This is Just To Say

I was discussing with a friend of mine how I'm kind of stuck for things to write about here every single day. I've decided that I don't like posting every day, and I feel like the quality of my posts goes down when I'm posting just to post, not because I have something to say. But that is beside the point. My friend suggested that I post some of my writing (poems or short stories). It's not like I would be the first blogger to put up his/her own poetry, and it would be a easy, little effort thing to do (as long as I did stuff I've already written rather than write something new each day. Which is what I would do, because I would want to post stuff that's been milling for a while and might actually be good).

I'm not going to post my stuff. I am generally against blog poetry. Why? Because it is almost always completely terrible. And people who don't know any better leave comments on it like "zomg wow that was so amazing and deep your like the best poet ever" which only encourages bad poetry. The logical side of my brain says that just the act of putting a poem on a blog doesn't make the poem bad. The other side of my brain sticks its tongue out and says, "you don't know that for sure. What if it does!" I don't like it when my brains fight.

My friend made the argument that, even if the poetry is not very good, it serves a purpose. It conveys a message to people who know the author really well. It exposes the author in a safe, kind of personal level, to those who he is comfortable exposing himself to (hee hee, exposing oneself). To that I say, why not just write your close friends a letter/e-mail/text message. Or, here's a radical idea, call them if you're Feeling enough to write a poem.

I think the problem is that most people think that poems are all about feeling and/or things that happen. It's an easy mistake to make. Poetry, if it's done right, can be overwhelmingly emotional and can often capture very poignant moments. But, in the words of Stephane Mallarme: "you do not make a poem with ideas, but with words." Poetry is all about the language, the constuction, the process itself. All poetry is, in some ways, just about the poem itself. The subject matter of the poem is irrelevant. True poetry can stand alone without all the background information about the author and what he's been through. I know there are many literary critics who may disagree with that. But a good poem is still a good poem if you take the author out of it. You may not be able to interpret it exactly without some biographical information, but it is still a good poem.

I have never read a blog-poem that was good.

I've read some blog-poems that would make interesting songs for some hipster, obscure indy-band. And that has some merit, but it's a whole different thing. If any of my readers really want to read my stuff... well, let me know. I'm not above sharing my work, and it's always nice to get feedback. I'm just not posting it here.