HOW TO WRITE POETRY. SEARCHING FOR A MOTIVE. By Vecheslaff Lavrinoff
PART 1. MOTIVE
To start to write something like poetry first of all you need a motive, it may be money, an essay to pass exam in university, or desire to get PhD and the like. But also it may be some stuff like your first young love to your neighbouring girl when you young, or hatred to your state ruling party and president if you old, and other many motives, for example, delusions of grandeur you was a poet.
PART 2. WRITE FOR MONEY
In fact, all modern poets write for money, because all the poetry has copyright with prohibition to copy free and destribute. But, I think, the modern poets have petty money yet, and I never heard that a contemporary poet was a rich man because of his poetry best selling. But at the same time, here is an exception among poor poets, and the exception is in pop-music, where poets are terribly rich, they are from the bands like the Beatles, or poets and pop-singers like Tailor Swift, Justin Bieber, etc. We may consider it is a serious poetry when we look especially on the progressive rock and the like, for example, I listened yestereday the band "U2" as well as "The Cranberries" about "Zombie", that is an anti-war poetry of very high quality by the Irish poets. So, if write for money, you may consider also to sing all your lyrics.
PART 3. WRITE FOR LOVE WHEN YOUNG
This is more intersting part of humankind when people produce lots of words just because they felt they were in love. To undestand the love song, we may look on Dante sonet because he has fallen in love with Beatrice since nine year old:
Dante Alighieri
The New Life (It. La Vita Nuova)
(Translation by Andrew Frisardi)
...Love, who sensed her there inside
of me,
awoke within my heart's demolished
core,
and told my sighs, "Each of you, out
the door!"—
at which they all got up in pain to flee.
In this short excerpt, you see, if you young and want to write about your love, you have to use the words: Love, Heart, Sigh, Door, Pain, and the like.
For example (All Is Full Of Love by Björk, Funkstörung):
...Trust your head around, it's all around you
All is full of love, all around you
You just ain't receiving, your phone is off the hook
Your doors are all shut.
PART 4. THE MOTIVE TO WRITE BECAUSE OF A HATRED TOWARDS RULING PARTY WHEN YOU HAVE GOT OLD
This is a sort of my humour to find such a motive of hatred towards ruling party, becuase all poetry written after all under influence of love. But maybe, if a poet loves his country and people too much, he just wants to alert people to save them from a futural tragedy. I think, in America, it was Martin Luther King Jr., who said in his speech about a dream as if it was a poetry, in all, his speech was very beatiful.
In my Russian country, we have lots of poets who criticized governments, but when I tried to recall, first who came in my mind was a famous poet Osip Mandelstam, who had written a critical poetry towards communist dictator Joseph Stalin. Mandelstam is famous mostly abroad and among California University staff. And in Russia he is also sort of a poet studied only during preparing for exam for a University bachelor's degree, and usual Russian probably even didn't know his first name Osip, maybe didn't hear also last name Mandelstam, which sounds also silly for Russian language, having similarity with abusive slang towards unappropriate swear words that may be popular among low income working class and drunkards. I mean that Russian names are all usually ending in "ev" or "off" or "in", having genitive origin, like in Medvedev, Ivanov, Putin. But the name Mandelstam goes from Yiddish, probably from Odessa jewish settlements, maybe frequently seen in Romania and Poland before WW2, with germanic "shtam" in the end, it sounds like a sort of a "virus" in Russian, and "Mandel" sounds like an abusive slang word for what Mick Jagger called "Lady Jane". So, the Yiddish name was just so terrible for Russian the ear of the new era of russian communist working class who, if even suddenly heard the name, would think that someone tried to mock him, because the name sounded as an arch-abusive slang.
In present time, we have in Russia several artists, who criticize our ruling party, but they are in main writers rather poets. More well-known is Victor Shenderovich, writer-satirist, who everyday said that our government is a sort of junta, they are criminals and liers. Victor Shenderovich was several times arrested during demonstration, but luckily for short time. The russian mass media, controlled by state, said about Victor Shenderovich nothing, they try just not see him, as if he didn't exist. Many people write in Victor Shenderovich Facebook lots of abusive words, they accuse him in treason and cooperation with the CIA.
In the conversation of the 4th part about the motive of a hatred, I would call Jesus Christ as example, because he was also a sort of a well-known poet, because his speeches are very beautiful and have resemblance with poetry, and Jesus Christ also criticized the Jewish ruling party of Pharisees, called them hypocrites. Also, I think, that George Soros has a huge resemblance with Jesus Christ if we look on him in Russia, because I think, he tried to help people to build more educated and prosperous societies, but Russian governmnet called him as an "undesirable person", and forbade him to invest in Russian education, accusing him in preparing of a "color revolution", and the same Jesus Christ was accused as if he wanted to demolish the Temple. I think, this is also a sort of anti-Semitism, when Russian senators and the president Vladimir Putin found a dangerous person, George Soros. And then, Russian president, trying to camouflage his anti-Semitism, staged lots of Jewish businessmen and artits around himself, for example, Roman Abramovich (well-known as a former owner of Chelsea Club from British Premier League), and the like, just to show that he was not an anti-Semitist, in all, but this, I guess, is a sort of a theatre, that is also called in classic literature as hypocrisy.
So, the 4th part became a sort of my madness, I guess, when I gathered all the things like that, Martin Luther King Jr., George Soros and Christ in one paragraph, but anyway, all good poets have to look a bit crazy, so, I did it intentionally. To find more in detail, how write the political and social poetry, we have to look on the Mandelstam well-known short poem. Here is the link to read the 1989 English copyrighted translation by W.S. Merwin and Clarence Brown and published on the website "Academy of American Poets", https://poets.org/poem/stalin-epigram.
We have to pick just a little element from the poem "The Stalin Epigram" to find what is about in abstract: the poem told about an unknown person, that produced decrees like horseshoes, so we can guess, that the unknown was a top chief in a governmnent, so every one in the Soviet Union would understand that the chief was the dictator Stalin. So, if we wish to write the politiacal poem, we need to paint the dictator how he looked, for example, you have to describe the dictator in the your poem was a tall or small, how long hair, brunette or blond, etc. So, if it was Hitler, you may call him "worker murderer" as I read in biography of Otto and Elise Hampel on "Wikipedia". They wrote on postcards the words "worker murderer", added also Hitler photograph to know precisely waht was about, and sent the postcards to random addresses.
Second, a very important thing about the sort of poetry, is that that all the poets were killed: Martin Luther King Jr., Osip Mandelstam (who died in Soviet prison probably from illness but this is the same), Otto and Elise Hampel.
Because we have here just some sort of an abstract observation on how write poetry, I think, if to say in short, this is all about the social and political poetry, or the poetry under the motive of hatred towards injustice in your country. So, there are only two main rules how to write the poetry, you have to describe how a dictator is looking, and have to prepare to be ready to be killed by dictator. But if you live in a miracle country where no dictatorship, you may just continue to live, but president, that you had described, may put you in a black list to remember not to give you his sweet grants from oily budget or like that.
PART 5. THE MOTIVE OF DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR
The sort of the motive of delusion of grandeur that you are a great poet is the best to write poetry, because the first motive of love may fade with time, the second of hatred to political situation is more like a partisan war rather noble literature, but if you've got the delusions, you could try your best with writing and imitating all the classics like Homer, Dante and Shakespeare. All the world may be burn to desert with the next World War 3, but your crazy diamond, the motive of delusions of grandeur, would be evergreen like a palm tree, blooming in a fallout shelter-oasis despite all the radiations and plutonium rains. It is only problem here for me to pull from somewhere an example of such poetry, because we cannot yet identify what poet has the delusions, and what hasn't.
Lavrinoff, V.
May 19, 2021