Category Archives: poetry

Church History Novels, Doctor Luke's Assistant, poetry, Writing

Waiting, Waiting

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Three months and three days. That’s how long it’s been since I sent a partial manuscrpt of Doctor Luke’s Assistant to an agent I met at a conference. The agent requested the partial, and I complied a couple of days later. No word since them. This is about at the time when, if you listen to on-line writer groups, I should be thinking about a refresher contact to the agent. I think I’ll wait another couple of months, however. It seems the waiting is getting harder on this one the longer it goes on.

Four months. That’s how long it’s been since I sent four items out for consideration by four different periodicals. Three were poems; one was a literary essay. I heard back from two of them over the next two months–two rejections. The other two, nothing. These are not ones I’m sweating over, as I don’t think much payment, if any, is involved, and not a lot of noteriety. Still, knowing would be better than not knowing.

One day. That’s how long it will be before they announce the results of the Valentine’s Day love sonnet contest at Absolute Write. I entered an older one titled “Motif No. 1”, a take-off of the famous fishing hut in Rockport, Massachusetts. One of forty-five entries with five prizes being awarded, I think I have a decent chance to get something. But I’ve been disappointed before, so my hopes aren’t really up.

Waiting is part of the writing industry, with most waits ending in the disappointment of rejection. We’ll see what these four unresolved submittals hold.

poetry

Reflections on the Death of Poetry

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This is a frequent topic on the poetry boards I participate in and monitor. Poetry, if not dead, is minutes away from expiring. People don’t buy it; people don’t read it; newspapers don’t print it and don’t print reviews of it. Poets no longer have influence as they once did. The debate is heated on what has caused this. Some say competing entertainments, such as movies, television, and the internet has drawn off all but the most dedicated readers. Others say that poetry is imploding, due to the dominance of masters of fine arts (MFA) programs and how they produce poets just like their instructors, who are just like their instructors, thus resulting in a similarity of poetry that is strangling. Others say that the poetry community at large is to blame, that they are writing poetry that no one but other poets (or other MFA grads) want to read.

I think it is a combination of these. Many more entertainments exist than, say, when Robert Frost and T.S. Eliot were starting their careers–pre radio, pre television, etc. Entertainment in the home consisted of reading, and little else. Poetry was among the items read. But why does poetry not compete well with television, et al? I think it’s because poetry, as the most compressed type of language, requires the greatest use of brain power of all the written arts. Prose requires less, visual arts less still, motive visual arts even less. So when faces with a choice of brain-taxing poetry reading or mindless sexually-oriented sitcoms most people choose the sitcoms.

However, I do find fault with poets for not providing a product their audience wants. I have always been partial to poems with rhyme and meter (or rhythm), but it seems poets and their marketing outlets (many of which are MFA-led “literary” journals) find fault with rhyme and meter, and go for free verse exclusively. The vast majority of the people simply don’t like free verse. Why? I think Screwtape (see my last post) answered that. People have a love of change, while at the same time a love of permanence or stability. God fulfills that through rhymthm. The seasons change, but always come back to each other year after year. Daylight follows darkness. Low tide follows high tide. In poetry, rhyme and meter in poems to specific forms seem most enjoyable to the largest group of people. Yet, about the same time radio came in, the poets en-massse began moving away from rhyme and meter. Hence, in the face of a shrinking market, the poets turned their backs on what that shrinking market wanted.

IMHO.

poetry, Writing

2007 in Poetry

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I spent little time with poetry in 2007. Having completed Father Daughter Day the year before (but with most of it written 2004-2005), I read it through once and did some minor edits, and found a few beta readers in my target audience. The year began with it under consideration by a gift book editor, but I heard in June (after three follow-up e-mails) that they weren’t interested. I showed it to a couple of editors at a writers conference in November, but as expected they were not interested in poetry. I almost looked into having the book illustrated, but decided the time was not right. So I’m letting this sit for a while.

As to writing poetry, my production this year was only seven:
– a sonnet “Yoked”, on the progression of marriage
– a free verse poem “A Far Away Look”, the first free verse I’ve tried for a while
– a light verse “Oxymoron No. 1”, about reading poetry
– a light verse epithet “For One Who Died Too Young”
– a light verse “On The Virtues Of ‘Good’ Or ‘Fine'”
– an haiku
– a sonnet “Of Bollards And Berms”, about the inner struggle to purity

Several of these I workshopped at Absolute Write or Mosaic Musings.

I just didn’t feel like writing poetry this year. Very few situations arose where I thought That would make a good poem and sat down to do it. I don’t know if this means my poetry interest is waning, or just that the time wasn’t there to do both prose and poetry, and thus I supressed, either purposely or subconciously, the desire to write it. I hope it’s the latter, and that at some point in the future my desire to write poetry–and read it–will come back.