IS it ok to mourn in poetry?

Question

Here's the deal. My mom passed away 4 years old when I was 14. But, I still like to write poetry about her and tell my feeling through that. That has been my antidote for years. Alot of people keep telling me I'm depressed but I think I'm just doing what works for me. What's your opinion?

Answer 1

its absolutely fine to mourn through poetry, sometimes doing that kind of thing is the only way to ease an emotion.

Answer 2

Write your heart out.

Sometimes what we write reflects our deepest emotions and can point to depression and other problems.  But oftentimes, it's a way of venting and a healthy release of emotions that could harm us if kept bottled up.

For example... earlier in the year I was almost suicidal because of many problems going on.  I vented my feelings on paper and got over it.  A couple months ago, my 11 year old daughter found what I had written and got VERY upset with me.  I took a book of poetry off a shelf and had her read them.  They were my own, written throughout my life and most were depressing.

I explained to her that a lot of times people write down feelings they can never express to other people and that was okay and people shouldn't be judged by such expressions.  We had a huge heart to heart and she felt better.

BUT, if your work is going to overly concern people, do as I have learned and keep it to yourself, under lock and key.

But by all means- Keep writing!

(((((hugs for your loss)))))

Answer 3

I feel that poetry is the best medicine, whether it's reading or writing, s'easy to find oneself lost in words. And it's productive!

"It is difficult

to get the news from poems,

yet men die miserably every day

for lack of what is found there."

William Carlos Williams

Poetry is the response of our innermost being to the ecstasy, the agony and the all-embracing mystery of life. It is a song, or a sigh, or a cry, often all of them together.

--Charles Angoff (Lerner, 1994)

Poetry humanizes because it links the individual by its distilled experience, its rhythms, its words to another in a way which no other form of communication can. Poetry also helps to ease the aloneness which we all share in common.

--Myra Cohn Livingston (Lerner, 1994)

I believe that a poem is an emotional-intellectual-physical construct that is meant to touch the heart of the reader, that it is meant to be re reexperienced by the reader. I believe that a poem is a window that hangs between two or more human beings who otherwise live in darkened rooms. I also believe that a poem is a noise and that noise is shaped.

--Stephen Dobyns (Dobyns, 1997)  

Answer 4

People write poems to honor their dead loved ones all the time. These poems are called elegies.

Answer 5

That's perfectly fine, ^_^

It's your way of coping with it, and it helps you remember her. It's better than harmful behaviors to yourself anyways.

Answer 6

I think thats a good idea that your expressing your feelings through poetry. To you that's how you cope with the feelings of losing your mother. I think you should keep doing it to get all the grief out and then turn it into a healing process by writing more positive things. poetry is what you make of it. Some use it in a different ways.