Interesting quote i found

"Poets are supposed to liberate the words - not to chain them in phrases. Who told poets they were supposed to think? Poets are meant to sing and to make words sing. Poets have no words 'of their own.' Writers don't own their words. Since when do words belong to anybody. 'Your very own words,' indeed! And who are you?"

What do you think? Do the words that we write belong to ourselves or are they property of language alone? Is there an unbreakable connection between words and the ideas they express, or are they completely separate? I'm not sure personally, I can kind of see both sides. You?

I don't agree with it at all!!

Hmm... Poetry without thought.

Haikus? Sonnets? Acronyms? Certain rhyme schemes?

Those SEEM to require a little bit of thinking to me. :)

Shakespeare's a good example. He invented hundreds of words: accomodation, gloomy, countless, obscene, pious, frugal, and submerge to name a few. (source: http://www.nosweatshakespeare.com/shakespeare_words_phrases.htm) But how many people actually know these origins? I think it'd be pretty crazy to still be calling these "Shakespeare's words", even if he did invent them. No disrespect to the man!

But I am starting to lean towards the idea in the quote... words can be so twisted and turned around, so many different meanings and connotations... and as far as poets thinking goes, I think sometimes too much thought can indeed be detrimental to a poem! It's not a dissertation, it's a piece of art. Sure, it should probably have a point, but the true beauty of a great is in the images used to create that point....

in my humble opinion!

I want to agree with the quote to a certain extent . It proves a good point in saying that none of the words we use in our poetry are theroetically "ours" (unless, of course, we invented the words) .

But also at the same time, the order in which we place the words and the way that we as poets bring them alive with ink and paper -- that is what belongs to us . The words we piece together to make the art of poetry so beautiful, those words, they belong to us .

But poetry requires a good deal of thought . The right imagery, the metaphorical meanings behind every line, they way to present the words as to impress an audience or just to impress ourselves: those require thinking . Styles of poetry require thinking to follow the rhyme scheme and the syllable count and everything else .

I think there's something to it. Sometimes, especially lately, I feel more like the tool of the words than the painter of them.

"Painter" it is a great way to put it. A painter needs the colors of paint to paint a wall like a writer of a letter needs words to communicate. But an artist does not need paint to paint his picture, true the color is part of the painting but it is the artist that finds the colors by mixing them in a way that could never be exactly duplicated and some are only sketches and some are black and white...it is the artist that creates the painting the same way it is the poet that creates the poem...the words are the paint that poets use but they are nothing without the poet.

As for the "thinking". The great poets average an IQ of 143 (with one std.) which is just shy of the average nobel prize winner's which is 145. You can "free words" without thinking but you cannot free the reader without "thinking" and that is what a great poet does.

I think the quote is ture to an extent.... i mean as a poet when i write a poem... a good one. i don't have to think about it, it just kind of comes to me. But yes it does take thought in arranging words into stanzas and such. This quote could be true to peoples whos thoughts don't run as deep as others... so i think how much (or hard) one thinks is just a matter of oppinion.
mollie

I think they belong to everything, and everyone. No one person can own words. Its our job as poets to arange them in lines expressing life, to help those who can't. If someone steals your arangement entirely, then they are wrong. I know I write about my experiences with this girl and our helter skelter relationship, so she can see my pain, as well for others to read. And just maybe they'll see the light at the end of the tunnel from reading our poems.

I believe the poems that we write belong to us.

Words don't belong to language, cuz there are words we use which don't exsist, and they have different meanings according to where you place them in a phrase or sentence... so words belong to whomever uses them

I think what it means when it says that poets are not supposed to think is that poetry is supposed to be more of a feeling...yeah you got to think do write certain forms...but that's after you've felt the words I guess.
Maybe what I said doesn't make any sense at all...but I get some of what the quote is saying.