Thoughts on the end of my first decade of poetry

Originally uploaded by Heart of Oak

The 2000s have been good to me and it’s good to see this decade pass into some good memories.  Of course, not everything was flamenco guitars and endless tapas with some rocky spots I could have avoided with some foresight but you know how that goes.

The most notable event of my 30s (Yeah, I’m a decade baby so as 2010 comes in so do my 40s… Good times!) was my introduction to poetry.  This is a good thing to remember cuz ten years back I wouldn’t know a good poem if it came up and smacked me in the back of the head.  Today, I do have a good idea what a good poem is to me and it doesn’t have to hit me in the head to be good.  I also have some sense of what a bad poem is and I’m very ready to smack it upside the head. The trick is to keep myself writing more of the good poems and less of the bad poems while developing a personal rubric that balances the technical and evocative elements I enjoy in poetry.

I’m trying to stay positive as the ball drops tonight cuz my relationship to my own poems has been seriously rocky lately. This coincides with my lack of blogging since the internet has not been doing much to improve my writing lately.  All I seem to keep finding is negativity and finger pointing, nameless bashing and a general focus on what’s wrong with US Poetry over what’s good.  And, seriously, who wants to be a part of that?

Now I gotta look at the man in the mirror (C’mon, no end of the year post is complete without a Michael reference) and stick to a game plan that steps up my own game by comparing my new work to my old work, submit more, read more fiction and keep working towards my AA and do it with a smile, style and a fly fedora.

Palabra.