Remembering Poetry
I was looking at some old poetry I had written roughly 15 years ago during a period of depression, (and consequently, a burst of creativity), and my early college years. I had originally saved them on floppy discs, which even if I could find them, I would have no means of running them. But fortunately, I had the foresight to print all of these out on paper and put them in a nice little 3-ring binder.
I had publish 4 of them around that time. One poem, "Solitude #2," was in a now long-defunct ezine whose title I'm not even sure of. I think it was October Country or something like that. I also don't recall the date or issue. I do remember that it was posted next to a picture someone had drawn/painted of Christ, and the commentary that went with it was that my poem was a wonderful depiction of Christ's last moments on the cross. It was an awesome interpretation. I never thought of it like that. But no, the crucifiction was the furthest thing from my mind when I wrote it. It did make me snicker at all that time spent in my college literature classes discussing the "true meaning" of some famous author's work and how brilliant he or she was for using such deep imagery, foreshadowing, insight, etc. If those authors could sit in on some of these sessions, they would probably be amazed at their own genius (or maybe more so, entertained).
The other three were all published at the same time in my community college's anthology, Flight, 2000 issue. (Yes, 13 going on 14 years ago.) I had an English professor at Mt. San Jacinto College who was chiefly responsible for all the creative writing courses and the anthology. For whatever reason, he really liked my stuff. When he solicited contributions for the anthology, he specifically asked me if he could use these three poems, "Recipe for Life," "A Crow's Burden," and "Lovenotes #2." The first two had been specifically written for that class, but the last one was written during my depression period and submitted for an assignment. As it turns out, my favorite is "Recipe for Life" and I have it pretty much memorized and enjoy it to this day.
Since that time, I have tucked these poems, and the others written around that time, away in my bookshelf where they were nearly forgotten. As the result of some recent events and issues in my life, one of those old poems suddenly came to mind. It wasn't one of the published poems, and I couldn't recall exactly how it went, so I pulled it out and read it. It still held up, even after all this time. Then, I started thumbing through the rest of them. Most of them were also pretty good, and with some minor tweaking, could probably be published. I am thinking about doing that. The ones that have already been published could be sold as reprints, and there is a lot of material that can be sold as new. I'm starting to get my itch for writing back, and reading this poetry has reminded me of its appeal. Poetry might be a good place to start again.
The only problem I might have, which I had even at the time the others were published, was that I prefer to use rhyme and meter. I consider it more of a challenge that turns the poem almost into some kind of artistic puzzle for me, and most of my poetry is written that way. I'm not knocking free verse. I've read some very good poetry written in that form where imagery and emotion just jump out at you. It's great, and I've written some (to what success is a matter of opinion). But when discussing rhyme and meter with other writers and having some of it critiqued, whether in forums or workshops, the opinion seems to be that it's a dated form that is, well, amateur and lacks skill. I might agree it's amateur in the sense that most people who begin writing poetry begin with that style. And if all they do is follow a rhyme/meter formula without much concern for anything else, it's not that difficult. But to follow rhyme and meter, and also make it flow well with strong imagery and feeling, that takes some skill. I don't know that all of my poetry has been successful at doing this, but at least 4 of them affected someone. That's good enough for me. So, I'll keep writing it that way as I feel like it, and if it doesn't work for everyone, that's fine. But if it works for someone, I'll consider it a success.
I know there is a Poem a Day challenge going on somewhere on the internet that just started this month, and it's still early enough in the month I could probably catch up without much difficulty. But I don't want to do it like that. First, I want to see if I can get some of my old work published. Then, I want to take my time with the new poetry. Like all my other writing, it takes me forever to get it all down and get it just right. I don't want to be hurried into it. I also plan on picking up my studies again next week and want to leave time for that, too.
I will also likely publish most of these under my real name. One of the reasons for using a pen name was to keep my genres separate. At one time, most of my writing was literary fiction, and I had published it under my real name. When I started writing sci-fi/thriller/horror, I wanted to write that under a different name, because I wanted my readers to easily know when they picked up one of my stories which genre they were getting. If I republish "A Crow's Burden," I will probably publish it under Lachlan David. But most, if not all, of my old poetry will probably work better under Lisa Woodard.
By the way, getting off the migraine meds has already been a great help. I did it without all the scary side effects I had read about. Or at least, the few I experienced were very mild. I don't like dealing with the headaches, but at least now, between headaches, I'm myself again.