Well, you may have noticed I've been posting quite a few poems recently. All of them have been from my poetry challenge for 2013. I'd like to reiterate here, I welcome any comments and critiques.
As far as my goal has been progressing, I consider it to be going well. I've settled down to more steady poem-writing (I haven't written eight in a day since the first week, I believe). I try to write one poem every night before I go to bed. And let me tell you something: it's harder than I thought it would be.
Every night. Sitting down with my pencil and my cool little journal. Having to pound out a poem no matter how tired I am. I've missed a couple of nights, sadly. I always feel a little bit of failure when I wake up and remember I didn't write a poem the day before. But I get over it, and write two just to make up for it. I'm up to 164 poems so far.
Writing poetry this steadily, and having them all together, has brought something to my attention. I have certain phrases that I use a lot in poetry. Words I like to work in. Pairs of words that I often use as rhyming couplets. So sometimes I have to make a conscious effort to not use a word in today's poem. If I want to cover the same topic that I've covered before (which happens a lot), I have to find new words for it. Which I like. But also disappoints me that with my tolerably good vocabulary I still reuse words all the time.
I'm getting lots of practice at poetry writing...
Will you stick with rhyme scheme? Do you work in metaphor? What's your goal besides a number?
ReplyDeleteThe goal itself, as I've put it forth, only covers the numbers. As I write however, I fully intend to experiment with different things. Most of my poems rhyme, but not all, and many have different rhyme patterns.
DeleteMy hope is that through writing consistently I sharpen my skills of word-play, rhyme, and meter. So I guess that could be considered part of the goal.
I did the same exercise for awhile, and it helped me to start finding and solidifying my poetic 'voice'. I wrote a lot of decidedly mediocre poems, and a few that I truly liked. I've definitely noticed that I tend to overuse certain words and phrases - not just in my poetry, but in all of my writing. Writing every day also helped to jolt me out of the rut of revisiting the same topics over and over and over again...though my poetry is still somewhat lacking in variety. Anyway, I look forward to seeing more of the fruit of your efforts!
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