poetry technique – don't confuse the narrator

the how, the why, and the big picture

Yesterday I was talking about writing with a non-writer friend. He asked why I don’t write fiction (which, after all, is a lot more saleable than poetry), wondered whether I actually enjoy the process of writing poetry, and suggested that I should use the voice memo option on my phone to help with my writing.

I’m not sure I managed to give suitable responses to his various points, but it did get me thinking about how and why I write.

And having thought, I’ve decided that there’s an element of oyster to my writing.
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auguries

I’ve been thinking about the presidential inauguration and wondering if I might be able to work a neat pun into this post. Something based on the prefix in being combined with the root augur – that the inaugural can’t augur well.

But that seems a little contrived, so let’s move swiftly on and talk about poetry.

The last two inauguration ceremonies – and, frankly, the only two I’ve really paid much attention to, presumably because of the live reporting via the internet – have both included poets reading their work; but it turns out poems have featured in only five presidential inaugurations.
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reflections on perspective

Yesterday I wrote about details and concluded that what you see depends on your perspective. This is not a new topic for this blog: I think I’ve made it clear over the years I’ve been posting that I think we have a lot of choice about which lens we choose to view things through and that Hamlet was right when he said:

there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

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pale fanfare

Yesterday’s poetry including the words

The silent fanfare of the moon
scatters the clouds.

so let’s start today with a pale fanfare of daffodil trumpets.

I guess even such a pastel flourish should be heralding something, so I’ll use them to announce my latest book.
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golden December

Sadly, the photo doesn’t really do justice to the glorious light that shone over the neighbours’ houses for a few minutes early this morning.

Perhaps, though, it gives an idea of a warm glow, which is the feeling I got when I discovered that an article I wrote about Critiquing Poetry, which was published on Writing-World in 2001 is still being shared and considered useful by complete strangers.

Over the years it’s been copied and re-published without attribution, rehashed and plagiarised all over the web and quite possibly elsewhere.

This time, though, it was properly attributed and credited by the Poets’ Roundtable of Arkansas, who shared it on their FaceBoook page a couple of weeks ago.