Monday, July 06, 2009

Ambitions ahead

Poetry is a medium where you have to say a little while saying a lot. I love to write poetry, but I'm not confident that I understand everything I need to know. I only took one poetry class in college, and the environment was so 1960's love-in that we never really got down to working on style, form, and all that other stuff. Most of the time we actually listened to one of the other students play guitar. And what bugged me the most is that for our final portfolio, I received a B- and absolutely no explanation on why (or why not) any of the eight poems worked.

This has given me little confidence in my poetry skills, but I still manage to send out poetry to the various journals a couple of times a year. I'm kind of tired doing this, because poetry is like art. It's a matter of taste, not necessarily of talent. I know that some talent is required when working inside a specific form, but with free verse it really is a free-for-all. I think people can appreciate and even start to like poems that the poetry community would turn their noses at.

That's why I have decided to self-publish poetry. I have no idea how many poems I plan to include, whether to have illustrations or not, and whether there will be a running theme, but once I make all these decisions and get things together, I'll let you know. And if you see a poem or two disappear from Triond or other outlets, their probably headed for the manuscript.

1 comment:

Chungyen said...

Hello!

I found your blog through CMF ads and I saw this post right away. What kinds of things would you like to know about poetry? I've been writing for nine years, and I've learned quite a lot since then. I'd be glad to give you some tips.