjoyment of reading to assume that a poem means something. Simple, but powerful. And in turn, when you review like things *have* to mean something and aren't just random, you start writing that way too... My personality is very critical so this simple change in emphasis for reading has been very helpful to me.
Other influences...
@Hannah - I have no joke, read every single Hannah poem in the "Poem on the Spot" thread, ... maybe twice, maybe three times. And have read several of her NaPo collections and poems throughout the years and I just admire her poetry so much - especially how she writes about hard things in empathetic / powerful ways. And memory! Hannah's poetry is very important to me! And her kindness / and gentle wisdom in reviewing is also something I would delight in imitating!
@Aley - Aley is the one that actually went to my wall and told me that I ought to stop telling people to capitalize the word "i" (she was slightly less direct than that!) - with a helpful link to her article on capitalization. Yes, I was going around in reviews telling people they needed to capitalize "i" before this. @_@' Also Aley's workshops on different poetic devices when I first became a poetry mod were very impactful - her eye for technical aspects of poetry was very influential. I still remember my heartfelt delight when Aley tagged like 2 dozen people one day as "poetry people" before I was a mod... and I was like does she mean me??! I'll carry that badge forever! @Virgil another early YWS influence!
I have very much benefited from @Hijinks, @Liminality, & cocteau's respective styles and especially their reviews throughout the years. I have been super inspired by @Rook's non-traditional poetic formatting - there is a chart-poem about the planets or maybe saturn's rings? that is implanted in my brain forever. I would love to one day make a poem that is as creative and layered as that one. @soundofmind has written so many gorgeous songs that are stuck in my head and her use of chorus, repetition, and heart-catching imagery is inspiring. Also @Arcticus - especially his religious / devotional poetry - especially so his napo collections of religious poetry, has inspired my own devotional poetry in many ways and I love how he has created such a sense of voice in his work that if someone gave me one of his poems in a line-up of other 10 other works, I'm sure I could identify which one is Arc's. @aether@kattee@starlitmind@Euphory@candyhearts@Carina@ellasnotebook are all also poets I'd be sure to mention as YWS influences ~
you should know i am a time traveler & there is no season as achingly temporary as now
“Sorry about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine.
I couldn't get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time.” — Richard Siken
