Sunday, March 6, 2011

My Poetry Year: Prologue

Early in 2010, I was writing short stories. I had just put together The People He Thought He Knew, my beloved little collection of horror stories, the year before, and I was working on another collection, hoping to continue the momentum.

And then, one night in March 2010, I totally blew it.

I started writing poetry.

I looked over my stories, decided that they weren't good enough and that I was just hacking them out, and for the first time in about five years, I started writing poetry instead.

It's hard to say what made me decide to try that art form again, other than that I had a thought that only seemed right to express as a poem. Then I had more thoughts, similar in nature. By the time 2010 ended, I had filled half of an inch-thick notebook with poems, and I didn't know what to do with them.

But then, I recalled that I have a blog that I rarely feel I have enough material to update!

So I'm going to put this blog to use. And the poems that I plan to put on here aren't quite masterpieces. The early ones can be pretty rough to read, and even among the later pieces, there are some real stinkers; I'm not even sure yet if I'll share the absolute worst of them. Hey, my delicate ego needs some cushioning sometimes! ;) But some of these poems have some charm or contain turns of phrase that surprised even me while I worked on them. I hope that you'll join me here and see what I've spent these months doing, and that by posting the work, I'll continue to grow, too.

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