Friday, November 04, 2005

Honorable Mention, IBPC

One of my favourite poems - Hey Tree! - received an Honorable Mention in the IBPC. I am pleased with that. It's one of my poems written in a newer 'voice', a voice I think is more me than all the others. It's loud, at any rate - all us Goodwins are loud it would appear. Trouble is, just as I was really starting to swing with it, my editor(s) listed those poems as their least favourite. It's all about 'inner frame of reference' - I have none!

I have only one poetic aspiration. I want to write a pantoum that sounds like water. Or wind. A pantoum that sounds like the gulls lifting from a beach. Or the train, the way it passes and passes. And I don't want it to be clever. I'll write this pantoum using few verses, and when Im done Ill leash the dog and run through the trails and I'll feel the poem in my lungs.

1 Comments:

Blogger Bob Hoeppner said...

It's tricky navigating through conflicting assessments of one's work. I felt I'd matured when I found myself not completely comfortable with either appreciative or dismissive responses. I just keep writing and let the critics fall where they may.

What I find most helpful is to have a few people who can provide feedback on what works for them in regard to intelligibility/accessibility. If I suspect I'm being too obscure (too allusive or suggestive or implicit) I like to have people give me their impressions of what they think is going on in the poem, and I'll tweak to make the poem less solipsistic. Other than that, I'm with Marina Tsvetaeva in her remark on who she writes for (check out my blog for that.)

Very nice poetic aspiration. Good luck with the pantoum!

5:47 AM  

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