An Invitation

     Consider this: you've read some of my work. Maybe you've left a comment, or joined my mailing list. Maybe you'd like to go a step further, and send me your work to respond to. I would love to start a conversation.

     Recently, a friend of mine, a retired academic, a woman sensible yet sensitive to the Zeitgeist, took recourse to poetry. She sat down, and in something of an altered state, proceeded to produce a dozen stanzas, more or less metered, more or less rhymed, attempting to engage with the pressures of the times. Once the words were safely on the page, she came up for air—and sent them to me.  Brave of her to share something raw, straight from a hurting heart!

     This is certainly one function of poetry: immediate self-expression. But in sending her lines to me, a practicing poet, she invited something more: not just an emotional response but a technical one as well. 

     My first response was a sincere “Thank you;” I was honored she had shared it with me. Her emotion was clear; the writing had reach and momentum; the passion that had gripped her was evident on the page. 

     What was missing, only half-evident, was technique—what in my mind makes a poem a poem, a dance a dance: rhythmic flow. 

     You recall that poems, when metered, use a measure called feet; such a poem can be called a verbal dance. In her case, every few lines the dancer stumbled, on the wrong foot, missing the beat, while attention to stanzas stole energy from a narrative arc which couldn’t quite find its footing either. Some technique was there, but inconsistent, only half-remembered, not mastered. 

     So I set out to supply the other half, putting new shoes on awkward feet, freeing the dancer to move: if not to fly, at least to flow. In fact, in my mind, flying can’t happen until there’s flow: that’s what technique—and a friendly editor—can supply. 

                                              I would be honored to do

                                                   something similar for you.

“To the extent that a poem remains your baby, it will never do anything more than toddle.”