You poets in the know, you always say
Waiting and looking is your thing,
And presume your next poem promises
Answers to questions you think
No one’s up to asking but you, well
If you think that’s true, try these two
Simple ones—who do you think you are,
And who asked you for your view?
An excellent little piece this. If every poet read this before they sat down to write a poem the Internet would be a happier place. To a certain extent I do ask myself something like this before I decide a poem is finished. Have I said something worthwhile, something that needed to be said? Mostly the answer is no and I don’t burden the world further. I’ve a folder on my computer full of poems and bits of poems that I look at every now and then to see if they’re salvageable. And most of them are poems I would’ve been buzzing about twenty years ago.
ReplyDeleteHi, Jim—thanks for stopping by with your view concerning these usual suspects—I suspect (and I suspect you do, too) that this list probably includes all of us from time to time and it’s imperative we control the quality of our output—trouble is, the trouble starts when our built-in shit detector goes haywire!
ReplyDeleteWhile recognizing (and yet still inevitably stumbling into, every now and again) the pitfalls of internet self-publishing of poetry, to which Jim alludes, I would continue to maintain that the practice has several things to recommend it; I would see it as more honourable, and indeed quite a bit braver, than pandering to approval of the sort conferred by august editorial agencies whose seal and stamp of approval putatively lifts one from the loser-bin into the pantheon of the Official Gang of Pseudo Poets, as received at the University of Huuklyeand Cinquor.
ReplyDeleteI'm with TC on this. While there's dross all over, there's one or two things worth staying with.
ReplyDeleteWhat worries me is the veneer of something that looks like meaning that lacquers much poetic output, official or otherwise, these days.
I don't disagree with any of you three; indeed it does take more than a modicum of courage to send your poems rocking into the blogosphere--as long as you're careful not to have them on automatic pilot!
ReplyDelete