I'm forty years old and I've been trying to write poetry for almost a quarter of a century (that sounds longer than twenty-five years). I've written probably well over a thousand poem-like substances, and have destroyed nearly half of them. As far as I know, I may have written one decent poem. I would not have selected this particular poem as my very best, though I will confess that I put more effort into it than just about any other of my precious little "creations".
I posted the poem for critique on a poetry board which specializes in formal verse, and the initial thread received some thirty-plus replies, all of them remarkably positive, which flabbergasted me. I'd been posting poems, to a small handful of boards, for two years prior to this "event", and nothing even remotely similar ever occured. The original thread has gone off the boards, but the poem received a second life, thanks to Timothy Murphy, in this thread:
http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/Forum19/HTML/000260.html
Anyway, though I'm grateful for all of that, and particularly to three people: David Anthony, Timothy Murphy, and Rhina Espaillat, I can't help wondering about a few things. First, the poem has at least two cliches: one, the "quiet as a stone" bit; and two, the "run like lightning" bit. As for the first, I have no excuses. It's dull and lifeless and boring, but it rhymed, which makes it even less forgiveable. As for the second, I actually do have an excuse. I meant the phrase "run like lightning" to be taken literally, at least in the context of who the speaker is and in the context of the poem. In any case, it weighs in the line there and smacks of sentimentality as well as over-familiarity, and I would like to drop it, if I ever get around to making another revision.
But that's not what I want to write about. Even if the poem is good, even if I have managed to write something which might stand a chance of living on after me, however slight that chance might be, even if the poem were truly excellent, I'm still weirdly unexcited by the prospect. I was told that a respected journal in the UK would take my poem, that the editor had actually said as much; and yet I haven't taken that opportunity. Timothy Murphy suggested that I send the poem to The Formalist, which I did. It was declined, without comment. I was a bit bothered that I didn't get a comment, and the realization suddenly kicked in, about how damned subjective everything is regarding poetry, or the arts in general. And that realization brought with it the damning and deflating knowledge that formal publication is an underwhelming validation at best. In light of the Internet, formal publication is not the great slippery brass ring it once was. The poetry on my geocities site looks just as pretty as it does anywhere else on the Net. It looks official. It looks nifty. It looks spiffy and special. So what if no one reads it? And of the ten poems I've published in semi-respectable (or defunct) journals, I only included one at my Yahoo site. The other nine have somehow diminished in value to me, or I just don't like them, for some other reason.
It boils down to numbers. If three widely published and well-regarded poets liked my villanelle, there will be three (and goodness knows, a phuque-of-a lot more) widely published and well-regarded poets who think it stinks, or who will be perfectly indifferent. Who is right? Getting published is sort of like playing the lottery. Every person who likes your poem equals one ticket. The more people who like your poem, the higher your chances of winning the lottery, the prize being having a poem published in some respectable venue. At least, so it seems. The problem is, no matter how many tickets you have, only one can be a winner: that being the editor upon whose desk your ridiculously lucky poem has landed.
I have no idea if any of that made sense. Too much cough medicine. But I hope my drift can somehow waft its way out. I think what I'm really saying is, I'm just not an ambitious guy. I don't know if my villanelle will ever get published, and I'm not particularly concerned about it.
I posted the poem for critique on a poetry board which specializes in formal verse, and the initial thread received some thirty-plus replies, all of them remarkably positive, which flabbergasted me. I'd been posting poems, to a small handful of boards, for two years prior to this "event", and nothing even remotely similar ever occured. The original thread has gone off the boards, but the poem received a second life, thanks to Timothy Murphy, in this thread:
http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/Forum19/HTML/000260.html
Anyway, though I'm grateful for all of that, and particularly to three people: David Anthony, Timothy Murphy, and Rhina Espaillat, I can't help wondering about a few things. First, the poem has at least two cliches: one, the "quiet as a stone" bit; and two, the "run like lightning" bit. As for the first, I have no excuses. It's dull and lifeless and boring, but it rhymed, which makes it even less forgiveable. As for the second, I actually do have an excuse. I meant the phrase "run like lightning" to be taken literally, at least in the context of who the speaker is and in the context of the poem. In any case, it weighs in the line there and smacks of sentimentality as well as over-familiarity, and I would like to drop it, if I ever get around to making another revision.
But that's not what I want to write about. Even if the poem is good, even if I have managed to write something which might stand a chance of living on after me, however slight that chance might be, even if the poem were truly excellent, I'm still weirdly unexcited by the prospect. I was told that a respected journal in the UK would take my poem, that the editor had actually said as much; and yet I haven't taken that opportunity. Timothy Murphy suggested that I send the poem to The Formalist, which I did. It was declined, without comment. I was a bit bothered that I didn't get a comment, and the realization suddenly kicked in, about how damned subjective everything is regarding poetry, or the arts in general. And that realization brought with it the damning and deflating knowledge that formal publication is an underwhelming validation at best. In light of the Internet, formal publication is not the great slippery brass ring it once was. The poetry on my geocities site looks just as pretty as it does anywhere else on the Net. It looks official. It looks nifty. It looks spiffy and special. So what if no one reads it? And of the ten poems I've published in semi-respectable (or defunct) journals, I only included one at my Yahoo site. The other nine have somehow diminished in value to me, or I just don't like them, for some other reason.
It boils down to numbers. If three widely published and well-regarded poets liked my villanelle, there will be three (and goodness knows, a phuque-of-a lot more) widely published and well-regarded poets who think it stinks, or who will be perfectly indifferent. Who is right? Getting published is sort of like playing the lottery. Every person who likes your poem equals one ticket. The more people who like your poem, the higher your chances of winning the lottery, the prize being having a poem published in some respectable venue. At least, so it seems. The problem is, no matter how many tickets you have, only one can be a winner: that being the editor upon whose desk your ridiculously lucky poem has landed.
I have no idea if any of that made sense. Too much cough medicine. But I hope my drift can somehow waft its way out. I think what I'm really saying is, I'm just not an ambitious guy. I don't know if my villanelle will ever get published, and I'm not particularly concerned about it.
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