Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Strange In the Right Way

I consider much of my poetry to be odd, weird, strange.  I try to write about unusual things in unusual ways.  What the problem is is that my work is not fragmented enough in form; I use solid blocks of text, stanzas that don't break up into chaos.  Nothing that's elliptical, no cut off phrases, no fill in the blanks for the readers.  I would like to write in a more modern way, for example like a writer for Jubilat or Fence, but I'm apparently too tight.  Maybe in the end I'm a conventional poet, who isn't trying things that's any different from James Tate or Charles Simic.  If I wrote "autobiographical verse," more based in the real world, I might have more markets that would be interested in my work.  But I don't, or don't do that well.  Sometimes I think my writing is stuck in the middle of two poles and that makes publishing more difficult.  On the other hand, I may have my "distinctive voice," as a teacher once told me, and eventually that will get me through.  I wonder if anyone else struggles with the type of poetry they write and what they aspire to create (or at least would like to try).

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