Young poets bewail the passing of love; old poets, the passing of time. There is surprisingly little difference.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
People used to say poems were different to songs but I don't think they are.
I love to compare different time frames. Poetry can evoke the time of the subject. By a very careful choice of words you can evoke an era, completely throw the poem into a different time scale.
Most poets are young simply because they have not been caught up. Show me an old poet, and I'll show you, more often than not, either a madman or a master... it's when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order simply to make a poem that you fail. That is why I do not rework poems.
Most lyric poetry is about love, whether yearned after, fulfilled, or wistfully regretted; what isn't tends to consist of laments and cris du coeur over this, that, and the other.
But I'm too old to be written about as a young poet.
Poems seem to have a life of their own. They tell you when enough is enough.
Poets are the only people to whom love is not only a crucial, but an indispensable experience, which entitles them to mistake it for a universal one.
I don't know if younger poets read a lot of, you know, the poets - the established poets. There was a lot of pretty boring stuff to sort of put up with and to add to, to make something vital from.
Maybe it is something to do with age, but I have become fonder of poetry than of prose.
Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them.