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Father and Son

My father listened to Reading My Book Aloud 002 last week, and commented that while his poetry is self-explanatory, I tend to explain my poems. That was an intriguing observation, and I’ve been thinking about it all week. I’ve come up with a couple of, um, explanations.

1. I write to organize/categorize/energize/exorcise my emotions. I feel that my father already has his feelings organized when he sits down to write.
2. My father writes poems about things he already knows, values he believes in. My poems help me understand things that I didn’t understand before. As I explain my creative process to myself and to my readers/listeners, I learn more about myself and more about writing poetry.
3. My father writes poems to help people understand important things more clearly. My poems are not about explaining to brains; my poems are an attempt to transmit my feelings directly to the reader/listener. (You know those moments in songs when you recognize the emotion the musician is describing, because you had that exact feeling once? Or those moments in movies when you immediately recognize the situation or the conflict, from your own personal experience?) I try to transmit my feelings via the textures and interactions of the words I choose.

I’m speaking for my father here, and I hope I’m understanding his writing motivations correctly. Kind of pretentious of me, ain’t it? But I think our different ways of writing are fascinating!