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On Poetry and Culture Shock

The Therapy Effect

Therapy should remain between you and your therapist. I am not your therapist. If you write to vent things out, good. That’s fantastic. Just don’t show it to anyone else later. I like the Elusive Poet (I mean as a person) because he doesn’t go around rubbing our noses into his feelings. Thank you, Poet.

I’ll say that again in case it’s not clear: writing is great, but showing it to others is not always so. I know people who think that since creative writing is very hard (or because they say they have no talent for it) they can only admire, never criticise or comment, on amateur work. Wrong. Amateurs are to be praised for trying, and then dissected if they dare showing their work in public. It is part of the process (am I being arrogant? Sure, but I’m fair. The comments section is there, and I’d love any feedback on my poetry).

Every time I write a therapeutic piece, something to help me get rid of a feeling, I tell myself I will hate it in two weeks. Then I put it into the quarantine folder and when some time has passed, I go back to it, thinking I will hate it. The prose is always horrible, no exceptions; most of the poetry can be saved with a bit of editing.

Of course I don’t mean that any poetry written “therapeutically” or anything that deals with very personal feelings is necessarily bad. But writing, like any craft, tends to need polishing, and it is harder to have the necessary distance when writing about our own emotions while they are still fresh. We all love our own feelings and it is very hard to see them, and the art they inspire, as different things.

1 comentario

Aurora -

Bien sabes que disiento contigo: el lector no es mi terapeuta, pero precisamente por eso dispone de la posibilidad de no leerme, cosa que el terapeuta no puede hacer porque le estoy pagando por ello :P Escribir y dar a leer es como contárselo a un amigo. Para mí, si lo escribo y lo guardo es como si no lo hubiera sacado a la luz. Cada cual tiene sus gustos, y si hay gente que compra arte contemporáneo, ¿por qué no va a existir gente que desee devorar las miserias ajenas a través de textos que a ti pueden parecerte deleznables?