I have just now reached my personal goal of writing 100 poems in a year! I know poets who have written a poem every day for a year, so this may not be the most amaze-balls news of the world, but it’s amazing for me. I think it’s a personal best, a personal record. I’ve had times in my life when poetry sprouted forth in spontaneous and voluminous spurts, but never sustained over such a long period, never 100 in a year. So, I’m pleased with myself despite misgivings I have about the quality of my verse, which, I’m pretty open about, and which, often, has become the subject matter for poetry, and which, is pretty much the subject matter for my one hundredth poem. I’d like to thank the academy, my readers, all my lovely and brave followers, and in particular, National Poetry Writing Month–which got the whole ball rolling for me in the first place one year ago April 1st.
Serious About Poetry
What would happen
if I became serious about poetry?
For one, I might stop
simply breaking my tiny
essays into lines and
calling them poems.
For another, I might do
things like this:
Rain comes down in torrents,
beats like mad against the windows,
and I shout over the top of it to be heard:
what’s for dinner, darling?
Something like that would be
good for a poem.
It seems to have all the requisite
poetry things: rain for example,
and an unexpected turn at the end,
the pairing of the mundane
with a totally different kind of mundane.
On second thought,
I think I’ll keep writing tiny essays
and breaking them into lines.
I’m calling that poetry, for now.
michael jarmer 