April is National Poetry Month. What that means is that a whole shitload of folks are going to be trying their hands at poetry for the next 20 days. That is a fantastic thing because 2% of them are going to make great art and discover a talent they didn’t know they had and their lives will turn into a frenzy of rainbows because of it. Like this:
And for that reason I will not, I swear, complain about the other 98% who are going to attempt 1) rhyme, 2) paragraphs cut up into three to seven word chunks per line, and 3) stabs at profundity.
I will not complain! I will not! Much.
Instead, I will try to be a bigger person and simply point to the poets who have shown me the way. Like the poem by Eliza Waters:
color was how
the world
sprang to life
to which I responded: “I love your poetry. You cut away everything that isn’t poetry and leave us with just the explosion of meaning. Thank you for that. We need you now more than ever in National Poetry Month, when a whole lot of people will be using all the other words you cut away and calling it ‘poem.'”
buildingapoem 
After looking up the meaning of profundity
I came to the conclusion you’d likely be
Lumping me in
Oh for my sin
With those in the 98 per cent
Who keep aiming for ascent
To the lofy heights of the minority
To be a 2 percenter my priority
Joys of creative expression
Need not get a mention
Now, I’ll have to stop rhyming 😊
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Sorry to sound so judgy!
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Hey- it’s your blog and you are free to express yourself in any way you choose 😉
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Yep, but there is a difference between expressing my opinion and making people feel bad. Not my intention.
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Cool. I made my point diplomatically- now we can return to poetry. Thanks for being open to dialogue on that – differing views online are often a minefield to tread on.
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DO NOT APOLOGIZE!!! lol…
I actually FB posted a lil quote from this…it is a pet peeve of mine, even tho that seems to infer that I think I am any good as a poetess…the question of attainment is for others to answer, the question of aspiration is answered for me by my heart. I am indeed a poetess and am about the work and mystery of Poetry, regardless.
I have often wallowed hungrily in your writings…and gulped your draughts, judgy and all!!
❤
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And a PS: no one “makes” anyone feel bad. It is up to us as we read to be the author and owner of our feelings.
and btw, I found10000hoursleft to be right in the heart and core of the best reply to your post! It was pithy, humorous, and used good technique to make a point about how easy the slide from 2 to 98 and back again
Love your blog and the commenters too
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It’s a lot easier to define what poetry is not, than to define what it is 🙂
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“It is easier to think what poetry should be than to write it — and this leads me on to another axiom: that if poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree, it had better not come at all.” — John Keats, letter to John Taylor (February 27, 1818)
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Yes and no. Sometimes it comes out perfect and sometimes, well, for example, the ending sucks and then you fix it.
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Poetry was my first love. And I still love to read it. But I seem to have lost the ability to write it.
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Start small. Describe food that you love. Use words that don’t match each other, like tangerines that taste like a spring breeze. Play with words. Let go and have fund with it.
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You have such a bee in your bonnet about rhyming poems. Well this one, by yours truly, will, I think, change your mind:
Master sculptor, bearing chisel,
Paused his work so he could wizzle.
And so the marble had to wait,
For sculptor to evacuate.
(Drops mic and strides purposefully toward the exit.)
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That’s kind of brilliant
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Why, thank you!
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