UGLY: a collection

introduction

I do not claim to be a great writer. I do not write with flair or style, maybe because I wasn't pushed into it, or maybe because I really just don't have that gift.

I know this collection is unconventional and some may consider it ugly or useless, but I am doing this for two purposes:  

I needed to vent it all out. I was in a terrible rut and could not bring myself to write anything I was confident in posting. I thought the words that came out were insincere and not beautiful enough to be considered poetry. I stopped writing altogether for awhile, but one rainy afternoon in December, I thought to myself: "if I critique everything I write to the death, what will be left of what it truly was? will the final outcome even be what I really wanted to say?" So, I told myself to forget all the conventions, to the pressure of producing something pretty, to being a perfectionist in an art form that was supposed to be freeing. I told myself to restart.

I want to share the truth about poetry: sometimes we forget that we can do whatever the fuck we want with it because it's supposed to be ours. I see the successful poets of this age writing in such similar styles, and it made me wonder if I should write like them to be appreciated, but I now know that I need to be done with making poetry for the sake of appreciation. This collection is for me, and for all of you that struggle with writing. It's okay to make something different, to put two words on a page and call it poetry, to write 32 rhyming stanzas about nothing, or to have no rhymes at all. Do what you want and if it makes you feel the sense of catharsis, you've done it. you've achieved the basic means of poetry.

This collection will be highly unedited pieces I've worked on over the past year. some when I first started writing, and some quite recent ones. I've found that prose is more my style; without the pressure of a meter, I've found that I wrote better. I felt better writing it. Each section may have a short author's note before the piece starts, to give you a brief context as to what it was supposed to be, or what I wanted it to be, and I guess, what it turned out to be.

If you continue reading, please remember that poetry is something you yourself should enjoy creating, not just what others enjoy reading.

Keep writing, I promise you'll feel whole one day.

seaofsilvers