Just a quick one... a poem I wrote a couple of years ago that I've read out and about twice recently and had a few comments about. I guess it's not one that the poetry magazines will exactly snap up so it's not worth keeping it hidden away and all that. Instead... here it is:
Last words
I am not old
I'm just well run-in
I am not past it
I'm just past youth
I am not useless
I'm full of stories
I am not over
I'm living truth
I am a mother
And so a daughter
I am a heartbeat
That might be heard
I am a poem
That's all I leave you
I am a lesson
Word follows word
RF 2010
15 comments:
says more about mpoetry magazines than your poem if that's so. does what it says on the tin and that's good enough for me...
...and this is lovely. More pity the mags.
Simple, direct and true. Who could ask for anything more?
Lovely poem Rachel - sums me up exactly.
Re the magazines... maybe I'm wrong but can you name a poetry mag that would publish this poem? Even the marvellous Poetry Bus probably wouldn't (Peadar's not mad about simple rhyme... in fact I think there are some articles coming up in the next issue about rhymes... pro and con type arguments maybe).
For me I would never want to write every poem I come up with in this style (some would say lack of style!) but I do like to do it now and again. It feels good to stretch all the muscles you mention here - the simple, the direct, the true - and I think we do need that in our poetry just as much as we need the complicated, the convoluted and true (or even the not-at-all-true).
But this is my broken record... variety, variety, variety...
x
I like the simplicity of the poem too - and I like the rhyme - it doesn't hit you over the head (although there's certainly something to be said for being hit over the head - er, Peter Goulding).
The older I get the more interesting older people are. I find myself impatient with twenty-somethings who are supposedly in the prime of their lives. Of course, I AM older now, so it might just be sour grapes...
This is one of the many poems I wrote around the time when my Mum was dying/died in 2010. It isn't really about her in particular... it's just one of the many things that came out of that time/experience. I feel hugely changed as a result of it all... I'm not sure other people would even notice but I certainly feel different! I would say almost everything about me has changed.
x
Well said. And most appropriate as I just finished Day 1 of the local senior citizen Olympics.
What events are part of that?
x
I don't know if Hope's are the same, but my dad & his wife participate in the Senior Games every year. They do long jump, softball throw, basketball. Daddy usually sings & Amy writes an essay (she won the gold in their local games last year) & the two of them do a skit every year. They have a blast.
By the way Hope - they're in Hickory, NC :)
So much to say that's already been said. Concur.
My thoughts? Poetry is a feeling most of all, and if it hits you, it works. Ain't nothing broken here.
Unlike the bloody verification thing! This is try number 3!!!
I really like it a lot. Your sensitivity shines through. I've given up thinking what the mags want. Sometimes I don't think even they do. It really is a brilliant poem.
'A feeling most of all'... goodness, haven't they indoctrinated you into the form/structure/masterful-sense-of-superiority-of-the-craft on that course yet T? Hooray.
Selma... I don't often think about the mags & comps these days but for my sins I decided to do a bit of submitting (in every sense...) this week. And I always find it a bit depressing to flick through my files and just know that about half my stuff would get a snort of derision (at best) from editors/judges etc. (even more depressing because I know that that would often be the work that a wider audience would respond to most). It's a neverending circle in a way.... or two circles... one up there, one down there... and very rare the two meet. Ah well.
x
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