I'm doing this really crazy thing for National Poetry Month. I've commited to writing a poem a day for the month of April. The prospect of this is simulaneously thrilling and terrifying. I won't be doing it here because this blog was envisioned primarily as a place for another kind of writing, not poetry. I don't want to muddy the blog-waters.
But if you're interested, here's a clip from my introduction:
Let me begin by saying that poems, by their very nature, do not lend themselves to this type of one a day writing buzz. A poem needs revision and a certain elbow-greasy-polishing before it is actually a poem. In my experience, this has almost always been the case. Only once in my entire writerly life did a poem fall intact, out of my head and onto the page. Even once is nothing short of a miracle. I do not expect it to happen again.
So, what will appear here will be a sort of stretching of my poetry muscles. Pieces that perhaps will be poems someday, perhaps not.
Now, if you're really, really curious (and you enjoy poetry), you can go over there and check out my April project, or go here and pick one of the 30 delicious things the Academy of American Poets suggests to celebrate National Poetry Month. Or just go read Green Eggs and Ham…
Posts
I look forward to reading them. Are you going to put a link on your sidebar?
ReplyDeleteI don't know. Should I?
ReplyDeleteFirst, yes--you should put them in the sidebar. I'm thinking of linking to old stories I've written myself. We need to put ourselves out there.
ReplyDeleteSecond--this is making me think of a little story Jennifer Louden told at the writer's retreat I went on last summer. Naturally I can't remember anybody's name, but the gist was this-- A famous poet (and I can't remember who) committed himself to writing a poem a day. And he did it. Every day, he wrote a poem. Another writer, upon hearing this, was amazed that the poet was able to produce so much. So he asked him, how did you do it? The poet answered: "I lowered my standards."
Take from that what you will. And good luck!
Thanks so much for the good wishes! I remember when David Lehman did his poem a day project.
ReplyDeleteSo, I've put a link to the poetry page on the sidebar. Feel free to wander on over...