I find there are two great sins against poetry, and often the same group is guilty of both. The first is to take poetry too seriously, and the other is to take it not seriously enough. It is only poetry, after all; it will not change the world nor feed the hungry nor clothe the naked. Writing it will not solve one's tribulations or postpone one's mortality. On the other hand it is poetry, after all, the deepest beauty and most elevated form of language. To write it one must be proud enough to place oneself in the legacy of men and women whose words flow like blood in the veins of our collective life and humble enough to know and accept gratefully one's place in that legacy.
Therefore, it offends me deeply when a writer takes poetry so seriously as to attempt to bare his or her deep dark tortured soul on paper, yet takes it so lightly as to assume whatever words come to mind must indeed be poetry simply because they describe a feeling or are capitalized a certain way or broken into lines.
I find, also, that readers tend to like my work whereas writers do not. I attribute this to a number of facts. Largely due to the feelings describe above my poems tend not to be confessional or autobiographical. In most cases they have nothing to do with me at all. The reader will find exceptions herein, of course, but I try in every poem not to bear witness to myself but rather to resonate with and speak directly to the reader. In so doing, I violate some of the writing school dogma, with humblest apologies to my mentors. When writers criticize my work they cite the very devices I employ, and I therefore take these criticisms as the highest praise. To delve into specifics here would rob the reader of the opportunity to experience what I mean first hand, so I shall leave you, dear reader, to your own leisure to peruse my work, with my blessings and thanks.
