I'm writing and revising poetry today.
Last month, Sandra Beasley put together a write-a-poem-a-day party. Okay, it wasn't really a party but an email event--I think there were probably just over ten of us who took part. The goal was -duh- to write a poem a day in August.
For me it got a little crazy because I was school for some of it, then took a trip to the ocean. So, there were some poems I wrote just to reach my quota of one a day--they were quickly typed up and sent off. The funny thing is, I've forgotten a lot of these poems because of how quickly they were written and so today as I pull them up to look at, I'm able to have a distance from them and to see their flaws as well as what went right.
Many are "throwaway" poems, poems that I just don't think will ever go anywhere, but every once in a while I open a file and am pleasantly surprised to find a pretty decent poem (or start of a poem).
I've heard a lot of poets just wake up and write a "morning poem." These poems are just written for the sake of being written, a sort of morning meditation. Most will never been seen, but occasionally, there's a spark, an intensity that's not in the other poems, and that poem will go on to live a good life outside the poet's world and into the reader's world.
It's something to think about adding to your writing life. Write a poem each day and don't worry about it. Don't expect it to be the next Pushcart Prize winning poem, but more, a meditation of where you're at in your life. If it goes on to have a life outside your laptop, then extra credit points to you. But if it doesn't, it still served the purpose of reconnecting you with your words and as a small step to something else.
