![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
After a recent mention by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mllelaurel, I decided to hold my breath and plunge into lastpoetstandng, an LJ Idol-type weekly-elimination poetry competition. Normally I take a pass on these sorts of contests, but my Muse kept kicking me in the shins under the dinner table until I gave in, so it's full speed ahead until my world-famous nano-attention span starts to...um...crap, what was I...what? Potatoes? Thingy? I...ahh, hell, I'll remember eventually. Who's hungry?
In all seriousness, it's not even the inevitable waning interest that's bothering me, but the fact that I haven't written a poem in fifteen years. I can remember the exact moment I gave it up: it was 1996, and I had handed Kristi the rough draft of something I'd been tinkering with, and her first (not necessarily unkind) comment was, "Wow. That's morbid." It was then that I realized that my last four or five poems had all been about death in some capacity, which depressed me, less because of the choice of subject matter than the predictability. I swear, I should have been drinking more espresso and wearing more berets back then.
The thing is, I now have no idea what my style is. In high school and early college, I chased a particular spark inspired by a single student poem I'd read in sixth grade or so, one heavily dependent on its visual arrangement on the page (I used a lot of tabs and carriage returns). By the time I finally gave that up, I wasn't writing much poetry any more, and only managed a handful of works between then and my quasi-retirement—not long enough for things to gel. And yes, I've been doing songwriting since then, but lyrics and non-lyrical verse are two different beastlings. In short, this should be interesting, in an psychoanthropological sense if nothing else.
Speaking of writing again, my last 23 remonstrations to myself to get either the novel or the not-yet-started erotica worked on have gone sadly ignored, as have any attempts to get the LJ rolling again. This is not a good sign. Sure as hell doesn't hold much hope for the poetry...um...thing. I...crap, what was...?
mllelaurel, I decided to hold my breath and plunge into lastpoetstandng, an LJ Idol-type weekly-elimination poetry competition. Normally I take a pass on these sorts of contests, but my Muse kept kicking me in the shins under the dinner table until I gave in, so it's full speed ahead until my world-famous nano-attention span starts to...um...crap, what was I...what? Potatoes? Thingy? I...ahh, hell, I'll remember eventually. Who's hungry?In all seriousness, it's not even the inevitable waning interest that's bothering me, but the fact that I haven't written a poem in fifteen years. I can remember the exact moment I gave it up: it was 1996, and I had handed Kristi the rough draft of something I'd been tinkering with, and her first (not necessarily unkind) comment was, "Wow. That's morbid." It was then that I realized that my last four or five poems had all been about death in some capacity, which depressed me, less because of the choice of subject matter than the predictability. I swear, I should have been drinking more espresso and wearing more berets back then.
The thing is, I now have no idea what my style is. In high school and early college, I chased a particular spark inspired by a single student poem I'd read in sixth grade or so, one heavily dependent on its visual arrangement on the page (I used a lot of tabs and carriage returns). By the time I finally gave that up, I wasn't writing much poetry any more, and only managed a handful of works between then and my quasi-retirement—not long enough for things to gel. And yes, I've been doing songwriting since then, but lyrics and non-lyrical verse are two different beastlings. In short, this should be interesting, in an psychoanthropological sense if nothing else.
Speaking of writing again, my last 23 remonstrations to myself to get either the novel or the not-yet-started erotica worked on have gone sadly ignored, as have any attempts to get the LJ rolling again. This is not a good sign. Sure as hell doesn't hold much hope for the poetry...um...thing. I...crap, what was...?
