End of Poetry Month

The last day of Poetry Month and I’m so pleased with how the decision to do poetry during my writing time this month turned out. The concentrated attention moved my poetry writing goals forward better than I expected.


I edited, polished and entered four poems: Songbird, Gone Missing, Not Someplace, My Place and Current Creek Reservoir into two contests, edited and polished Ginger Tea of Melancholy, Abandoned Stories, Lost Boys, Others, Unadvertised Special, Not Wolf #25, Hosanna and Kelton for contests later this year.

That’s, also, thirteen, a baker’s dozen more poems toward my goal for a chapbook and thirteen potential wins. Here’s hoping.

Better yet, I have several new poems in their first or second drafts that excite me: Mother’s Lilacs, Canterbury Wars, Butterfly Ridge, You and Me and An Old Yellow Dog and Enough, plus more than a dozen poem seeds or sketched first drafts. That doesn’t include the poems in various stages of drafts I took another look at, wrote down thought notes about and essentially, moved forward.

The month’s been very productive, but that’s the thing, the more I do, that more I can do. Poetry had always fed the writer in me and the soul of me. I need the poetry when life gets tough and it has been that these winter months.

The hardest part about concentrating only on poetry has been all the other writing that took a back seat this month. Stories still nagged at me, the solutions to problems made themselves known. I took copious notes, tried valiantly to keep organized (with a bit of success, too) and tried each day as I closed my computer to have a plan for the next day. For the most part this worked so well, I’ll continue this method, even when I begin again tomorrow working on Hearts High.

The break has been great. I’m looking forward, excited about the one scene I have left. I was struggling; the break has changed my attitude. I’m no longer dreading it. It’s a pivotal scene and a difficult one. It involves poker and detail and conflict, but luckily, I’ve consulted and played through the scene with one of my sons, going over the way the scene would play out and why many times. I hope I can translate all I learned into the scene.

Things I learned:

A change can help with the doldrums.

Never ignore the poetry too long.

A little research, deepens any writing.

Tiny, insignificant, quiet steps can get you through hell.

A Blessing

Spring is here, nagging me just like that black headed chick-a-dee in back that keeps calling to its mate his fee bee call. I imagine him saying “You-hoo, you-hoo.” Her answer, “I’m here, I’m here. (Kind of comforting) Still, I put in my time at the computer, ignoring as best I can the lusted-after sun and warmth and green stuff.

Winter was a real bear this year. Gray and dull, with snow on the ground way to long, but the daffodils are blooming and I have an old canning jar; I’m happy.

Working furiously on poetry. It is, after all, Poetry Month. I decided to put aside my editing on Heart’s High and take the month to work on my chapbook. I have made huge strides adding to my goal of 20-30 polished poems that will fit into a book.

Some poems I developed into what I think will be good contest entries, too, others I’m struggling with. That’s all right, though. I’ve found the poems I have the hardest time carving into what I’m trying to say, please me most, in the end. Now, that is not to say, they are my best poems.

Funny how that happens, the poems I like best are rarely the ones that strike a chord with anyone else. I guess that is the nature of poetry, though.

I’m not done, by no means. There are several poems in rough state, still in need of a lot of work—finding words and rhythm and rhyme. The work has saved me, though. Life has been a rough patch for some months. Nothing everyone else isn’t going through, but instinctively I reach for poetry work when I’m struggling with work, home, money, the blues.

Every time, it has saved me. The blessing of that, the reward of that, is that I don’t have to win a contest, get the book published, have a one of my poems reach the light of day. I just need to work them and let them save me.

And isn’t that the blessing of being a writer? I knew there was one.