Traitor• Show poetry

Sweetest Embrace
About my neck,
Anticipate
My
Final Breath.
And now the
Pendulum
Become
I count
Off your
Final
Hour

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So I have an issue. With people and their comments. And not just people who leave those empty "That was a good write" comments. I have an issue with people critiquing poetry they clearly do not understand. Everything in poetry is deliberate. EVERYTHING. An awkward phrase here maybe is drawing emphasis towards some point. Two lines that look out of place just might be there BECAUSE they are out of place. Poetry is art, and art isn't some streamlined, mail order hiccup of the soul. Art is emotion. And emotion is raw. Emotion isn't cohesive, it doesn't make sense and it can't be classified on any scale other than intensity. You know what the greatest piece of art I've ever seen is? "Fuck you" spray painted in bright red on the wall of my school. That is art. That is pure, unadulterated emotion. A bottle smashed on the ground is art. The bruises on a woman's face that betray the drinking habits of her husband, those are art.

I'm not saying that all the explorations of the expression of emotion are wrong. I'm not saying that forms and imagery and metaphors and flow are non-art. I'm saying they often get in the way of art. Writing what your college professor taught you to view as art isn't writing poetry. Writing what courses from your mind to your pen is. Refine it if you must. But don't expect me to sit and listen to you going on about how awkward the things I write sound, or how my wording or structure just doesn't make sense because if it doesn't, it's not supposed to.