The Hurt Works!

Face it, heart break may hurt but if you are a poet it certainly helps.  Yes, it helps in several ways.  First, something very good can come out of it.  Mood is usually the best motivator for a poet and bad relationships or ones that end beyond your control will definitely put you into a mood.  Secondly, it makes for great therapy.  Poetry in a vast dumping ground for all emotions.  Emptying your thoughts, heart and soul word by word onto paper or screen brings great release.  Nobody is filtering your cleansing.  A friend might give their two cents if you try to talk about it and alter what was in your heart but flushing everything out from your soul to your fingers is pure and truly therapeutic.



I will always belief that some of the greats like e e cummings put their hearts out there to get pounded on.  They fed off the pain and the rapid return to a fresh new love.  Okay I am not suggesting that you relieve yourself of your lover and to go fetch a new one for the sake of a good poem but you have to admit it could work.  I have never been that committed to my work that it comes before people.  Doubt that I ever could be. 

What also may work is to revisit an old pain that you never got the chance to write about.  Perhaps there was someone that you still think about and still ache over.  Write it off your heart and move on. 

You could try using a Journal form of poetry describing your feelings throughout the ordeal.  I have seen this done well and it lends to a very emotional piece.  Done poorly and it comes off and well a journal entry of complaints and not a strong poem.  Another style is Letter form.  Write directly to the person as if you are having a conversation.  A very effective style for dealing with relationship pain and composing a great piece.

To get more mileage from the wreckage (there I go trying to sound like cummings) you can make the contents fit into other forms of poetry and end up producing many exceptional works.  I sometimes take my Free Verse poems and turn them into rhyming poems creating two works from one. 

Use the hurt and write and write and write until there is nothing left to feel the pain with.  Then let the healing begin!

Go do some deeply felt writing...

Love.Me