(Or those who are not currently finishing their Creative Writing degree)
When readers of my work are those who know me personally or have met me, they tend to confuse certain poetical or fictional elements. Readers who know the author often place themselves within the work or take it on a personal level. Poetry especially needs to be broken down: there is an author, a speaker, and there are objects, situations, or persons that the poem is revolved around. Specifically, the author and the speaker within a poem needs to be seen for what they are: different and separate entities. The author is writing with a voice of someone, or something, in a certain situation. Poetry and fiction are about imagination. Unless those people or places are specifically named, using proper nouns, they are applicable to almost anything.
I know my mother often looks at my poems and exclaims, "Oh dear, that's about me". I may have gotten my ideas for a character from her, from someone else's mother, or from bits and pieces of different random people that I have encountered, or perhaps solely from the imagination. Even if the title says something like: "Ode to My Mother," I could be taking the view of someone else writing to their mother - an egg hatching, for instance; or perhaps even a poem addressing its "mother"which is a pen. These are just examples, but apply to practically all poetry or fiction. Edgar Allen Poe did not, in fact, kill his neighbor and hear the dead heart beating under the floorboards; Poe is the author, the speaker committed murder.
I apologize for this little rant, but hopefully this helped some people who were very confused or perhaps just did not take a poetry class.
When readers of my work are those who know me personally or have met me, they tend to confuse certain poetical or fictional elements. Readers who know the author often place themselves within the work or take it on a personal level. Poetry especially needs to be broken down: there is an author, a speaker, and there are objects, situations, or persons that the poem is revolved around. Specifically, the author and the speaker within a poem needs to be seen for what they are: different and separate entities. The author is writing with a voice of someone, or something, in a certain situation. Poetry and fiction are about imagination. Unless those people or places are specifically named, using proper nouns, they are applicable to almost anything.
I know my mother often looks at my poems and exclaims, "Oh dear, that's about me". I may have gotten my ideas for a character from her, from someone else's mother, or from bits and pieces of different random people that I have encountered, or perhaps solely from the imagination. Even if the title says something like: "Ode to My Mother," I could be taking the view of someone else writing to their mother - an egg hatching, for instance; or perhaps even a poem addressing its "mother"which is a pen. These are just examples, but apply to practically all poetry or fiction. Edgar Allen Poe did not, in fact, kill his neighbor and hear the dead heart beating under the floorboards; Poe is the author, the speaker committed murder.
I apologize for this little rant, but hopefully this helped some people who were very confused or perhaps just did not take a poetry class.
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