A blog that covers the intricacies of poetry writing, publishing, editing, and the challenges of being an intermediate poet.
Showing posts with label strange. Show all posts
Showing posts with label strange. Show all posts
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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