by Rick Nickles

Created on: January 12, 2012   Last Updated: January 13, 2012

I view a poem written from the heart as being a poem that is written solely an outpouring of all the emotional garbage a person has inside of them - the focus of a poem written from the heart is on the poet and all the emotions that the poet is experiencing.   While I think there can be good poetry written this way there is a lot of very bad poetry written this way because the person is primarily focused on themselves and what is  inside of them - I am not saying that people should not write this type of poetry, but I call this poetic therapy and I think there is a marked difference between poetic therapy and poetry.  

I view a poem written from the mind as being a poem which is from the viewpoint of an observer or where the focus is not on me as a poet but on something or someone outside of myself.    I think poems from this perspective can certainly have a lot of emotion attached to the poem, but the focus of the poem is on something outside of myself such as on a candle or a picnic basket or a butterfly or whatever I happen to be writing about.   It's like I  either have a camera and film and are taking a picture of an object but instead using words, or I am finding an  object outside of myself and I'm telling the story of the Christmas cookies where in many ways it is like I am writing  a short film but instead it's a poem.  

The first part of my poem I try to get the reader's sympathy and try to engage them into why they should care about this story and then I try to find a problem that needs to be resolved and then at the end of the poem there's the resolution to the problem.    I think it helps if there is a happy resolution to the problem but then there may not be.   In my mind a poem works better if there is some planning as to what I hope to accomplish with the poem.      

Even though I do not wish to generalize my observation of women is normally that they are focused on how they feel, and when I hear women talk they talk about how they feel this or they feel that way whereas when I speak as a male I'm normally talking in terms of I think this or I think that - it is mostly in terms of my thoughts and what I think about things, and even in this article I notice that I am speaking in terms of how I think.  So this is obviously not always going to affect each person the same way but it certainly influences my poetry and the way that

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