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writing Horror Writing poetry Essay Darkness Light Ursula LeGuin Edward Hirsch Dark Poetry
By Holly Lyn Walrath
Jul 2, 2019
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922 words ·
4 minutes
From the author: This is a repost of a guest blog I wrote for the Horror Writer's Assocation. We don’t set out to write a “dark” poem. I think we purveyors of darkness simply see the world around us with a bit more clarity. We see the dark side of reality and unreality for what it is. We are looking for the abyss because we want to look into its body and find the truths that are hidden there...
On Finding the Light in the Dark Places of Your Writing
One of my favorite poets is Edward Hirsch, who talks about how poetry has to travel a long way to reach the reader. It’s like a message in a bottle. While we may have an idea of the audience, we don’t know who is going to pick up that bottle, or what the message inside will mean to them. Hirsch says in his fantastic book, How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry, “The reader exists on the horizon of the poem.”
For me, that horizon...